CD exploded in a DVD-player

Yesterday, a CD exploded in my DVD-player on my PC. That's not funny... but I'm a lucky guy : my DVD-player is still OK. That's different for the CD : there were so much pieces...
I saw that it was possible with 48x burners, but I never heard about it for a DVD-player.

Do you know how it is possible ? How can a CD be destroyed while it turn in a player (or a burner) ?

 

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I saw a link once...wish I could find it. It showed tests they did which shows the maximum speed at which a CD could spin before it exploded. the speed I believe was 52 or 54x for a brand new CD. They even wrapped a kevlar wire around the cd to try to hold it together and it actually kinda liquified and went around the wire and still exploded. Pretty cool. My guess is that your cd was older and had lost some strength at somepoint. Either way, I would call the manufacturer. That's not supposed to happen, and even though you think your player is still good, it may have something wrong with it. Call and get a replacement. It's there fault. They're lucky it didn't hurt you...then you'd get a FAT settlement.

-AntonK

 

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This happened to a friend of mine only the shards of plastic actually came flying ouyt the drive and stuck in the wall, it was so powerfull it blew the cd splinters throught the computers's front. He was lucky not to be in the way! Here's an explaination of why. CDs don't have much weight but they spin at tremendous speeds thus they have a very large momentum regardless of their nominal weight. If the disc is inserted even slightly at an angle it could catch on somehting as it spins. To stop somehting with such momentum instantly requires a lot of resitance unfortunately the tendency is for the weakest point to just give and this is alwasy the CD.

 

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im so trying this, all i have to do is spin a CD as fast as possible(i'll use a really really really geared electric motor), and it'll "explode/fragment" awesome, im doing it.

 

AntonK : Thanks
god-of-course : I'm more lucky than your friend because my CD (or its pieces...) keep in the DVD-player. I had no problem with ejected pieces.
squirrels : Have a lot of fun

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oh, i will, those light any match heads, stick them into a small film canister roll-can, duct tape it, shoot it out of a pneumatic cannon, its cool, have a water hose ready.
(email me at battlebikr@aol.com for more info).

 

Is it the raw speed that does it, or the stress created by acceleration?

 

From a physics standpoint, raw speed nor acceleration does anything to the CD really. Its the fact that as the CD spins, it wants to continue in a straight line (every atom of it), but the CD is held together by the molecular bonds in the plastic. At some point, the kinetic energy of the particles is too great and the bonds break,. shattering the CD to pieces.

-AntonK

 

just curious...when a CD explode, does it explode as in fragmentised or does it really explode as in combustion?

When a CD player is just playing/reading a CD what speed is the disc spinning?

Is this hazzard extended to home entertainment players as well? To be honest, this is the first time I've come across incidents of CDs exploding. I do quite a lot of burning and after reading this thread, I think I'll have to stop sitting so near the CPU when burning.

If this is a common hazzard, I think they should start putting warning labels on CD burners and players.

 

When you get a CD-ROM and it says its speed such as 52X or 48X, this is refering to how many times faster than a standard CD player (think playing a song). Actually, with newer CD-roms they don't need to actually spin at 52x time the normal speed because they use multiple lasers to read faster.

So, because of this, you don't have to worry about your home CD player since it never spins faster than it has to to read the CD to play.

-AntonK

 

When it explodes, it fragmentised ! It's not a real explosion...

Don't worry about it : when it happened to me, all the pieces stood in the player (and that player is still running). I don't know if it's the same with burners, however I don't think that a CD can get out so easily from a computer.