# Why did boiling a CD work?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 25, 2002, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666 "2002-09-25T20:33:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![critter42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ba0ec/32.png) [@critter42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/critter42)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2002, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666/21 "2002-09-28T04:25:31Z")

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most plastic shrinks when heated - who remembers “Shrinky-Dinks”? 🙂

critter42

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**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2002, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666/22 "2002-09-28T07:31:35Z")

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- 
  - 
    - Plastic explosives do not shrink.  
~

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**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2002, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666/23 "2002-09-28T11:47:11Z")

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**DougC**

Now that is strange, I heated up some plastic explosive and it shrank so fast that it seemed like a loud bang, and it had shrunk so much that it had dissapeared.

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**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2002, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666/24 "2002-09-28T12:30:06Z")

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Aside:

Ahhh…remember the days when CD’s were touted as indestructible?

And I just read that the top layer of a CD is thinner, so doesn’t that make it more important to protect the top than the bottom? (Aside from the laser refraction arguement I guess, now that I think of it…?)

-Tcat

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**Author:** ![scotth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9e5f3/32.png) [@scotth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotth)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2002, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-boiling-a-cd-work/129666/25 "2002-11-29T13:54:16Z")

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Well, I was very skeptical about this one. But, thought it might be worth a try if the situation ever came up.

I finally did.

Bought a brand new X-Box game. The disk was spotlessly clean and no scratches. But it refused to play. I have a “data/disk doctor”. But, there wasn’t anything on the disk to clean up or buff out. I examined the disk quite closely. Visually perfect.

I dunked in boiling water, rinsed in cool water, and dried. Amazingly enough, the disk now works. Actually, I think I need to do it one more time, because occasionally during game play it will crap out and say bad disk. But, it wouldn’t play at all before, and I only dunked it a few seconds.

I have no idea what the mechanism for the improvement could be, but it definitely did make an improvement.

This would be a good one for the master, maybe.

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