All articles starting with F

Flash (photography)

Flash photography: making photos with a brief intense burst of artificial light, from 1864 magnesium powder through 1929 flashbulbs to electronic strobes; covers sync, soft light, fill flash, and flash versus continuous lighting.

Flash animation

Flash animation: animation made with Macromedia/Adobe Flash (FutureSplash Animator, 1996), vector timeline authoring with tweening and SWF playback. Flash Player ended 2020; the authoring tool became Adobe Animate, moved to maintenance mode in 2026, with works preserved via Flashpoint and Ruffle.

Flash Boys

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt is Michael Lewis's 2014 Norton book (274 pp.) arguing the US stock market was rigged by high-frequency traders; protagonist Brad Katsuyama built IEX. It triggered an FBI probe, Virtu's delayed IPO, SEC dark-pool investigations, and the Flash Boys Case, though later research found no evidence for its most extreme readings.

Flash butt welding

Flash butt welding is an electric resistance welding process that joins rails by melting their ends with heavy current and forging them together, the dominant method for continuous welded rail.

Flash chromatography

Flash chromatography is a preparative column technique that purifies organic compounds by forcing solvent through fine silica gel under positive pressure instead of gravity flow.

Flash evaporation

Flash evaporation is the partial vaporization of a liquid when its pressure drops below saturation pressure, a violent, pressure-driven boiling that underlies flash distillation and multi-stage flash desalination.

Flash fiction

Flash fiction, also called microfiction or sudden fiction, is very short complete fiction, typically under 1,000 words, coined as a term in the mid-1990s and defined by compression, implication, and a mobilized story world.

Flash flood

A flash flood is a flood of short duration and high peak discharge that rises rapidly, usually within six hours of intense rainfall or a dam failure.

Flash Flood Alley

Flash Flood Alley is the Central Texas region along the Balcones Escarpment, from Dallas–Fort Worth through Austin and San Antonio, prone to deadly flash floods from steep terrain, shallow soils, and intense rainfall.

Flash flood warning

A flash flood warning is an official alert that flash flooding is in progress, imminent, or highly likely, issued in the United States by the National Weather Service.

Flash freezing

Flash freezing, also called shock freezing, rapidly freezes food so only small ice crystals form, preserving texture and flavor; Clarence Birdseye launched the industry in the 1920s.

Flash glucose monitoring

Flash glucose monitoring, also called intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring, is a wearable diabetes sensor that reads interstitial glucose from a filament in the upper arm when scanned.

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon is a 1934 Alex Raymond science fiction comic strip for King Features, created to rival Buck Rogers, following Flash, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov against Ming the Merciless on Mongo; famous for its Universal serials and Star Wars influence.

Oct 3, 2026

Flash Gordon (1936 film)

Flash Gordon (1936), also released as Space Soldiers, is Universal's 13-chapter Buster Crabbe science fiction serial based on Alex Raymond's comic strip, pitting Flash, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov against Ming the Merciless on Mongo; a record-budget serial entered into the National Film Registry in 1996.

Flash Gordon (film)

Flash Gordon (1980) is a Mike Hodges space opera produced by Dino De Laurentiis, adapted from Alex Raymond's 1934 comic strip, starring Sam J. Jones, Max von Sydow, and Timothy Dalton, with a Queen soundtrack and cult status after a poor initial reception.

Flash Gordon (serial)

Flash Gordon (serial): 1936 Universal 13-chapter movie serial adapting Alex Raymond's comic strip, also called Space Soldiers. Starred Buster Crabbe and Charles Middleton; biggest serial budget of its era and 1996 National Film Registry selection.

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) is Universal's third and final Flash Gordon serial, 12 chapters directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor, starring Buster Crabbe, Carol Hughes, and Charles Middleton as Ming battling the Purple Death.

Flash hider

A flash hider, also called a flash suppressor, is a muzzle device that reduces or redirects a firearm's muzzle flash to hide the shooter's position and avoid blinding them.

Oct 22, 2026

Flash Joule heating

Flash Joule heating (FJH) is a resistive heating process introduced in 2020 by chemist James Tour's lab at Rice University, best known for making flash graphene from waste plastics.

Flash lock

A flash lock, also called a staunch lock, is a movable barrier in a river weir, opened to release a rush of water that carries boats through.

Flash memory

Flash memory, also called Flash EEPROM, is a non-volatile semiconductor storage technology that stores data as trapped charge in floating-gate transistors; it is used in USB drives, memory cards, and SSDs.

Flash memory controller

A flash memory controller is the processor and firmware in an SSD or memory card that manages NAND flash through mapping, wear leveling, garbage collection, and error correction.

Flash mob

A flash mob, or flashmobbing, is a group that assembles suddenly in a public place, performs a brief act, then disperses, organized via email or social media since 2003.

Flash photolysis

Flash photolysis, also known as transient absorption spectroscopy, uses a short light pulse to trigger and monitor photochemical reactions, earning Norrish and Porter the 1967 Nobel Prize.

Flash point

The flash point is the lowest temperature at which a liquid gives off vapor that can ignite in air; the lower it is, the more flammable the liquid.

Oct 3, 2026

Flash Point (导火线) (2007 film)

Flash Point (導火綫, Dou fo sin) is a 2007 Hong Kong action film by Wilson Yip starring Donnie Yen as Detective Ma Jun fighting Vietnamese gangster brothers; its MMA choreography won Best Action Choreography at the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards.

Flash powder

Flash powder, also known as photoflash powder, is a pyrotechnic mixture of metal fuel and oxidizer that burns almost instantly, producing an intense flash and loud report.

Flash pyrolysis

Flash pyrolysis is an analytical technique that heats microgram-scale samples at about 10,000 K/s in an inert atmosphere, identifying polymers, microplastics, and biomass by GC/MS.

FLASH radiotherapy

FLASH radiotherapy is a radiation therapy technique delivering doses at ultra-high dose rates above 40 Gy/s, over 1000 times faster than conventional radiotherapy, killing tumors normally while reducing normal tissue injury, with first-in-human treatment in 2018.