Natural Diamonds
Diamonds are the known to men as the hardest substance on earth. They cannot be scratched unless with another diamonds. Due to the diamonds' hardness, sparkle and brilliance, they have become the most sought after and the rarest gemstones in the world. Diamonds are weighed in carats (1 carat = 200 milligrams) and in points (1 point = 0.01 carat). A very high reflective power gives the diamond its extraordinary brilliance, fire and sparkle. A properly cut diamond will return a greater amount of light to the eye of the observer than will a gem of lesser reflective power and will thus appear more brilliant. This high dispersion gives diamonds their fire, caused by the separation of white light into the colors of the spectrum as it passes through the stone.
The scratch hardness of diamond is graded on a Scale of 10 the Mohs scale of hardness; corundum, the mineral next to diamond in hardness, is rated as 9. Actually, diamond is very much harder than corundum; if the Mohs scale were linear, diamond's value would be about 42.
Synthetic Diamonds
In addition to gemstones, several varieties of industrial diamonds occur, and synthetic diamonds have been produced on a commercial scale since 1960. Synthetic Diamond is diamond produced through chemical or physical processes in a factory. Like naturally occurring diamond it is composed of a three-dimensional carbon crystal. Due to its extreme physical properties, synthetic diamond is used in many industrial applications, and has the potential to become a serious disruptive technology in many new application areas such as electronics and medicine. Synthetic diamond is also called industrial diamond, manufactured diamond, artificial diamond or cultured diamond. Synthetic diamond is not the same as Diamond Like Carbon, DLC, which is amorphous hard carbon, or diamond imitation, which can be made of other materials such as cubic zirconia or silicon carbide.
Synthetic diamonds are considered less in terms of value and price as opposed to Natural Diamonds that are mined from a rough form and then polished and cut to produce a more beautiful stone.
Every diamond is immensely old, formed long before dinosaurs roamed the earth. The youngest diamond is 900 million years old, and the oldest is 3.2 billion years old.
Every diamond is unique; no two are alike.
The very word 'diamond' comes from the Greek term adamas meaning unconquerable.
Diamonds exist in many colors, the rarest of all being red.
Diamonds were first mined in India more than 2800 years ago.
Each stone loses, on average, more than half its original weight during cutting and polishing.
The word 'carat' comes from the carob tree whose seed was used as the standard of weighing precious stones.
Less than 5% of all the diamonds made into jewelry are larger than one carat. |
