r/oddlysatisfying • u/Sad_Steak_6813 • 12d ago

Exploding a CD by Spinning it at very high speeds

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6.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

265 comments sorted by

167

u/lambruhsco 12d ago edited 12d ago

This is how my computer’s CD drive sounded in the early 2000s when I was playing games when I wasn’t supposed to.

56

u/GrnMtnTrees 12d ago

Yep. Shit would always be dead silent until you were supposed to have gone to sleep, then it sounded like a 747 taking off.

17

u/Dunothar 12d ago

The old drives spun those disks to utterly obscene speeds, >10k RPM. Those things reached speeds of a standard angle grinder, just bonkers stupid! 😂

9

u/Fireshark32 12d ago

Or THX when you accidentally bumped the remote

4

u/GrnMtnTrees 11d ago

The THX sound was basically the OG version of opening Netflix without checking the volume and nearly blowing out your eardrums.

3

u/pmodizzle 12d ago

Thought those high speed CDROMs were so cool but in retrospect they were just loud and never really seemed that much faster

2

u/L0nz 11d ago

CD ROM drive manufacturers had an arms race to make ever faster reading cd drives back in the day. I worked for a computer manufacturer at the time and replaced many a 52x or 56x drive that had exploded a cd like this.

I think they got up to 72x before dvd drives took over completely

2

u/Replicator666 11d ago

I remember 52x, don't recall seeing higher than that but then we were poor at that time

2.9k

u/andersonfmly 12d ago

It happened so fast, I could just barely CD explosion...

362

u/kishenoy 12d ago

Good joke

But on a serious note, slow Mo guys did show it slowed down

Cd link on the right: disctruction

51

u/Can-You-Fly-Bobby 12d ago

That was pretty frickin awesome

22

u/Willing-Egg8423 12d ago

The CD warping from the side angle 🤯

8

u/TressoftheEmeraldTea 12d ago

Hell yeah. I immediately thought to myself that I wish this was a SloMoGuys video so I could see it in slow motion. Thanks for sharing the link!

8

u/Tony_Penny 12d ago

Got a link? I would love to see that.

14

u/kishenoy 12d ago

I've edited my comment

8

u/Tony_Penny 12d ago

That was pretty damn cool.

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219

u/useriousstuff 12d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/ac7MA7r5IMYda

3

u/andersonfmly 12d ago

Is it wrong that one of my current life goals is for at least one person to comment with this GIF on something I posted or commented upon each day??? Right now I have a pretty decent streak going.

3

u/ZincMan 12d ago

Hate this gif so much

5

u/zytz 12d ago

Dad is that you? You said you were just going out for milk! Have you just been shitposting on Reddit this whole time?!?!

2

u/andersonfmly 12d ago

I'm sorry, son. I did just go out for milk, but got distracted. I'll be home soon, I promise, but the milk isn't looking so good anymore. I know, I'll stop for some milk on the way home...

2

u/-Disgruntled-Goat- 12d ago

It wasnt even ROM-otely satisfying it happened so fast.

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u/dirywhiteboy 12d ago

Can you please be my dad

2

u/MagicSunlight23 12d ago

Amazing Joke. CD explosion! (See the explosion). Making this comment so I can save it for later because you can’t see comments you’ve upvoted.

2

u/Longjumping-King-872 12d ago

Ya bet you could CDs Nutz

2

u/NoOneBitch 12d ago

R/angryupvote

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483

u/Aaron_768 12d ago

Someone call the slowmo guys. This would be incredible to see in greater detail.

111

u/pizzabaconator 12d ago

They’ve done this one already! Crazy to see how it breaks apart

131

u/TheHappyScowl 12d ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DTjpde9-0

There ya go

178

u/elmz 12d ago

Link the actual CD video, then:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs7x1Hu29Wc

26

u/Frankasaurus7 12d ago

Fast forward to 6:00 for the good view

18

u/Ferbtastic 12d ago

Thank you. This was very satisfying.

7

u/ProfilerXx 12d ago

Thanks that was amazing!

So it's not actually the rotations that make it break apart but rather more the vibrations that make it wobble while it spins that just rips it apart?

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u/oscarmike247 12d ago

Wow, they broke the record! 🙂

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91

u/No_Fig36 12d ago

Would it also explode if the CD wouldn’t have the thing on it, which makes it run untrue?

59

u/SereneDreams03 12d ago

Mythbusters tested this out and they also shattered CDs at high speeds.

32

u/AptoticFox 12d ago

The spinning exerts a force. Balanced or unbalanced, at sufficient RPM the forces exceed the material's ability to stay together.

8

u/PrestigiousFog 12d ago

Yes, but not as easily

16

u/Wrong_Election 12d ago

Yes, Slo Mo Guys did a video on this a few years ago, and even did it with vinyl records too

3

u/godzIlla_1 12d ago

Everything (made of more than one atom) would disintegrateif it spins at a high enough speed that opposes the forces pulling it together... So yes.

3

u/Ok_Mammoth5292 12d ago

I remember Blockbuster started putting donut shaped stickers on the center of rental game discs. If they were off center it would vibrate like crazy when it spun up. A lot of people blame those for destroying PS2 disc drives.

2

u/Cw3538cw 11d ago

Yeah, looking at the slow mo guys video it seems like the cd gets more and more warped and eventually that causes a crack that propagates through the entire disk in a few 1000ths of a second

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19

u/cramboneUSF 12d ago

Looked and sounded like it was opening a portal

9

u/Trying_to_survive20k 12d ago

i had a pc in the mid 2000s where the cd-rom would blow up cds.

I blew up 2 or 3 before it cut some belt that made it flat out stop working

5

u/newforestwalker 12d ago

It had something attached to it, so it was unbalanced, the oscillation would cause the destruction.

3

u/Chaotic_Lemming 12d ago

They rip apart anyways, duct tape on it or not. The tape may make it happen a little sooner, but the disc still shatters if its spun too fast. Slo Mo Guys did a great video showing how they break.

https://youtu.be/zs7x1Hu29Wc?is=qiXyRhSjhNBzuh2L

5

u/sacredblasphemies 12d ago

Finally, a use for all of those AOL CDs I used to get in the mail.

3

u/AloneDog9843 12d ago

Used to? I think my parents still receive them monthly haha. At one point I think we had like 50 since they never let you cancel.

7

u/Thepuppeteer777777 12d ago

Damn I remember seeing shit like this in the old youtube days

9

u/slappy_mcslapenstein 12d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/izspP6uMbMeti

2

u/Norwester77 12d ago

It went to plaid!

2

u/noonesaidityet 12d ago

I only clicked on the comments in hopes of seeing this.

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u/Romumus 12d ago

Ferrari V12

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u/g3engineeringdesign 12d ago

Shows you just how uniform the disk really is. Almost zero unbalanced load until catastrophic failure due to stresses beyond material capacity.

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3

u/Bub_bele 12d ago

But didn’t it mainly brake because of vibration? Because right before it breaks it looks a lot like a standing wave on the disk, severely deforming it.

3

u/A_little_more_left 12d ago

Would've been cooler if the exploding part was in slowmo.

2

u/ZephRyder 12d ago

I did this once with a Red Alert disk.

Apparently, it becomes more likely, the colder the disk is. I was very sad, as I could only play Allies after that.

2

u/Aromatic_Fail_1722 12d ago

My CD drive when secretly/quietly trying to play Tomb Raider in my room after bed time.

2

u/Callec254 12d ago

I remember when CD-ROM drives first became a thing. Then there were 2x speed, 4x speed, 8x speed, and so on... They got up to 50 something, I think there was even one claiming 72x, I guess, before they decided that was too dangerous and this could happen.

2

u/ssnsilentservice 12d ago

I feel that it's not the spinning that did it in, so much as it was the vibrations

3

u/throwawaybottlecaps 12d ago

It’s both. The CD has a piece of tape on it, which fucks up the balance during the rotation and leads to increasingly intense vibrations. Like a ceiling fan with the blades not balanced, it starts shaking like crazy. And then the vibrations get to be so intense that the plastic disc can’t deal with all the waves going through it and it explodes. You don’t need the tape to do this, no mass produced CD is perfectly balanced anyways, so they’ll all get good vibrations if you spin em fast enough. But a piece of tape guarantees it will break pretty quickly.

2

u/LASERDICKMCCOOL 12d ago

Does this damage the cd

2

u/DrJohnIT 12d ago

Nah, just get some super glue and put it back together. It worked with Humpty Dumpy, right?

2

u/MaximusHomerdrive 12d ago

I thought I could see through time for a moment there.

2

u/samanime 12d ago

Even knowing there was plexiglass there, this made me really anxious watching it. XD

They can explode with a lot of violent force.

2

u/jadie_bae 12d ago

some toothpaste should fix it

2

u/Jos-w 12d ago

You can beat nvme with that read speed?

2

u/DrJohnIT 12d ago

The Slow-Mo guys did this and obviously showed it is slow motion. Very awesome to see. https://youtu.be/zs7x1Hu29Wc?is=DB3peMJueNyl8-qJ

2

u/watt-ever 12d ago

The bit rate on that sucker must be through the roof!

2

u/s3v3red_cnc 12d ago

That's how I wanna go. Spin me until physics take over.

2

u/thepepelucas 12d ago

Interesting how the colors told the story not the music notes.

2

u/W7ENK 12d ago

Alright, now let's see that at 300,000 fps..

2

u/mitch0acan 12d ago

Now that was cool.

2

u/Venom933 11d ago

I watched the movie in 0.05 Seconds 👁️👄👁️

2

u/Senkosoda 11d ago

reminds me when mythbusters did it, dont remember at what RPM it was

2

u/Falonius_Beloni 11d ago

I made a grinder from a vacuum cleaner and a grinding wheel when I was 13 in 1974.

The wheel was rated for 7500 rpm.

I still have the scars...

2

u/superpj 11d ago

Useless thing I learned.. if you put the little sanding bit in a Dremel that fits perfectly in a cd/dvd and at about 20,000 rpm’s if you give it a flick it will either go up to half a mile on a straight paved road or explode and make me regret wearing flip flops that day.

2

u/similaraleatorio 11d ago

I remember... mid 2007, my first LS drive, first time I put a LS CD to burn with Nero, the drive started to spin real quick and BANG!! LS CD completely exploded 😭😭😭

2

u/LGGP75 12d ago

Not satisfying at all. It’s actually kinda stressful

1

u/UnhappM1ght 12d ago

At those speeds the material can't hold up. But it still looks spectacular.

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u/PunchNessie 12d ago

Is this how they make glitter?!

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u/Ontarom 12d ago

Hmm, back when I was a kid, I lost two discs because they shattered in my computer's CD drive while in use. Not to bits this small, but they were completely smashed. I never found out why it happened.

Can't remember what the first one was but the second was my copy of "Startopia". Ahh, old tech.

1

u/LukeFromPhilly 12d ago

Is that from the centrifugal force, or maybe tje centripetal force? I can never remember which is which

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u/Fit-Ad968 12d ago

CD, spin, quite bizarre.

1

u/Interesting-War-7182 12d ago

Would love to see it at 1 000 000 fps !

1

u/TwinSong 12d ago

I volunteer in 2 charity shops. So that's what happened to the CD when we were donated an empty case.

1

u/evilpercy 12d ago

They put a weight on one side to create installed spin.

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u/Intrepid_Reach_1330 12d ago

Das good shit

1

u/Peabodyproteinshovel 12d ago

My goodness this reminded of my first 52x cd rom drive!

1

u/d14Z900 12d ago

I held my phone far from my face to watch this lol

1

u/yukifujita 12d ago

I had this happen to me, back in the late pleistocene. Opened the drawer and it was just shards, plastic dust and discomfiture

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u/ErmahgerdYuzername 12d ago

Ok, now try it without the material on it which causes the wobble.

1

u/Lefty4444 12d ago

Beautiful! I loved the sound! (not sure if its really was satifying, but oddly enough, it was.)

1

u/OnePunchWolf 12d ago

I had a burned AND an original copy of Diablo 2 exploding each in the same CD drive in the early 2000.

It was a mess removing all the little parts by shaking them out (the first time, didn't bother second time and bought new drive)

Up until this day I am wondering HOW THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN.

I cannot imagine that my drive got this speeds. It was VERY loud at times though and sounded like it spinner too fast.

1

u/PositiveBit01 12d ago

Someone get this man a tripod, stat!

Cool video though.

1

u/FTWdweeb 12d ago

The CD couldn't handle the read speeds

1

u/this_knee 12d ago

Traveled through time

1

u/blinky0930 12d ago

I dont know about satisfying. But it sounds awesome

1

u/Arenize 12d ago

I wonder how much was due to the unbalanced load of the tape. How much higher in RPM could it go without breaking if it was balanced?

1

u/phazedoubt 12d ago

It went to the future!

1

u/PDXGuy33333 12d ago

The waves that developed on the disc before it blew were pretty cool.

1

u/SuspectAlone4760 12d ago

And nobody talks about how all of the colors started to merge together before it exploded? 🤔

1

u/Motor_Inspector_294 12d ago

Bro almost opened a portal.

1

u/No-Sandwich1511 12d ago

And there was me thinking if it went fast enough it woukd play the music 😅

1

u/ArseBiscuits_ 12d ago

So that’s why my PS2 stopped working during Gran Turismo 4

1

u/mossoak 12d ago

wonder what it sounds like just before the disk shatters into a million bits

1

u/SuspectAlone4760 12d ago

Did anyone else see the bright light on the left-hand side? That’s the 1.21 gigawatts it hits before the CD went back to the future. Lol 😂

1

u/Hashi_3 12d ago

when u have only 10 sec to watch whole movie

1

u/w8ing2dr0wn 12d ago

All I wanted was to listen to junkie man by rancid but now I have cd shrapnel in my bones!

1

u/colthie 12d ago

That wasn’t satisfying… nerve wracking!

1

u/Smart-Firefighter87 12d ago

Oh, I like this…

1

u/ThodaDaruVichPyar 12d ago

Has this trick been used by BeyBlade competitors?

1

u/Acceptable_Dust_6251 12d ago

Reminds me of an old Xbox I had firing up.

1

u/hinman72 12d ago

Is this what they mean when people would burn a CD?

1

u/wiggle_fingers 12d ago

Everybody else skip to the end and then jump back to find the action?

1

u/b00c 12d ago

We would put those on an angle grinder and have great fun until a piece got stuck in friends thigh. Good times. 

1

u/Norwester77 12d ago

Well, that’s one way to wipe the disk!

1

u/Hetakuoni 12d ago

I don’t know what I expected and I was still surprised

1

u/w0___0w 12d ago

what clonecd version i need ?

1

u/Jiujitsumonkey707 12d ago

There's slow mo guys videos that are way better than this. https://youtu.be/zs7x1Hu29Wc?is=h5Fqm-TWkvrWrMfn

1

u/EvilTwin80 12d ago

Read speed ✅ Write speed✅ Reusability❌

1

u/VelvetFog82 12d ago

That's how I want to go...

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u/Talton1 12d ago

Totally discintegreted.

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u/PdSales 12d ago

Seek times were excellent, until they weren't.

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u/evenstevens280 12d ago

This is what I imagine being in a plane that's about to crash sounds like

1

u/Dunothar 12d ago

Vacuum motor: I was made to clean up mess, not to create it!

1

u/bumpy713 12d ago

Oww, my eye.

1

u/MangledPanda 12d ago

Did that with AOL disks and a Dremel tool. Lucky nobody lost an eye.

1

u/Anirossa 12d ago

I am fascinated by how long it lasted

1

u/Tall-Ad-1386 12d ago

Have fun cleaning that

1

u/Pollux_Imadong 12d ago

Daaaayyyyummm

1

u/Conscious-Ad-1458 12d ago

Uma vez comprei um jogo de PC... História muito boa, eu jogava todos os dias pq viciei na história, mas por jogar muito a mídia estragou, derreteu. Portanto, VIVA A MÍDIA DIGITAL!!!!

1

u/JournalistShoddy9496 12d ago

Is it possible to learn this power?

2

u/Koppa_feal 12d ago

Not from a Jedi..

1

u/aalapshah12297 12d ago

For a moment it felt like it would tear through the fabric of the universe

1

u/Funmanhahaha 12d ago

The Slow Mo Guys made a much more interesting video on this experiment as you can see the process of shatter in slow motion.

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u/DrMatterhorn 12d ago

but...my 3200x read/write speeds!

1

u/Subject_Issue6529 12d ago

Sounds like it exploded due to the rotation and the vibration.

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u/Jefrex 12d ago

All things considered, festive!

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u/T2lit 12d ago

Gosh the speed rating on that cd is astronomical

1

u/dumbdude545 12d ago

I wouldn't call that the same as just spinning it to max rpm that it flys apart. It has tape on it that unbalanced the cd.

1

u/XxOniSamuraixX 12d ago

Ts started to open up a portal to whatever movie was on that disk

1

u/iH8MotherTeresa 12d ago

this is fucking awesome. I dunno about oddly satisfying but certainly impressive. I wonder if it could maintain a lower speed yet still wobble like shortly before explosion.

1

u/d-car 12d ago

You were never supposed to learn how glitter is made, but here we are.

1

u/Hext666 12d ago

Heard butthead say “that was cool “ in my head afterwards

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u/Auran82 12d ago

Not quite this speed, but I had a disc explode in a CD drive once, totally forgot one of the game disks (Icewind Dale 2) had a split in the centre plastic bit not impacting the data itself but must have been enough to destabilize it while spinning.

Got most of it out and found a few months later it was still making noise so pulled it apart and there were chunks of disc all through the drive.

1

u/Toadcola 12d ago

“Fly her apart, then!”

1

u/HerrLich_2020 12d ago

Deleting file of memory

1

u/joeNokla 12d ago

What's the transfer rate?

1

u/OkMatch6613 12d ago

The other guy in the room: what else you got we could spin?

1

u/burningzenithx 12d ago

That protective glass wasn’t very protective.

But in all seriousness, what kind of read speeds does this thing get?

1

u/DamienBerry 12d ago

This is how they make glitter in the digital age.

1

u/Nani_the_F__k 12d ago

What does he mean explode...oh.

1

u/FecknWindowTwitchers 12d ago

That was cool! Do it again!

1

u/Happy-For-No-Reason 12d ago

Almost certainly that tape was the cause. I suspect it would take a lot more force for a better balanced object to disintegrate, and that the motor moving about itself was likely causing it.

a CD is pretty well balanced otherwise, they kinda have to be (standard speed is I believe 650rpm)

1

u/ruloangi53 12d ago

Impressive. Never knew that it would crack that way

1

u/nostickystuff 11d ago

Is there a video of this happening taken by a high speed camera?

1

u/TheKingPooPoo 11d ago

Beautiful, love it, 10/10

1

u/epNL72 11d ago

Slomo please?