Last December I went on a tour of the Diamond synchrotron. Here's a photograph of the model inside. The smaller circle on the left hand side is where they accelerate the electrons up to speed before sending them around the main circle.
This photograph is taken inside the facility, stood on top of the main circle.
The electrons don't in fact go round in a perfect circle. They go along a series of straights and are then bent at corners. The yellow line on the floor shows the path of the beam.
The sort of magnet arrays that bend the beam are shown in the model photographed below. To change the motion of the electron beam in this way means that a beam of high energy electromagnetic radiation is released. This comes out as high energy X-rays, which carry on in a straight line when the electron beam (yellow line) changes direction.
The X-rays go straight on into facilities called huts. Experiments are set up in the huts. The X-rays go through samples to show, for example, the structure of a protein.
Diamond has a brilliant website. Here's a link to the education bit http://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/Teachers.html . There are open days. Their staff were brilliant!
