Do You Know That...

- diamond was taken like standard element by Frederich Mohs, a German mineralogist, who created the scale of mineral hardness. Diamond rates 10 - the highest rate - on the Mohs scale and it is more than 50 times harder than corundum, which is the next most solid natural element, however diamonds lose in hardness to laboratory grown nanomaterials. Synthetic stones are going to be 58% harder than diamonds;

- diamonds can be of various colors: green, blue, yellow and brown (they are most numerous), black, red and pink (the most rarely found in nature). Though some imagine diamond as a transparent colorless gem, the number of pure white diamonds is low;

- diamond can burn, but you need to heat it to about 1300 Fahrenheit. Still, it is considered to be almost fireproof;

- not more than 20% of all mined diamonds are qualified as gemstones and are used in jewelry, the rest stones are intended for industrial needs, especially they are used to produce polishing, cutting, grinding and drilling tools;

- the biggest uncut diamond ever mined was colorless Cullinan. It weighted 0,62 kg or 3,106.75 carats. It was cut in 106 pieces where the largest cut diamond is the Great Star of Africa - 530.2 carats. This diamond is considered to be flawless, though typically each diamond has flaws;

- the world smallest cut diamond was cut by Bhavani Mikro. The gem weights only 0.00006 grams what is 0.0003 carats. Diamond gemstone has 57 shining tiny facets;

- first diamond stones were found more than 4,500 years ago, according to Peter Lu. Harvard physicist proved that ancient Chinese benefit from unique physical properties of diamond. They used it for polishing corundum axes, which could be polished neither more nor less than by diamond;

- according to various legends a person who wears diamond jewelry is protected from evil. Moreover, a wearer is considered to be a lucky man and the one possessing enough courage. All his traits were explained by wearing diamonds;

- real diamonds can be grown in the laboratory. New Age Diamonds and Gemesis place a small piece of natural diamond and a bit of carbon into the growth machine where high temperature and high pressure are applied to grow a larger stone (up to 5 carats) from these materials. Real diamond comes up in several days and possesses all the properties of naturally-occurring diamond.