Dr. Paul Debevec is the director of the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. On this page of his Web site, he presents some of his recent work that involves simulating light sources for a virtual environment. This is done with a sphere of different colored lights that can produce lighting effects representative of the virtual conditions. His most recent addition...

Synchrotrons are used to study the atomic structure of materials. The second largest synchrotron is the Advanced Photon Source, located at the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. The homepage provides information on the synchrotron and current research being conducted at the laboratory. This site covers one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 1997, compiled in the December 19,...

This Web site, produced by Pierantonia Cinzano at the University of Padova, addresses the many problems of light pollution and its possible solutions. Amateur astronomers can learn how to assist the International Dark-Sky Association in collecting measurements of the night sky's brightness. Everyone will enjoy the downloadable paper, The First World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness,...

Solid-state lighting is a revolutionary technology that uses semiconducting materials to create light while generating almost no heat. This is extremely energy efficient, but until recently has been impractical due to the small amount of light emitted. New developments in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have reversed this trend, and strong interest has been shown by the US government and many...

A division of the Berkeley Laboratory, the Advanced Light Source (ALS) "is a national user facility that generates intense light for scientific and technological research." Students and educators can learn how ALS, with the use of one of the world's brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft X-ray beams and the world's first third generation synchrotron light source in its energy range, studies the...