Measuring the capacity of a Compact Disc

Hoang Van Thien Nguyen Tien Dat Nguyen Tat Dat

Nguyen Toan Thang

Final Report, Physics

Computer Science 2017
Vietnamese–German University
18th April 2018

1 Introduction
Compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by
Philips and Sony and released in 1982.
CDs are made mostly of plastic (polycarbonate) and can store more information by
having multiple recording layers. The data is stored in a series of tiny pits, arranged in
a spiral, tracking from the center of the disk to the edge. The data layer is coated with
a thin layer of aluminum or silver, making it highly reflective. The spiral of pits is a
periodic structure that diffracts light into multiple beams. Such a periodic structure is
called diffraction grating. [1]
The purpose of the present experiment is to measure the capacity of a standard CD
based on diffraction grating method.

2 Method
The equipment list consists of:

• One Compact Disc (CD)

• Black tape

• One diode laser (with a wave length (λ) of 650nm)

• One protractor

• One A4 paper sheet

• One pencil

The experiment was done through five attempts. In each attempt, we placed the CD
perpendicular to a flat surface on which the paper sheet was used to catch the diffraction
of the laser beam. We used a pencil to mark the incident beam and the first maximum

1
diffraction. The incident angle (θ1 ) and the diffraction angle of the first maximum (θ2 )
were determined with respect to the normal of the CD surface.
From that we can calculate the track pitch (d) using the following formula:
λ
d=
sin θ1 + sin θ2
Before going to the next step of the calculation, we made two assumptions that the
CD was formed of concentric circle tracks, instead of a spiral, and that one CD track has
270,000 pits (correspoinding to one binary bit) ([2] and [1]).
We then measure the writable torus width (denoted as l), which equals the difference
of the outer radius and the inner radius of the CD. The number of tracks (n) can be
deduced by dividing l by d.
Finally, the capacity (in bits) equals n times 270,000.
During the experiment, the random error in reading figures on measuring equipment
is the smallest division of the equipment, and the propagated error is calculated using
derivatives.

3 Result
The average storage of the CD is 822.160 MB. Over five attempts, the minimum is 790.796
MB and the maximum is 846.030 MB. The average relative error is 4.730%.
Details for each attempt are provided in Table 1 and the graphical illustration for the
capacity is provided in Figure 1.

2
 No. θ1 θ2 sin θ1 + sin θ2 d ∆d l n ∆n Capacity ∆Capacity Relative error
(o ) (o ) (m) (m) (m) (MB) (MB)
1 1 30 0.517 1.256E-06 5.604E-08 0.033 26270.661 1172.085 845.561 37.725 0.045
2 0 30 0.500 1.300E-06 6.003E-08 0.033 25384.615 1172.187 817.042 37.729 0.046
3 4 24 0.476 1.343E-06 6.759E-08 0.033 24569.176 1236.330 790.796 39.793 0.050
4 2 27 0.489 1.309E-06 6.355E-08 0.033 25208.390 1223.758 811.370 39.388 0.049
5 5 25 0.510 1.255E-06 5.879E-08 0.033 26285.222 1230.946 846.030 39.620 0.047

Table 1: Collected data

3

Figure 1: The capacity of the CD measured in each attempt

4 Discussion
According to the manufacturer’s specification, the CD can store about 700 MB. However,
the experiment gave a number of 822.160 MB (in average). This may be due to the fact
that CDs, besides storing 700 MB of user data, have even more space to store error
correction.

5 Conclusion
The experiment above measured the capacity of a standard CD based on diffraction
grating method. With the low relative error, we concluded that our experiment is of high
accuracy. Nevertheless, the precision of the practice needs to be re-evaluated, because
low-cost equipment can cause inevitable errors.

References
[1] L. Seemann and M. Bersabal. (2005, Aug.) "Estimating the Storage Capacity of a
CD/DVD". [Online]. Available:
https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/uoh_diffraction_activity1

[2] N. Mathivanan, Microprocessors, PC Hardware and Interfacing. PHI Learning Pvt.

Ltd., 2003.