In the age of wireless technology and streaming services, CDs could be considered an obsolete medium, primarily used by 21st-century Luddites clinging to a way to play their tragically untrendy music. However, for an invention that's over 40 years old, compact discs are pleasantly sophisticated technology (if you look closely). The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

CDs (compact discs) simply work by using a laser to read digital information etched onto their surface in minuscule patterns.

This information is encoded as a sequence of tiny depressions (called pits) and flat areas (lands) which together represent binary data (basically 1s and 0s). The pits are absolutely minuscule, measuring just a few micrometers in length (

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