Several papers have been published on the use of a CD as a grating for undergraduate laboratories and/or for high school and college class demonstrations.1–7 Four years ago The Physics Teacher had a spectacular cover picture showing emission spectrum as viewed through a CD with no coating.8 That picture gave the impetus to develop a system that can project the spectra of light falling on a CD on a white board or a screen. Such an arrangement would be more suitable to show diffraction spectra to a large class.

1.
C.
Noldeke
, “
Compact disk diffraction
,”
Phys. Teach.
28
,
484
485
(Oct.
1990
).
2.
J.
Kettler
, “
A compact disk as a diffraction grating
,”
Am. J. Phys.
59
,
367
368
(April
1991
).
3.
V.
Zanetti
and
J.
Harris
, “
Spectra of three light sources with a CD
,”
Phys. Teach.
31
,
82
83
(Feb.
1993
).
4.
F.
Wakabayashi
,
K.
Hamada
, and
K.
Sone
, “
CD-ROM spectroscope
,”
J. Chem. Educ.
75
,
1569
1570
(Dec.
1998
).
5.
T.
Knauer
, “
A compact disk transition spectroscope
,”
Phys. Teach.
40
,
466
467
(Nov.
2002
).
6.
P.
Gluck
, “
Compact disk optics
,”
Phys. Teach.
40
,
467
468
(Nov.
2002
).
7.
J.
Tellinghuisen
, “
Exploring the diffraction grating using a He-Ne laser and a CD-ROM
,”
J. Chem. Educ.
79
,
703
(June
2002
).
8.
See The Physics Teacher Nov. 2002 cover photo.
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