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Vanessa Lynn

Look under your bed. Among the dust bunnies, behind the sleeping bag, next the embarrassing photos from high school, there’s probably a pile of CDs. Some are worn out from use; some are freebies from AOL; some are blank CDs that you planned to burn the best of mixes on.

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Let’s be real: You’re not burning any mixes, sport. You’re never going to use these CDs again.

But Din Ping Tsai, a physicist in Taiwan, could. His lab, reports FastCoExist, has developed a technique for purifying water — destroying 95 percent of contaminants — using nano rods, UV lights, and CDs. Watch it in action:

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Why CDs? “They spin fast, and are durable and commonly available,” says FastCoExist. And nobody, nobody wants them anymore.