| The
Diamond-Just Another Rock?
Most of you people are probably more familiar with our optical
qualities--our transparency, brilliance, and sparkle. These
have not only earned us a reputation as the most important
gemstone, they have also increased our practical value by
making us useful for lenses, lasers, and windows for outer
space.
Maybe
you think we're conceited for telling you how good we are.
We're only trying to prove that we're not just another rock.
Actually, we'd be the first to admit that we're only simple
folk. Coal and pencil lead are our next of kin. All of us
are nothing but carbon, and that's why you can't say that
diamonds are forever. When you heat us in oxygen up to about
700O C (12920 F), we start turning to carbon dioxide or carbon
monoxide.
We
can understand, though, that someone who has a hard time making
it past the age of 100 would think that a diamond that's a
few million years old is forever; but to us, a few million
years isn't much. Your scientists are finally beginning to
realize that we existed long before your solar system did,
now that they're studying us in meteorites.
Man
also has a hard time imagining that something so simple and
practical as a diamond can be transformed into a handsome
work of art. Maybe that's why it took him so long to bring
out our inner beauty. It's only been in the last few hundred
years that he's cut tiny geometrical windows around us to
reflect and let in light. Until about 1919, most of us looked
a bit lackluster compared to the way we look today. Then the
mathematician Marcel Tolkowsky published a complex formula
for cutting us that made us more brilliant.
The
Tolkowsky formula and other similar ones can only work well
on diamonds that pass the jewel qualifying exam--an inspection
so severe that about 75% of all diamonds fail. This exam is
a nightmare for us. The results determine whether we will
bask under someone's appreciative eye or slave away as, perhaps,
a drill.
When
you heat
Ordinary
looking rocks
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