What are strobe lights and does it freeze motion?

What are strobe lights? I don't want definitions from wikipedia and what not, I don't get them. I read that they make something in motion appear as if it's stationary during that flash of light, is that true? If someone was in a bar dancing and there are strobe lights producing regular flashes, although the person is in constant movement, would that person seem to pause in a certain move for a longer period of time thanks to the flash?What are strobe lights and does it freeze motion?Strobe lights are light sources that produce an extremely brief flash of light - around 1/1000 second or less. The flash might be one-time (as in a camera flash), repeating based on a timer, triggered by peaks in sound, or triggered by other things, but the common feature is the very brief flash.

As for "freezing motion" - it depends on what the strobe is doing and on what the motion is.

If you have a relatively dark room with someone dancing, and you fire a strobe ONCE, you will see the person's position at the instant the strobe fires - just like a still photograph.

If the person is just randomly dancing and you start a repeating strobe, you will see a series of "still frames" of the person in various positions. The motion does not actually stop, of course, but since it is only lit during brief instants you don't see the movement "in between" the flashes. Persistence of vision allows you to see these very brief "frames" for longer than the strobe's actual duration.

If a person is making a repeating movement -- always coming back to the same position in a fixed amount of time, as in, for example, calisthenics - and you set the strobe to fire at those moments, then to your vision it will seem that the person is not moving, not changing position, at all.

A related effect is the "wagon wheel effect" seen in movies.

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