i saw something about this on discovery-channel... pretty interesting...
pretty cool also that you can fake a diamond... they are totaly identicle exept that the fake diamonds light up if you expose them to a black light. But some new sientist are saying they have something about that too... So there is this company... "Beer" i thought or something like that. That is now putting their own logo on the diamonds that are real... that you know later which diamonds are real and wich ones are fake... Sounds rather stupid tho that you can fake it... The nature does 3 million years on creating a diamond... and some freaky sientists can do it in about 6 weeks

funny though i watch a few programs about diamonds and they never talk about it, no wonder tongue.gif, but yeah those numbers would have to be pretty darn small so you would need a robot eye just to see it.

My mum used to be really into diamonds and knows a fair bit about them. She heard about these manufactured diamonds a few years ago. Apparently, from my understanding, when they cut the diamond, they cut it so it has a very small flat edge around the rim of the diamond, and engrave the numbers into there. You can't notice it with the naked eye, but if you magnify it, you can see it.

I think you can also have natural diamonds engraved similar to this so that if they ever get stolen, they are able to be found again.

Well let's first ask this question, what is a diamond? It's a complex, potentially never ending network of carbon. It is such a strong bond because the carbon are bonded to four other carbons in a diamond shape making it really hard to break. They are found in old volcanoes because of the heat reaching about 3000 degrees and they form hundreds of miles beneath the earth's surface because of the pressure.

Now onto the question, how do they make a real diamond in the industrial world? It was found out by chemists at General Electric back in the 50s and improved since then. They take graphite, another carbon built metal, and mix it with peanut butter believe it or not. Why? Well the carbon in graphite is bonded with three other carbons so it is almost like a diamond but a different shape because of the different bonds. To make a diamond they need to break down the graphite into carbon and have the carbon dissolve into a solvent which is Nitrates (found in peanut butter). The peanut butter also has carbon in it which is added to the carbon from the graphite forming the diamond. They heat the graphite with a dab of peanut butter in a little cylinder and heat it up to 3000 degrees (like a volcano) and pressurize it to One Million pounds of pressure per square inch (like it is hundreds of miles below the Earth). They have gotten it to the point where they can make 1 carrot diamonds in a 24 hour period.

Yes it is real diamond that at this point you can't really tell the difference. They want to mass produce it but I don't know if that will happen or not. The cost of producing it will be probably though around just as much as the process of finding them in the ground. It's sort of complex, I saw a movie on it today which is where I got this information, it was made by PBS so I'll see if I can find some information on it.

To see a comparison between the graphite and diamond carbon structures, click this link.
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/carbon/

This post has been edited by Plenoptic: Dec 8 2006, 09:20 PM

I think its pretty amazing how much pressure and heat his needed to make diamonds. I remember watching on the science channel where they were able to make diamonds and other crystals like jewlery by have a machine that compresses and heats it, with and added element, making it bigger. I don't quite remember, but I know that they are very similar to the real diamonds.