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by jeffbee 2103 days ago
It's very HN that we've been trolled into debating the irrefutable, widely-known, totally obvious fact that a CD reflects light.
3 comments

Didn't mean to come across as a troll, this is how I remember CDs, with rainbow diffraction. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cd
I think at such shallow angles it's the plastic surface that becomes reflective, not the metal layer with the pits and grooves. Hence the lack of diffraction (and hence why it works with my black PSX disc).
She's using a CD-RW with blue/purple dye. The reflection is definitely coming off the surface.
Everything reflects light, but not everything reflects it clear enough to read documents through. I haven't held a CD in ages, so it it's possible that folks don't remember exactly how reflective they are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Almost everything reflects light. The discussion is on why it can be used as a mirror.