Re: rainbow colors in Compact Disc reflections

redbelly wrote:

It's called diffraction, and involves wave interference.  You can look
up diffraction, or "diffraction grating", in an optics book like Hecht,
or at Google.


FYI- one of the students at a local science fair did a project to measure the pitch on all kinds of cd-like objects: CD, CD-R, DVD, Laser disk, etc. etc. etc. It was a great project, really good- it's something a motivated high school student could do on their own. I'd recommend it to teachers as a good laboratory excersise.

--
Andrew Resnick, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
.

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