General Description of Diamond.History Term Paper Essay

Diamond.
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General Description of Diamond.
Diamond is an element of carbon. It is merely a solid form of carbon whose atoms are organically arranged in a crystal structure known as diamond cubic. Although graphite, another solid form of carbon, melts and converts into a chemical form at room temperature and pressure, diamond is a hard solid which does not convert at all. Due to its hardness and high thermal conductivity, diamond is said to be the hardest and most durable mineral of all the minerals on earth (Mehta, 2016). Its properties have made the crystal the most fundamental part of such industrial processes as cutting other metals and manufacturing durable tools. Moreover, its constituents, anvil cells, are used in mining as it can exert maximum pressure on certain materials stored deep below the surface of the earth. Additionally, the mineral is exceptionally pure due to the arrangement of its atoms, and therefore, it cannot be easily contaminated. Diamonds age between 1 and 4 billion years, created approximately 160 and 260 kilometers deep in the earth's mantle.
Physical Properties of Diamond.
As mentioned earlier, a diamond is an allotrope of carbon. Its material properties, precisely the physical properties, are among the main reasons why artists used precious metals as a representation of art in the past and even today. It is an anisotropic opaque crystal with particular fundamental properties that can be summarized as suitable for its purpose (Libretexts.org, 2019). The following prompts state and describe the essential features of a diamond as a mineral.
Color.
Most of the gems with high-quality properties range from being colorless to slightly yellow, brown, or grayish. The most valuable and identified diamonds in history are those that are colorless. However, there are other categories of diamond gemstones that are beginning to gain recognition, such as colored diamonds, which occur naturally with a variety of hues including red, pink, yellow, orange, purple, blue, green, and brown (Libretexts.org, 2019). The use of diamonds in the art industry depends on their quality and purity, whereas the value of colored diamonds depends on their intensity.
Clarity.
The typical and the most standard diamond is pure and free from fractures and inclusive particles of colored and foreign materials (Field, 2012). This is evaluated in its appearance and the interference of light as it passes through. Colorless diamonds are clear and free of dark compositions.
Luster.
A diamond has an adamantine luster. This reflects from the proximity at which the mineral’s facets. Additionally, due to its flatness, diamond has a refractive index of 2.417 as measured through sodium light (Field, 2012). It has a high dispersion of 0.044, which is evident is the perception of the fire of cut diamonds, which manifests itself in crystalline rocks used in making jewelry. In this context, the value of diamond as a mineral is determined by its marketing, a link between its hardness and dispersion and resistivity.
Hardness.
History states that diamond is the hardest mineral in the world. Mohs hardness scale gives a diamond a hardness scale of 10 (Field, 2012...