More like microscopic fidget bubble poppers.
When the computer wants a bit to be a 1, it pops it down. When it wants it to be a 0, it pops it up.
If it were like a punch card, it couldn’t be rewritten as writing to it would permanently damage the disc. A CD-RW is basically a microscopic punch card though, because the laser actually burns away material to write the data to the CD.
Worth noting that the wiimote just uses Bluetooth, so it doesn’t take any specialized equipment to connect to your computer. And Dolphin has built in support for it. The sensor bar was also just a pair of infrared LEDs; All of the actual “sensing” happened at the wiimote directly. So you can just throw a wireless sensor bar (like $15 on amazon) underneath your computer monitor, and it will work fine.