eli5 why does putting toothpaste on scratched disks fix them?

Question

As the title says why does toothpaste fix disks

In: 2049

Answer 1

Toothpaste is a mild abrasive, it works as a gentle polishing compound when used on other surfaces. Often there are better abrasives for other tasks (jewelry polish for example), but toothpaste is cheap and available. In the CD era, it was common for any store that sold CDs/DVDs to also sell disc-buffing kits, but it’s a pretty niche product at this point.