Exploring matter with Synchrotron Light is an interactive and detailed introduction to the physics and technology of radiation generated using accelerators and the corresponding widespread high-tech applications in science, medicine and engineering. Making use of the most advanced multimedia techniques today, the CD-ROM is conceived for a worldwide audience, both diverse and specialised, with students, scientists and industrialists as choice targets.

The CD-ROM, Exploring matter with Synchrotron Light, invites you to participate in a virtual tour of a synchrotron, it explains how a synchrotron works and details the innumerable applications. Widely used in the most advanced fields of research in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and materials science, synchrotron light has participated in many of the greatest scientific discoveries of our times such as molecular biology and nanotechnology.

Its interactivity and multiple-entry points permit each and every visitor to explore the CD-ROM according to their own knowledge and curiosity. Numerous animated images give the visitor the opportunity to vary specific parameters and to follow the results. In this way the visitor becomes involved in a virtual experiment. Topics include: Light and Matter: Nature of Light. Properties of Light. X-Rays. Synchrotron Light. Atoms. Interatomic Bonds.

Order and Disorder. Properties of Matter. Technology: Physical Basis. Injection. Storage Rings. Optics. Sample. Detectors. Data Acquisition. Methods: X-ray Imaging. X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy. X-ray Scattering. X-Ray Diffraction. Applications: Surfaces. Magnetism. Extreme Conditions. Materials. Biology. Medicine. Chemistry. Environment.