These are seven layers of a backlight from an old laptop LCD. The amount of optical engineering required to produce a nice, even glow from an edge-lit panel is impressive.
(Be careful if you’re taking one apart yourself– until recently many LCDs were backlit by CCFLs, which contain a small amount of mercury and need to be disposed of properly.)
[…] Mayer dissected an old LCD display into its constituent layers. He writes: These are seven layers of a backlight from an old laptop […]
I would have liked to have known more about what each layer is doing. My search continues…