• Question: What is a synchotron?

    Asked by thamminb to James on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by libhacharlo.
    • Photo: James Marrow

      James Marrow answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      It’s a big ring of magnets that sends a beam of electrons round and round in a circle. (a big circle). As the electron beam is bend around corners it gives off light. That light covers a wide spectrum above and below the visible range of light that you might normally think of. X-rays are part of that spectrum, and the synchrotron gives off very very bright X-rays. They are so bright that they can shine through centimetres of steel – and it’s these X-rays that we use to look inside our samples.

      There’s a nice new synchrotron at the Diamond Light Source (http://www.diamond.ac.uk/), but so far I’ve done most of my work using the one in Grenoble in France (http://www.esrf.eu/) – the food there is great.

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