Mike Hord writes:

> > Bob Blick writes:
> > 
> > > Clearly it's your fault, you over-revved the CD and the centrifugal force
> > > blew it apart :)
> > 
> > As an aside, the reason that 52x cdrom drives were only produced for a
> > short period of time is because this was happening far too
> > frequently.  At those speeds just a slight instability can lead to
> > oscillations which will shatter the disc.
> 
> See the Discovery Channel's show Mythbusters.  There was an episode
> where they set out to prove that this was possible (or not).  I don't
> believe they ever managed to get a healthy CD to shatter at regular
> CD-ROM speeds (not that I doubt the veracity of claims to the
> contrary), but even small flaws made for big excitement.

The story, at least as I heard it, was that balanced cdroms were just
fine at 52x, and could probably be pushed even further.  The problem
comes in when the media is unbalanced, and several layers of
silkscreen ink on a commercial CD is enough to get things out of
whack.  I'd also suspect that any motion against the gyroscopic force
of the disc could cause a similar problem.

I don't get cable and I don't watch any broadcast TV aside from PBS
and the occasional Simpson's episode, but I did catch an episode of
Mythbusters while testing a home theater setup for a friend.  Neat
stuff.  Is anyone aware of any websites with summaries of their
experiemnts?

-p.
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