CDs and DVDs are everywhere these days. Whether they are used to hold music, data or computer software, they have become the standard medium for distributing large quantities of information in a reliable package.
CD: Material : Most of a CD consists of an
injection-molded piece of clear polycarbonate plastic.
The total amount of digital data that must be stored on a CD is:
44,100 samples/channel/second x 2 bytes/sample x 2 channels x 74 minutes x 60 seconds/minute =
783,216,000 bytes
CD: The Spiral : A CD has a single spiral track of data, circling from the inside of the disc to the outside. The fact that the spiral track starts at the center means that the CD can be smaller than 4.8 inches (12 cm) if desired.
CD: Bumps : You will often read about "pits" on a CD instead of bumps. They appear as pits on the aluminum side, but on the side the laser reads from, they are bumps.
The incredibly small dimensions of the bumps make the spiral track on a CD extremely long. If you could lift the data track off a CD and stretch it out into a straight line, it would be 0.5 microns wide and almost 3.5 miles (5 km) long!
CD Player Components:
The CD player has the job of finding and reading the data stored as bumps on the CD. Considering how small the bumps are, the CD player is an exceptionally precise piece of equipment. The drive consists of three fundamental components:
- A drive motor spins the disc. This drive motor is precisely controlled to rotate between 200 and 500 rpm depending on which track is being read.
- A laser and a lens system focus in on and read the bumps.
- A tracking mechanism moves the laser assembly so that the laser's beam can follow the spiral track. The tracking system has to be able to move the laser at micron resolutions.
What CD Player Does: Laser Focus
The fundamental job of the CD player is to focus the laser on the track of bumps. The laser beam passes through the polycarbonate layer, reflects off the aluminum layer and hits an opto-electronic device that detects changes in light. The bumps reflect light differently than the "lands" (the rest of the aluminum layer), and the opto-electronic sensor detects that change in reflectivity. The electronics in the drive interpret the changes in reflectivity in order to read the bits that make up the bytes.
What CD Player Does: Tracking
The hardest part is keeping the laser beam centered on the data track. This centering is the job of the tracking system. The tracking system, as it plays the CD, has to continually move the laser outward. As the laser moves outward from the center of the disc,