What is "spark"

electric current \electric current\, electrical current \electrical current\, the movement of electrically charged particles, atoms, or ions, through solids, liquids, gases, or free space; the term is usually used of relatively smooth movements of electric charge through conductors, whether constant or variable. Sudden movements of charge are usually referred to by other terms, such as spark or lightning or discharge. In metallic conductors the electric current is usually due to movement of electrons through the metal. The current is measured as the rate of movement of charge per unit time, and is counted in units of amperes. As a formal definition, the direction of movement of electric current is considered as the same as the direction of movement of positive charge, or in a direction opposite to the movement of negative charge. Electric current may move constantly in a single direction, called direct current (abbreviated DC), or may move alternately in one direction and then the opposite direction, called alternating current (abbreviated AC).

Old English spearca "glowing or fiery particle thrown off," from Proto-Germanic *spark- (cognates: Middle Low German sparke, Middle Dutch spranke, not found in other Germanic languages). Electrical sense dates from 1748. Old French esparque is from Germanic.\n

\nSlang sense of "a gallant, a showy beau, a roisterer" (c.1600) is perhaps a figurative use, but also perhaps from cognate Old Norse sparkr "lively." Spark plug first recorded 1902 (sparking plug is from 1899); figurative sense of "one who initiates or is a driving force in some activity" is from 1941.

c.1200, "to emit sparks," from spark (n.). Meaning "to affect by an electrical spark" is from 1889. Figurative meaning "stimulate, to trigger" first attested 1912. Meaning "to play the gallant, to court" is from the 17c. secondary sense of the noun. Related: Sparked; sparking.

Etymology 1 n. 1 A small particle of glowing matter, either molten or on fire. 2 A short or small burst of electrical discharge. 3 A small, shining body, or transient light; a sparkle. 4 (context figuratively English) A small amount of something, such as an idea, that has the potential to become something greater, just as a spark can start a fire. 5 (''in plural'' '''sparks''' ''but treated as a singular'') A ship's radio operator. 6 (context UK slang English) An electrician. vb. (context transitive English) To trigger, kindle into activity (an argument, etc). Etymology 2

n. 1 A gallant, a foppish young man. 2 A beau, lover. vb. To woo, court.

1. n. a momentary flash of light [syn: flicker, glint]

2. brightness and animation of countenance; "he had a sparkle in his eye" [syn: sparkle, light]

3. electrical conduction through a gas in an applied electric field [syn: discharge, arc, electric arc, electric discharge]

4. a small but noticeable trace of some quality that might become stronger; "a spark of interest"; "a spark of decency"

5. Scottish writer of satirical novels (born in 1918) [syn: Muriel Spark, Dame Muriel Spark, Muriel Sarah Spark]

6. a small fragment of a burning substance thrown out by burning material or by friction

1. v. put in motion or move to act; "trigger a reaction"; "actuate the circuits" [syn: trip, actuate, trigger, activate, set off, spark off, trigger off, touch off]

2. emit or produce sparks; "A high tension wire, brought down by a storm, can continue to spark" [syn: sparkle]

SPARK is a formally defined computer programming language based on the Ada programming language, intended for the development of high integrity software used in systems where predictable and highly reliable operation is essential. It facilitates the development of applications that demand safety, security, or business integrity.

Originally, there were three versions of the SPARK language (SPARK83, SPARK95, SPARK2005) based on Ada 83, Ada 95 and Ada 2005 respectively.

A fourth version of the SPARK language, SPARK 2014, based on Ada 2012, was released on April 30, 2014. SPARK 2014 is a complete re-design of the language and supporting verification tools.

The SPARK language consists of a well-defined subset of the Ada language that uses contracts to describe the specification of components in a form that is suitable for both static and dynamic verification.

In SPARK83/95/2005, the contracts are encoded in Ada comments (and so are ignored by any standard Ada compiler), but are processed by the SPARK "Examiner" and its associated tools.

SPARK 2014, in contrast, uses Ada 2012's built-in "aspect" syntax to express contracts, bringing them into the core of the language. The main tool for SPARK 2014 (GNATprove) is based on the GNAT/GCC infrastructure, and re-uses almost the entirety of the GNAT Ada 2012 front-end.

Spark is Thomas Leeb's second available release and features nine instrumentals and one song with vocals.

Spark was a Thoroughbred stallion who was among the early imports of Thoroughbred horses to America. The Belair Stud stables were associated with him and a mare, Queen Mab, also imported in this period. Frederick, Prince of Wales gave the stallion to Samuel Ogle, the governor of Maryland, as a gift.

"Spark" is a song by Tori Amos, released as the first single from her 1998 album From the Choirgirl Hotel.

"Spark" is a song performed by Scottish singer Amy Macdonald. The song is her second single released from her album A Curious Thing and was released in the UK on 10 May 2010. The song has charted in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, however it was the first time a single failed to chart in the UK.

A spark is an incandescent particle. Such sparks may be produced by pyrotechnics, by metalworking or as a by-product of fires, especially when burning wood.

Within the narrative of the fictional Transformers universe, a spark is usually the " soul" of a Transformer. Likewise, the AllSpark is an ancient artifact or object capable of creating new Transformer life by bestowing machinery with sparks. The term "AllSpark" was created by writer Robert N. Skir, who responded to a fan question about the TV series Beast Machines July 21, 1999 web page. Skir explained that the Beast Machines entity called The Oracle was actually the AllSpark, consisting of "the spark of every transformer who has ever lived, or ever will live". In a November 6, 1999 web page, Skir clarified that the Matrix was something called the AllSpark and was "made up of every Spark that ever was, and every Spark that ever will be".

In the Beast Machines television series, the term "AllSpark" was used for the Transformers' afterlife. Although the concept of the Transformers afterlife was briefly touched upon in the original series and Beast Wars series, it was not until Beast Machines that the concept was explored further. The Autobot Matrix of Leadership, as seen in the original series, was not merely a receptacle for the consciousness of deceased Autobot leaders; it was a gateway that led to the AllSpark, from which all current and future Transformers' sparks came. Possessing a sentience, the AllSpark had sent Sparks out into the world to live. When any Transformers, good or evil, were destroyed, their Spark would return to the AllSpark and share with it all that it had experienced, thereby adding to the timeless fountain of knowledge and wisdom. The facility on Cybertron, which produces Maximal protoforms, was named after the aforementioned Matrix, and was analogous to human's Heaven. A similar Predacon facility also exists, named the Pit, and was analogous to Hell. The Pit was also known as the Inferno until the late-season addition of the character Inferno.

In the Transformers 2007 live action film, the "AllSpark" is a cube-shaped artifact adorned with glyphs and designs which is capable of granting independent life to normal electronic and mechanical objects and is the source of life for all Transformers. The AllSpark was prominently featured in the concurrently released 2007 Transformers Animated series, where it shares a similar history and capabilities with its 2007 film counterpart, but resembles the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. IGN described the AllSpark saving the day as one of the worst moments of the Transformers movie. The "AllSpark" name is also mentioned of Hasbro Studios's new film self-finance/co-finance production label Allspark Pictures on October 20, 2014.

Spark is a Canadian radio talk show about "technology and culture." Hosted by Nora Young, the program made its CBC Radio One début on September 5, 2007. The show is also broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio 159 and, since January 9, 2010, on Vermont Public Radio's network of stations in the United States. Spark is produced in Toronto by Young and a team that currently consists of Michelle Parise, Dan Misener, and Kent Hoffman.

The program is made collaboratively with its audience. Nora Young often encourages listeners to become "Spark Contributors" by participating in the active conversations on the Spark Blog, notifying the Spark Team of interesting ideas to investigate, or even recording interviews and letting Spark use them on the show. The show often plays phone messages left by Spark listeners and features comments left on the Spark Blog. Its episodes made use of Creative Commons music until October 2010, when CBC management realized that Spark was available on some platforms considered to be commercial, violating use restrictions of most of the music available under the Creative Commons licenses. This prompted Spark to limit its use to the APM Music library.

Although less politically themed than most CBC shows, Spark sometimes comments on proposed legislation that affects widely used technology. An example was the Copyright Modernization Act and the bills leading up to it.

In Conway's Game of Life and similar cellular automaton rules, a spark is a small collection of live cells that appears at the edge of some larger pattern such as a spaceship or oscillator, then quickly dies off.

Sparks are commonly separated by some distance from the main body of the pattern -- the analogy is to an object "throwing off sparks" -- but the minimum requirement is a set of cells on the pattern boundary that are alive in one phase but dead in a later phase, and that are unaffected by other parts of the pattern (they would die in the same way if the rest of the pattern were removed). The converse is not necessarily true: for example, removing the spark in the accompanying illustration would destabilize the fumarole.

Sparks are an important way for components of a larger pattern to interact with each other; for instance, Niemiec describes the use of sparks formed by colliding gliders as part of the synthesis of other life objects. Bell writes that lightweight, mediumweight, and heavyweight spaceships in Life are especially useful because they all have small sparks which may be used to perturb nearby puffer trains and stationary patterns as the spaceships pass by them.

Spark is the third album from Norwegian singer-songwriter Marit Larsen, and was released on November 18, 2011. The information was made available via Marit Larsen's Tumblr page. On 31 July 2011 Marit Larsen began to post information about her third album on her Tumblr. On 7 October 2011 she announced the name of the album and track list. The first single, "Coming Home" had premiered on NRK P3 and on her Facebook page on 15 October.

SPARK is an award winning international architecture and urban design practice based in Beijing, London, Singapore and Shanghai. Since 2001 the studio was responsible for designing a wide range of projects from complex multi-phase mixed use buildings to small scale special urban infill projects.

Spark is the official student newspaper of the Victorian College of the Arts Student Union. It is published four times per year and is free to all Victorian College of the Arts students.

Spark is also the official student newspaper of the Lakota East High School. The publication is run almost entirely by students of Lakota East High School. Spark sends out 7 issues a year.

Spark Mag is also an online music and culture magazine featuring underground and radical artists. It was started as a collaboration between members of punk band Downtown Boys and grassroots advocacy organization Demand Progress.

In mathematics, specifically in linear algebra, the spark of a matrix A is the smallest number n such that there exists a set of n columns in A which are linearly dependent. Formally,

spark(A) = min∥d∥s.t. Ad = 0.

By contrast, the rank of a matrix is the largest number k such that some set of k columns of A is linearly independent.

The concept of the spark is of use in the theory of compressive sensing, where requirements on the spark of the measurement matrix are used to ensure stability and consistency of various estimation techniques. It is also known in matroid theory as the girth of the vector matroid associated with the columns of the matrix. The spark of a matrix is NP-hard to compute.

Spark is a 1998 film starring Terrence Howard and Nicole Ari Parker. Garret Williams made his directorial debut with this tale of an urban black couple trapped in a desert town of rednecks after their car breaks down after hitting a dog. Byron (Terrence Howard) and Nina (Nicole Ari Parker) are driving a BMW from Chicago to L.A. to take Nina to school when they experience a back-road breakdown. Teen Mooney (Brendan Sexton III) tows them to a white-trailer-trash town where they're charged $500 for repairs. When the BMW dies again, they stay overnight in a motel, and the situation soon gets grim as Byron starts spending more time with Mooney and his true colors start to show revealing a disturbing town story. The characters in this low-budgeter were first introduced in a 1996 short. Spark was shown at 1998 film festivals (Sundance, Berlin).

The Spark group is a US Trotskyist organization. It aligns internationally with the Lutte Ouvrière tendency.

Spark originated as a faction within the Spartacist League that was attracted to the French group Voix Ouvrière's method of propagandizing in the factories. They allied themselves with the Turnerites against the leadership, but left independently before the League expelled the Turnerites late in 1968. This tendency formally organized as "Spark" in 1971, with two locals in Detroit and Baltimore.

The organization began a monthly magazine The Spark in July 1971, which became a biweekly in early 1976. It also produced a variety of newsletters based at local factories, such as the Ford Spark, Eldon Spark etc. Another magazine, Class Struggle, began in 1980.

The movement was wary of becoming too enmeshed in " petty bourgeoisie" movements - members wished to firmly base themselves in the proletariat. But neither did they completely eschew work in such movements. For instance, referring to the anti-nuclear movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, they proclaimed "They should participate in its activities when such participation does not detract from their basic activity in the working class. But we must be clear that the building of a revolutionary organization rooted in the working class comes before participation in any petty bourgeoisie movement".

In mid-1982 Spark had locals in Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago and New York.

SPARK, or Spaceborne Payload Assist Rocket - Kauai, also known as Super Strypi, is an American expendable launch system developed by the University of Hawaii, Sandia and Aerojet Rocketdyne. Designed to place miniaturized satellites into low Earth and sun-synchronous orbits, it is a derivative of the Strypi rocket which was developed in the 1960s in support of nuclear weapons testing. SPARK is being developed under the Low Earth Orbiting Nanosatellite Integrated Defense Autonomous System (LEONIDAS) program, funded by the Operationally Responsive Space Office of the United States Department of Defense.

Spark is an Indian drama film directed and written by V. K. Singh, produced by Rekha Yadav and Naresh Gupta. The film stars Rajneesh Duggal and Subhasree Ganguly in lead roles, with Govind Namdeo, Ashutosh Rana, Rohit Raj and Rati Agnihotri in supporting roles. The film was released on 2 October 2014.

Spark is an upcoming animated film written and directed by Aaron Woodley, and featuring the voices of Jessica Biel, Hilary Swank, Susan Sarandon, Jace Norman and Alan C. Peterson.

Spark is a email application for iOS devices by Readdle. Lifehacker wrote that Spark was the best alternative for Mailbox users when that service went offline.

Spark is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

• Muriel Spark (1918–2006), Scottish novelist
• Alex Spark (1949–1993), Scottish footballer
• Alexander Brodie Spark (1792–1856), Scottish-born Australian merchant
• Debra Spark (born 1962), American writer
• Jeany Spark (born 1982), British actress
• Nick T. Spark, American film-maker and writer
• Victoria Spark (1950–2006), American actress

Spark is a free and open-source software web application framework and domain-specific language written in Java. It is an alternative to other Java web application frameworks such as JAX-RS, Play framework and Spring MVC. It runs on an embedded Jetty web server by default, but can be configured to run on other webservers.

Inspired by Sinatra, it does not follow the model–view–controller pattern used in other frameworks, such as Spring MVC. Instead, Spark is intended for "quickly creating web-applications in Java with minimal effort."

Spark was created and open-sourced in 2011 by Per Wendel, and was completely rewritten for version 2 in 2014. The rewrite was hugely centered on the Java 8 lambda philosophy, so Java 7 is officially not supported in version 2 and above.

Spark is an open-source instant messaging program (based on XMPP protocol) that allows users to communicate via text in real time. It can be integrated with the Openfire server to provide additional features, such as controlling various parts of Spark functionality from a central management console, or integrating with a customer support service Fastpath, allowing Spark users to log in to queues, accept and forward support requests, use canned responses. Being a cross-platform application, it can be run on various systems. Installers for Windows, Mac OS and Linux are available on the official website.

Spark is the debut studio album of American country music singer Drake White. It was released on August 19, 2016 via Dot Records, an imprint of Big Machine Records. The album has produced two singles, "It Feels Good" and " Livin' the Dream", both of which have reached the Top 40 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. White co-wrote ten of the album's twelve tracks.