At this year's Expo for Young Scientists, held at the University of Pretoria Sports Complex. Two teenagers from South Africa won with the concept of using color to increase the storage capability on a CD or DVD. The winning project from the Intel backed event, theorises that at least 64 times the current amount of data can be stored on a CD or DVD simply by using colors.
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Says Van Wyk: 'Up to now, the amount of data that could be stored on a CD or DVD was determined by area of the optical storage medium or the compression ratio used. It is theoretically possible to enable an optical device to read a CD or DVD in multiple colours, allowing for different layers of colour to be added to the media, thereby increasing its overall storage area." A CD or DVD player utilises binary code to read the pits on optical media. Light that is reflected onto a receiver reads as a one while light that is not reflected is read as a zero. Mouton and Van Wyk's method would allow a specially modified optical device to read the three primary colours (red, blue and green) and write all the combinations of these colours, then using the same binary code to record eight times as much data. The CD or DVD (MPD) would include eight layers: the primary and secondary colours as well black and white while the device would include three lasers '“ red, blue and green. Using software, the device would burn data to one of the different layers, which reflects the needed primary colours, to achieve about 320 GB of storage on a single CD or DVD. They are currently researching a concept that could allow for optical media capable of storing up to 1 024 times the data presently achievable on a single disk. As the new DVDs can store up to 120GB, this means 122 880GB on a single CD. |
According to the article, new laser writing and reading technology capable of using red, green and blue coloured beams as well as new CD and DVD media are all that are needed to implement the scheme.
Says Mouton: 'The scope for application of this technology is almost limitless from portable hard drives and server backups to storing movies in formats that are compatible to the next generation of ultra-high resolution televisions. In addition, CD and DVD media could be drastically reduced in size for use in portable devices such as digital still and movie cameras and media players."
Wow, these kids aren't like the ones in my neighborhood! Congratulations to both of them for being recognized for their hard work. What great communicators they are too. Odds are, we will be hearing more from these two in the future.
Source: It Web
