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Author | Topic: using your cd-rom to test for anthrax | |||||||||||||||||||||||
riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
I wish I could find the story, but I can't. I think I saw it last night on the science channel.
This guy developed software to test over 150 (adding more) different powdered substances using a blank cd, and your cd drive in your computer. It is really meant to have a quick way of testing any powdered substance that might come in the mail, etc. You take a blank cd, put a drop of water on the inner circle, add the suspected substance. Bake in an oven at 75F for 20 minutes. Add a protective cover, and insert into your cd rom drive. With the software it uses the laser in the drive which has a resolution to 300 nanometers? to read the image left by the stain. Then a spectrograph of sorts pops up on your computer, and you can just compare images. I think it even tells you what it is, if it recognizes it. I thought that was cool. What a practical application of science, using common items.
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nwr Member Posts: 6409 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
To me, this reads like an urban legend.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
CD-ROM drives don't have the sort of photodetector you'd need to run that kind of spectrogram. It's an urban legend.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
I watched them do it on the science channel.
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
You didn't watch them do it on the Science channel last Saturday did you?
TTFN, WK
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jar Member (Idle past 414 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
It is really meant to have a quick way of testing any powdered substance that might come in the mail, etc. So you handle, breathe, disolve the substance.
Bake in an oven at 75F for 20 minutes. Bake in an oven at 75o F? Right. Go look at the temp dial on your oven. Why not just leave it on a counter top for 20 minutes. Most homes are 70o or so.
Add a protective cover, and insert into your cd rom drive. Yeah, right. Try inserting a cd with a cover on it into your cd player.
You take a blank cd, put a drop of water on the inner circle, add the suspected substance. Guess what? The cd player does not read the inner circle. That's why it's used to print things like batch numbers et al. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
No, last night. I can't seem to find any info to back up what I saw.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
jar, you are funny.
Instead of trying to prove it wrong, try to imagine how it would be done. It was the science channel, not E! You don't ahndle it, only qualified people can.The oven they used was a labrotory oven, kind of looked like a toaster oven, probably used to speed up culture growth. The cover was a thin pastic film, so that you wouldn't contaminate your drive. They probably use the inner cirle because there is no information there, and need a clean read. You can instruct your cd-rom to do whatever you want, if you know how to program it. It was within the inner 1 inch of the cd.
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jar Member (Idle past 414 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
jar, you are funny. Instead of trying to prove it wrong, try to imagine how it would be done. It was the science channel, not E! Sorry RR but you stated in your Op "using your cd-rom to test for anthrax" and that my friend, negates almost everything you say in the rest of your post.
You don't ahndle it, only qualified people can. Negated by your OP.
The oven they used was a labrotory oven, kind of looked like a toaster oven, probably used to speed up culture growth. Negated by your OP. Also, 70o F is room temperature.
The cover was a thin pastic film, so that you wouldn't contaminate your drive. Again, negated by your OP.
They probably use the inner cirle because there is no information there, and need a clean read. No, it was a blank disk, remember? And guess what? There is information in the inner circle, it's where they print batch numbers and tracking information. There is no information on the writable part of the disk.
You can instruct your cd-rom to do whatever you want, if you know how to program it. Well, no you can't. You cannot program a CD drive to read areas where the head cannot physically cover. If the head will not move over a spot because it is outside the tracking area, then all the programing in the world won't move the head there. This message has been edited by jar, 04-06-2006 10:55 AM Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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kjsimons Member Posts: 822 From: Orlando,FL Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Bake in an oven at 75o F? Right. Go look at the temp dial on your oven. Why not just leave it on a counter top for 20 minutes. Most homes are 70o or so. Well down here in Orlando it's in the upper 80's today, my air is set at about 77, so I guess I would just have to crank the air down a couple of degrees.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
Ok dude, your right, it's all a lie.
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jar Member (Idle past 414 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
I don't remember saying it was a lie. Rather I imagine it most likely was an April Fool's story. It could also just be infotainment like the UFO shows, Big Foot, Alien Abductions or homepathic medicines.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I watched them do it on the science channel. The same channel that runs "Ghost Hunters"? Look, CD-ROM drives don't work that way. They detect the way pits on the reflective CD surface cause the laser to interfere with itself on its way back to the photodetector. It's not an optical scanner, it's an interferometer. You can't just shine it at an arbitrary surface and get signal back. If you shone it at your goofy anthrax test mixture, the laser would simply disappate. You'd get no reflection back to the detector optics so the CD-ROM head would have nothing to detect. It's not possible, RR. It's a hoax, like the spaghetti crop or the vinyl-based LP-ROM drive.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
It may have been 175F, my kid was talking to me while I was watching the show. They did say 20 minutes, and not to hot to melt the cd.
I thought 75F sounded odd, but all they needed to do was dry the stain.The oven in this link looks like the one they used in the program, which starts at 50C. http://www.ascoindia.com/...ms/laboratory-electric-oven.html But they did use a standard PC with a cr drive. Something about the laser being able to read the signature left behind by the stain. They did perform the whole operation on the show, it was the science channel, and I think it was beyond tomorrow, or discoveries this week, I don't remember, I was surfing.
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riVeRraT Member (Idle past 436 days) Posts: 5788 From: NY USA Joined: |
It's not an optical scanner, it's an interferometer. right I understand that, I said like a spectrograph. I don't know how it works. They viewed a graph in the end product. Maybe the light is being blocked in a certain measurable manor? I don't doubt that it could be a hoax. If it is, they presented it like it was real, I was so amazed, that is why I brought it here. But the program was not a hoax type program. Ghost hunters is.
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