What is it about diamond that is so attractive? As most of us already know, we are carbon-based life forms. The carbon atom, with its quadruple-bond ability, is the only atom strong enough to functionally group together chains of molecules. In order for life to function, it needs a skeleton. That skeleton is carbon. But what happens when carbon reaches out and bonds to itself? There a many answers. One is graphite, or coal. Another is a buckyball, a ball of 60 carbon atoms bonded together in a sphere. Another, of course, is diamond.
If you imagine carbon with its 4 arms reaching out and grabbing itself, graphite is basically carbon sheets, one on top of another, with each atom triple bonded to the next, leaving one open and gliding near the sheet above. Now, imagine taking each of those sheets and smushing them really, really hard. The floating bond of each carbon may just bond to the sheet above, with each carbon atom totally bonded to every other atom. This is diamond. Why is it so hard? Well, imagine yourself with your four limbs glued to four different limbs and each of those other people glued to four other people by their limbs and the pattern repeating itself millions of times. That’s a people diamond. A homunculus diamond if you want to call it that.
Since there is no other atom that can quadruple-bond to itself as strongly as carbon, not only is diamond the strongest substance known, it is the strongest possible substance that can be formed by matter as we know it. This makes it very useful for things like cutting and polishing. Say, if you want a knife that will never dull, a diamond tipped knife will do the trick. Or if you want to drill into the earth’s crust and find some oil, a diamond tipped drill bit will get you pretty far.
The only way to cut diamonds is with other diamonds, so if you want to cut a diamond, you’ll need a diamond. As for the difference between jewelry diamonds and cutting diamonds, the only difference is shape and impurities, but neither affects their hardness. They even have a name for really crappy diamonds. They’re called bort. These are usually made in a laboratory with big machines that can crush things under enormous amounts of pressure. Then they put them on drill bits. The diamonds on your ring are crushed by Mother Earth over 1 to 3 billion years and spewed out by volcanoes.
But why are diamonds so attractive? It has to do with extremes. Diamonds are extremely hard, and yet diamonds are extremely simple. Simplicity attracts the human mind. Nothing else to say.
