50 Amazing Facts about Diamond | Amazing Facts 4U
- The word “Diamond” comes from the Greek word “Adamas” and means “unconquerable and indestructible”.
- The weight of a diamond is measured in carats. A carat is a fifth of a gram.
- A fact is a man first discovered diamonds first only 4,000 years ago in the riverbeds of the Golconda region of India.
- Diamonds were not originally mine. They were actually found alongside or at the bottom of rivers in India.
- Amazingly until the 18th century, diamond mines were only found in India.
- Just as India’s production was dwindling, diamonds were discovered in Brazil in 1725 and in South Africa in the 19th Century.
- The top three diamond mines in the world are Botswana (24 million carats), Russia (17.8 million carats), and Canada (10.9 million carats).
- Even though the U.S. produces almost no diamonds, America buys more than 40 percent of the world’s gem-quality diamonds, making it the world’s largest diamond market.
- The fact is eighty percent of diamonds mined today are used in industry for cutting, polishing, or grinding. Only 20% of diamonds are used for jewelry.
- Diamonds are made of pure carbon.
- Most diamonds found in nature are between one to three billion years old.
- Diamonds are created by the combination of tremendous pressure and temperatures of 2000º –3000º F at depths between 75 and 120 miles beneath the earth’s surface. Diamonds are carried to the surface by volcanic eruptions.
- In their pure state, diamonds are colorless. Yellow and brown are the most common colored diamonds. Blue and red are the rarest colored diamonds.
- There are over 16,000 different classifications of diamonds.
- Diamonds used to be the Hardest Substance on Earth but in 2005 scientists have manufactured a harder substance called hyper diamond which is 11 % harder.
- Diamond has a hardness of 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, with 1 being the softest (talc) and 10 being the hardest.
- Only a diamond cuts another diamond.
- The amazing fact is that diamonds are brittle in spite of their hardness. If hit hard with a hammer, a diamond will shatter or splinter.
- Diamonds have a very large melting point of 3547′ C( 6420′ F)
- Diamonds have a boiling point of 4827′ C( 8720′ F).
- Amazingly diamonds are dense enough to slow the speed of light traveling through them by more than half.
- To produce a single one-carat diamond, 250 tons of earth must be mined.
- For every 1,000 polished diamonds, only one weighs more than one carat.
- The Diamond Cartel run by De Beers controls about 60 to 75% of the world’s diamond trade.
- Diamond is the best known thermal conductor (heat transfer) among naturally occurring substances.
- If you put a diamond on your tongue, your tongue will start to get cooler because diamond sucks all of the heat from your tongue.
- Ancient Chinese used diamonds to polish ceremonial burial axes in the late stone age or over 4,500 years ago.
- Amazingly a law in Thirteenth-century France decreed that only the King could wear diamonds.
- The amazing fact is that in 2004, scientists have discovered a diamond star that is 10 billion trillion trillion carats! The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
- The world’s largest diamond was the Cullinan, found in South Africa in 1905. It weighed 3,106.75 carats uncut. It was cut into the Great Star of Africa, weighing 530.2 carats, the Lesser Star of Africa, which weighs 317.40 carats, and 104 other diamonds of nearly flawless color and clarity. They now form part of the British crown jewels.
- Cullinan, the world’s largest diamond was big enough to create about 2,600 average-sized engagement rings when it was dug up in 1905.
- The amazing fact is that when the world’s largest diamond was discovered in South Africa, it was shipped to England on a steamboat under heavy security. But it was a diversion, and the real stone was sent in a plain box via post.
- In the past decade, scientists have perfected a technique called Chemical Vapor Deposition, where carbon gas cloud is passed over diamond seeds in a vacuum chamber heated to more than 1,800 degrees. In a matter of days, they are now able to “grow” diamonds that are virtually indistinguishable from natural ones.
- The amazing fact is that candle flames contain millions of tiny diamonds. It has been revealed that around 1.5 million diamond nanoparticles are created every second in a candle flame as it burns. Unfortunately, these particles are burned away and converted to carbon dioxide.
- Amazingly the Mir diamond mine of Serbia, Russia is so large that it creates air currents strong enough to suck a helicopter into it.
- The perpetrators of the “Diamond Heist of the Century”, the Antwerp Diamond Heist of February 2003, amazingly got past 10 layers of security, including infrared heat detectors, Doppler radar, a magnetic field, a seismic sensor, and a lock with 100 million possible combinations and to this day no one knows how. Thieves broke into a vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Center and making off with at least $100 million worth of loose diamonds, gold, jewelry.
- The Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas is the only place in the USA where you can find naturally occurring diamonds. It is open to the public, and you can keep any diamond you find, regardless of the size.
- Howard Hall was an American who primarily developed the synthetic diamond process for GE, making them untold millions. The first synthetic diamond was made in 1954. Amazingly he was given just a $10 bond as a bonus for his effort in addition to his regular salary.
- A financial institution in Dubai offers an amazing diamond-studded credit card.
- The synthesized material known as cubic zirconia is a crystalline form of zirconium dioxide (ZrO2). It is at times in competition with diamond because as well as being hard, optically flawless and colorless, it is also durable and cheap.
- Chocolate Diamonds are in fact nothing more than unwanted diamonds just marketed well.
- A Moon-sized diamond was found in space, and it has been named “Lucy” in reference to the Beatles’ song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
- Uranus and Neptune may literally rain diamonds, which then pile up miles thick and those aren’t the only diamonds being produced in space.
- Diamonds are not rare or valuable and the reason demand is high is because of a marketing campaign by DeBeers holding a monopoly to sell more engagement rings.
- Hope diamond has a reputation for its successive owners dying of unnatural causes. It also glows red after being exposed to UV light, fueling its cursed reputation.
- In 2012, an all diamond ring was created by a Swiss jeweler, weighing in at 150 karats and costing $70 million.
- When the vaults of a temple in Trivandrum India were opened after many centuries, they were found to be full of precious gold, diamonds, and rubies worth $40 billion.
- There are at least 10 gems rarer than diamonds and some of them will change color depending on the light you see them in.
- The Eureka Diamond, a 21.25 carat diamond from South Africa, was first used as a toy by a 15-year-old boy before it was given away to his neighbor when the neighbor offered to buy it.
- Under extremely high pressure, diamonds can amazingly be made from peanut butter.
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