The grooves of a compact disc can act as a grating and produce iridescent

reflections. Diffraction gratings are often used in monochromators, spectrometers,

lasers, wavelength division multiplexing devices, optical pulse compressing devices, and
many other optical instruments.

Diffraction gratings are used to disperse light; that is to spatially separate light of different
wavelengths. They have replaced prisms in most fields of spectral analysis.