chefpyro

It’s 2018 and I still have no clue how CDs work. It’s a shiny disc, how do they get data on that, let alone that much?? Magic

topographicocean

Like a vinyl disc, where a physical groove is marked into the vinyl, a laser marks the ink of a CD in a similar manner.

A laser (your disc drive) can then look at the pattern in the ink and understand it.

chefpyro

There’s no grooves on a CD tho???

rave-lord-nito

They’re just really tiny, hence the laser. The smaller grooves means that more info can fit on a disc of the same size.

chefpyro

Man how the fuck did they figure out how to make that

silver-tongues-blog

They took the vinyl concept and made it smaller. Like how they took the concept of computers and made them small enough to fit in your hand