Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Dear Expert,

I really need help with developing an investigation from my idea. For several weeks, I have been trying to find or think of a model that I could build or an experiment I could do to explain how lasers read CDs (I have a computer's CD drive that I could use in this assignment). Can you help me? I have no idea how to show how a laser reads a CD, and if you do, I would REALLY appreciate it if you told me!!!!

Thankyou,

Steff.

Hi Steff,

Take a look at http://www.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm to see if the information there works for you. Please let me know.

Thanks for posting a reply Dave! To tell you the truth, I had already come across the HowStuffWorks site and it was pretty helpful. Thanks anyway, and if you or anyone has any other ideas, I would definitly like to hear them.

Thanks again,
Steff

Steff,

Howstuffworks covers the cd reading process by a laser pretty nicely. There isn't a whole lot more to it really without going into semiconductor physics (if you want to learn about how to lay metals onto a substrate, for example).

I have found a couple more sites you might want to look at (they are actually not as detailed as Howstuffworks but may help you understand the concepts from a different angle):

http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/ ... sics2.html

http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~c9727722/CDROM/CDRead.html

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm? ... 540&page=2

Shijun