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CD BURNERS!!

1. For my assignment I will investigate how CD-Burners and CD-R's work. This is a very important topic because many of us use CD burners and copied CD's almost every day, whether making our own personal discs or copying and storing computer data. 2. CD burners were developed when, in the early '90s, "more and more consumers and professionals were looking for a way to make their own CD-quality digital recordings."

As a respone, electronics manufacturers developed the CD-R with its transluscent dye as a replacement for the tradition CD's bumps and flat areas. Also they developed the CD burner to create the data on the new CD-Rs.

3."How does this all apply to light?" you may ask, however it is all made possible by light. That is because the whole process of burning the CD, as well as reading it, is done by use of lasers (of varying power of course.). What is a laser? In lamens terms it is a completely focused beam of light, travelling all in one direction and composed of one single wavelength - thus being one color, usually red. Laser is actually an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

In order to understand how CD writers work, we must understand that CDs store digital data as a pattern of bumps and flat areas, arranged in a long spiral track. The CD fabrication machine uses a high-powered laser to etch the bump pattern into photoresist material coated onto a glass plate. "CDs store music and other files in digital form -- that is, the information on the disc is represented by a series of 1s and 0s. In conventional CDs, these 1s and 0s are represented by millions of tiny bumps and flat areas on the disc's reflective surface. The bumps and flats are arranged in a continuous track that measures about 0.5 microns (millionths of a meter) across and 3.5 miles (5 km) long." Then the CD player uses a laser to pass over this long track of data. When the laser hits a flat area on the CD it bounces back to the optical sensor and is recognized as a 1, however when a bump is hit the laser beam is reflected away from the optical sensor in the CD player, and it in turn recognized as a 0.


CD Burners work in a completely different way, however it produces the exact same effect as the processes used to create a conventional CD (pressing the flat areas and bumps into the CD's surface.) Also the CDRs are made of different materials than regular CDs, which are made of aluminum and plastic. Instead, CDRs are composed of a smooth reflective metal layer, which rests on top of a layer of transluscent photosensitive dye. This dye, when heated, turns opaque so that light can no longer pass through it (like a "bump" area on a regular CD.) CD burners use a high powered laser to "burn" this dye into the same pattern of 0s and 1s as a regular CD, and when the laser hits a burned area it reflects back to the optical sensor and is read as a 0 and when the laser hits a non-burned area it reflects away from the sensor and is read as a 1.


4. CDRs and CD burners are very important and I learned specifically how they work through this project and my research.

This web page was created by Mark Aquino.

all information and pictures obtained from www.howstuffworks.com