Synchrotron radiation sources have enabled significant improvements in well established methods of materials characterization, and have also allowed the development of new methods to study materials. In this set of two lectures, I hope to 1) provide a synopsis of some of the main methods of materials characterization that are available at most synchrotron sources, 2) provide an overview of how and why the radiation is generated at large synchrotron facilities, and 3) how beamline design provides optimized experimental resources to host these methods and techniques for studying materials.