Do you know why diamonds seem to sparkle on their own? Well it seems it’s because of the carbon structure of a diamond which actually slows down the speed of light and deflects its direction so that light actually bounces around inside the body of the diamond and comes out in a random direction from the point of entry, (don’t quote me on this as I saw it on a TV programme). On this same programme they were also showing how they can make artificial diamonds using a real diamond as the seed these artificial diamonds (industrial diamonds are actually harder than natural diamonds and as such are extremely hard to cut or polish), they also showed how they can now grow diamonds in a flat wafer structure similar to the way they grow a silicon wafer used for making micro chips (no fish jokes please) the benefit of these diamond wafers is they conduct heat away at a much faster rate than silicon and as such can run at much hotter and higher speeds thus making a computer up to 30 times faster (again don’t quote me, it’s what I saw on the TV programme) where will it all go to next I wonder! I love techy stuff don’t you.

I know this is nothing to do with Jewellery but did you know that when you are born your eyes are the same size as when you’re an adult and they don’t actually grow as you do and that’s why baby’s seem to have such big eyes, unless they’re aliens in which case they’re enormous (all 3 of them!).

Just in case you didn’t know here are the top 10 gemstones in order of Hardness

1. Diamond

2. Sapphire

3. Ruby

4. Emerald

5. Alexandrite

6. Topaz

7. Spinel

8. Zircon (CZ)

9. Garnet

10.Aquamarine

Diamond is the hardest natural element know to man but there are harder materials but they are man made the hardest being a material known as ADNR or Aggregated diamond nanorods see picture. As you can see it is about as desirable to wear as a Gaulstone so I think we should stick to wearing gemstones (Mother nature is far better at it than we are) and it seems that scientist don’t do pretty other than pretty ugly when it comes to materials. Still I don’t suppose they created it for us to wear and after all beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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