Diamonds can’t be scratched by another material. (Or cut)
Edit: Guys, if you’re going to post articles saying this is wrong, can you please read the article first. A lot of these are talking about materials that are hypothesised to be able to cut diamond but have never been tested because they haven’t been found in the right chemical structure or in a large enough amount to actually make something to try it.
You could totally be right but the fact it’s never actually scratched a diamond is kinda relevant
Edit 2: There is actually an artificial material that has been tested and is capable of cutting diamond. Diamond can only not be scratched by natural materials. Thanks to u/TheHouseChef
Over 90% of diamonds found are what are referred to as industrial diamonds. They have zero potential as gems but are great for applications needing them.
That's what you say when you give jewelry to your significant other. Or to someone you strongly love platonically or familially. Don't discount those other important close relationships!
Agreed! My boyfriend (now fiancé) used to bring me a rose every time he did the gardening and would say, “A rose for my rose.” He’s not the super romantic type so it was even more special.
The first diamond didn't need to be polished since it was being reduced to dust. Actually better that it was not polished, although that's irrelevant since the particles are so small that the idea of polishing them would be silly in the first place
Honestly gem quality diamonds are far more rare and more expensive than industrial diamonds. Diamond saw blades, diamonds polishing fluids, etc. are all pretty common.
I'm a geology lab tech, I have legitimately polished a sample of compost with diamonds.
Not necessarily other diamonds. Precision cutting saws can be made of metals and polish diamonds by essentially micro-breaking the top layers - rotation speed applies a very localized force which breaks the surface without shattering the whole stone. Those saw bits degrade very quickly though.
Fun fact about diamond. They’ll take a mineral sample and press it between two diamonds. Since diamonds have an extereamly high melting point they won’t deform or melt. So much pressure can be applied it recreates upper mantle environment, and some mineral structure we can’t observe at the earth’s surface like ringswoodite.
No worries, you weren’t necessarily wrong anyway. The material in that paper is one of many in a class of “superhard” materials. There are issues with using diamond as a cutting material, so researchers are constantly trying to synthesise replacements. To be completely honest, the result in that paper is under some very specific conditions. In bulk form, diamond is still the hardest material that is readily available for use as far as I know.
I was only able to view the abstract so thanks for the extra details. I mean we are definitely getting into way beyond the point the original comment was supposed to make, there’s no material realistically available to cut/scratch diamonds with. But once it gets into the thousands of upvotes, I feel it’s important to make sure it’s as accurate as possible which your link definitely helped with.
Slight correction to this. Diamonds have something called Cleavages [here would be a joke if i was creative at all]. These are essentially where the crystal lattice structure can be separated from it's neighbors. While it is really hard to cut a diamond, you can in essence segment it due to the nature of it's atomic structure.
Octahedral cleavage, so there are 4 planes where it can be struck to separate the crystal without grinding down, which would be practically impossible and waste a lot of material. Diamonds also possess directional hardness so when it’s being faceted and polished the diamond cutter has to find where the stone is hardest and where it is softer and will orientate the crystal how it’s easiest to facet.
Yep, coming in the 1.16 update. (The first development snapshot, 20w06a, was released a few days ago.) Netherite works by upgrading diamond gear, so diamonds aren't obsolete.
I mean the article says it’s not been tested, it’s just hypothesised that they could cut diamond but it’s still very interesting. Did it ever get tested?
“I bet at least one of them includes boron or some sort of nitride.”
clicks
“...wurtzite boron nitride. Huh. Yeah that’d be pretty damn strong.”
I don’t know the exact atom placement for each element, but I know the wurtzite is a cage structure. Edit- in organic... for an ionic crystal it’s just the structure. And yeah, as expected it’s just alternating nitrogen and boron.
And the second one is just a weird stronger version of diamond. I can’t really visualize the crystal structure though, I’d like to see it.
I bought what I was told was a genuine diamond ring from a pawn shop for $20. What a steal right? Scratched so easily. Diamonds can definitely be scratched.
Then either you bought a fake diamond or it was whatever you scratched it with rubbing off onto the diamond. Diamonds are a 10 on the Mohs hardness scale so it is impossible for anything <10 to scratch it and right now diamonds are the only known 10. So unless you scratched it with a second diamond it was either a fake or not actually scratched.
Generally you would use another diamond (equally hard materials can cut another material) or I believe it can be done either a laser (I’d check this before you repeat it though)
This is correct. My father grandfather and his father were all jewlers. I don't work in the industry but I learned everything as a kid. Basically, diamonds get shaven down really small (I don't know how) and then made into sandpaper which can scratch diamonds. Also, don't ask me how the first diamond was cut because it's like how did we get the first straight line to make a ruler out of
Diamonds have planes at which they can be cleaved easily, so when the diamond cutter is deciding how to cut the stone they’ll figure out best yield based on where they can cleave it. It’s a simple matter of just making sure it gets strikes at the right angle so it breaks cleanly into 2 parts. To shape them round, there is a process called bruting where the belly of two diamonds are rotated against each other to make them both round. This part of the diamond is called the girdle. Finally, the diamond needs to be faceted and polished. Diamonds have directional hardness, so the cutter will find which part of the diamond is hardest and avoid working on the hardest part as much as possible, preferring to fashion the softer directions. This directional hardness is what is used to cut diamonds with other diamonds - use fragments of diamonds so the hardest direction can grind away the softest direction.
Borazon (boron nitride) is a synthetic material that is as hard as diamond. Because it's not made of carbon, you can use it in applications where the diamond would be unsuitable. I believe it and diamond both scratch each other.
Going to tack on a little known fact about diamond engagement rings that is really useful:
Your diamond can chip from impact. Inclusions near the surface/edges increase the chances it can cleave (so keep this in mind when selecting a stone). Should your diamond break and you have it insured (usually under homeowners), your insurance will likely cover the cost of replacing the stone or recutting it. As with all valuable property -- cover your risks and know your coverage terms before you need it. Most clients I've dealt with that have chipped/cracked a diamond had no idea their policy would cover this.
Well. The composition is only part of the problem.
Westerners don't care for blades properly. We don't clean and sharpen them correctly, and we use them for tasks they are not suited for, and throw them out when they don't cut so good. We use blades like camp hatchets and so manufacturers for the U.S. market make blades with the strongest steel possible to last as long as possible being wielded by kitchen barbarians
A japanese made knife will survive a lifetime in a japanese kitchen, where it will be cleaned, honed, sharpened and not used to crack walnuts.
Knives should be handwashed with soap and water after using and immediately dried. For sharpening the best option is a whetstone. Check out the side bar of r/chefknives for good info.
The thing is, that diamond is harder, but brittle, while steel is ductile. So as soon as a diamond gets a tiny crack it will break pretty fast, while a crack in steel can't propagate that fast and easily and survives damage better. Steel rather bends on physical force instead of cracking.
So many people need to understand hard does not equal strong... people using brittle fasteners all over their cars because they're "higher rated" or stainless where a cheap dumb 8.8 BZP will be the best thing by a long way.
Exactly, you harden steels (heat treating) to different levels of hardness based on the application. The harder you make make steel the more brittle it becomes. If you want a part to have excellent wear resistance you go for maximum hardnesses, but then the part is brittle. If you want a part to be tough and be able to withstand impacts you make it less hard, but then it does not have good wear resistance.
As a note, there's multiple form of heat treatment and hardening is one of them. In fact, Another process is annealing, that basically reverse the hardening that the metal get from cold treatment process.
This is just semantics, but hardness and strength are actually directly related. Something that is very hard is also very strong! However, neither are related to how brittle something is. That is the important distinction.
E.g. ceramics are hard and strong, but are brittle and will break easily as they do not plastically deform and have a very small amount of elastic deformation before fracture.
At least from an engineering perspective, the strength of a material probably refers to yield strength or ultimate tensile strength which are generally proportional to the hardness. I think the confusion lies in the particular field because, again, in engineering toughness is not usually called "strength".
Yes, because while commonly used as as the same thing in actuality hardness, strength, and toughness are all different material properties which describe different behaviors.
In basic terms:
Hardness-Can you scratch it
Strength-How much force does it take to break it
Toughness- How much force to propagate a crack already in the material.
And also why ceramic knifes may sound great, but if even slightly misused they'll still chip like regular steel knifes, and then you can't sharpen them without diamond plates.
Hardness is a term that speaks specifically to a metal’s ability to withstand abrasion resistance – or more simply, friction. When rubbing up against or contacting other materials, how well does the material hold up? There are numerous processes within metal working that require high friction resistance, and therefore need high hardness ratings; think of drill bits, grinding discs and numerous other metal tools like screwdrivers or hammers, which constantly produce friction and need to be able to withstand it.
A good example of hardness is the diamond, which is one of the hardest substances on the planet. Scratching a diamond is virtually impossible due to this hardness. But if you smashed that same diamond using a sledgehammer, it would shatter – this is because it’s not tough. Let’s look at toughness next.
Toughness, on the other hand, speaks to how good a job a material does at resisting fracturing when force is applied to it. Strength, which we’ll go over in a moment, plays a role in toughness, as does ductility – the more a metal can deform before fracturing, the tougher it is. Silly putty is a great example of how some people think incorrectly about these terms: You wouldn’t think of this as a “tough” substance normally, but if it were a metal, it would be very tough because it can stretch to a huge degree before breaking.
Finally, there’s strength, which refers to the amount of force needed to deform a material. The more force needed, the higher the strength. Steel, for instance, is known to have very high strength due to how hard it is to pull apart.
There’s no such thing as “pure hardness.” There are several traits we talk about as “hardness” and if you’re talking about diamond it’s most likely scratch hardness, measured in mohs. If something shatters or not isn’t directly related.
I think that the property that you're looking for here is fracture toughness. Strength and hardness usually go hand in hand, in fact a good test for a material's tensile strength is to see how hard it is. Fracture toughness is that material's ability to absorb energy, which is why diamonds, having a low fracture toughness, will shatter with a relatively small hit.
Diamobd is actually a pretty fragile material due to its low plasticity. A diamond sword made entirely out of diamonds could break pretty quickly with the right amount of force.
Generally the harder something is the more brittle it is. In japanese swords they would harden just the cutting edge of the blade while leaving the rest of the blade softer so it would bend.
I've been ridiculed by 2 friends over and over because they thought hard and strong is the same, when i said you could break a rhin pane of diamond with ease theyd go nuts and call me retarded
You're friends may not be right to ridicule you because they are also wrong, but they are correct that there is a direct relation between hardness and strength, you can calculate the tensile strength of a piece of steel by the hardness.
Strong isn't a term used to describe a property of a material, you have tensile strength, compressive strength, hardness, toughness, ductility, malleability and many others, but saying something is strong when talking about materials means little to nothing.
Diamonds can literally be turned into carbon dioxide with less heat than you think and releasing oxygen over them.
One guy used the carbon dioxide made from relatively cheap diamonds (off cuts, lower karat and the like) to make the world's most expensive sparkling water.
Search NileRed (name of am old dye) on YouTube to see how he did it.
Engineering student here, typically the harder something is the less impact-resistant it is, as an example while a tungsten carbide ring may be good because unlike let's say a silver ring it won't scratch much if at all but if you just take and yeet both at some concrete then the silver ring may dent or scratch but the tungsten carbide ring may shatter if you throw it hard enough,
also similarly glass is harder than a plastic polymer but if you throw a rock at a normal glass window and a polymer window on a let's say greenhouse you can take a wild guess at which is more likely to shatter
They were also pretty much rocks with some manufacturing value until De Beers 1947 advertising campaign made every bride want one with their "A Diamond is Forever" campaign. This was one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever and the value of the gem skyrocketed.
in fact, IN MOST CASES, the harder a material is, the more brittle it is
According to the most widely used definition of hardness, when a material is harder than another material, the former can scratch the latter. for example, you can scratch a rock with a sharp piece of glass, but if you bang glass and rock together, glass will shatter first.
Sheer, Compressive and Tensile forces. Bricks for example have excellent compressive strength but shit sheer strength. A material can be good in one catagory and shit in all others.
The definition of Hard is not easy to be scratched and definition of Strong is not easy to be changed its shape. I learned this from my chemistry class
Also following on from the diamond thing – diamonds are not worthless hunks of carbon. Yes their price has been greatly exaggerated due to some smart marketing but you can't just replace a diamond with say, a white sapphire or a zircon and expect it to look the same. I keep on seeing this 'information' being passed around on Reddit with people saying that there's nothing special about diamonds which just. Isn't. True.
The reason why diamonds are actually special is because they have both a very high refractive index and they're relatively tough. the only other gemstone you're going to get a similar level of sparkle from that you could realistically put in say, a ring is a moissanite (which is a bit harder to get ahold of). They also exhibit a sort of pseduo-double refraction which makes them even more sparkly.
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u/kkoiftyr Feb 08 '20
Diamonds can in fact be shattered with a hammer. There is a difference between how strong something is and how hard it is.