SHINE RIGHT WITH THAT DIAMOND

One of my female friends asked if I could tell if on her engagement she could come to me and see if the ring she gets is a real diamond or not. So the first question I asked is "how sure are you’ll get engaged or get a diamond ring?"... Let’s just say I had to buy her lunch as an excuse of an apology.But anyway, away from my daftness, how would an ordinary Kenyan Republic citizenry, without the know-how , get to differentiate a genuine diamond from a fake? Well, fake or real, firstly you will need to get an actual/real Kenyan man who is willing to buy you a diamond ring, no matter how many carats it holds, which as I am told the number of carats increases with love, so I will have to explain carats later in another blog. I doubt women care anyway as long as its shinny and shaped just right. So back to the point. 

this stone has been graded both highest in colour and clarity grading – D colour and Flawless. The diamond was cut from a 236 carat rough diamond that was discovered at the Jwaneng Mine in Botswana. Because of the sheer size of the rough diamond and the intricacy of cutting this 101ct beauty, the stone took almost 2 years to polish (http://www.77diamonds.com)

Diamonds- yes- The most popular diamond fake is a Cube Zirconia (C.Z for the purposes of this article).Thse ways listed here are not scientifically proven or fully effective but they could be of great help and are simple...somewhat.The oldest trick in the book is “all diamond scratches glass”. True. But so do every other fake in the black (ok I sometimes find this racist) market. C.Z scratches easily. 
This picture below shows abrasions at the facet junctions and scratches when looked at closely under a magnifying glass.


 
Fakes are also cut in a very sloppy manner most of the time. My advice then is use this with extreme care (meaning never)
My favorite has to be the fog test. Take the diamond place it in front of your mouth and just breathe on it. If the fog lasts for, lets say 2-4 seconds, congratulations your man is cheap! Diamond, releases heat instantaneously so the fog will have cleared up before you get to see it. (A downfall to this is that oil and dirt on the rock could affect its reliability)
For you who like having those kinky U.V lights in your bedrooms, you can use that light to do other things other than set the mood. When “doing your thing”-  because I know you probably have the ring on, and before it gets too exciting to notice- look at the diamond under the ultraviolet light, it should have a blue fluorescence. Most of the fakes usually don’t have it. Good for you if its real, but there is a twist too, it’s less valuable. I avoided saying cheap on this on this one. Lack of the blue fluorescence could mean its either a fake or of better quality. Two extremes in one.
The weight test. If you have a butcher husband, you would he would probably have a trophy cabinet of some of his prized measuring scales or whatever his fetish is. C.V will weigh 55% more than the real thing of the same shape and size. The fake diamond will then definitely tilt downwards towards itself in all its attention seeking.The next one if the most effective to some extent. 

The transparency test

Step one

Take a blank piece of paper and draw a dot on it with a pen

Step two

Take your “ice” turn it upside down on the paper and center it on the dot.





Step three

After its set and centered observe. The C.Z will have a circular reflection of the dot. The diamond will break up the reflection to a point where it becomes impossible to recognize

  




“I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number of carats in a diamond.”
photo credits here

DIAMONDS ARE NOT SQUISHED COAL!!

so what geological misconceptions have people had in the past and still have? well here is one

Reblogged from Lounge of the Lab Lemming

Diamonds are not former coal. Coal is the organic-rich remains of terrestrial plant matter, and this is younger than the oldest land plants, which are roughly 400 million years old. Pb isotope studies of diamonds show that they are generally between 2 and 2.8 billion years old, 5-7 times older than the oldest land plants. Thus diamonds were already collecting their pensions by the time the first coal beds were formed.

Secondly, they have different isotopic compositions. Plants, which fix CO₂ via photosynthesis, contain 2% less ¹³C than the Earth’s mantle, while most diamonds have mantle carbon isotopic composition. The light isotopic composition of coal is due to the preferential uptake of ¹²C over ¹³C during photosynthesis. Diamonds, not being related to coal, never photosynthesized, and do not show this effect.

Thirdly, metamorphic minerals have very different textures than hydrothermal ones. Diamonds are thought to precipitate from a CO₂ fluid when said fluid is reduced in the mantle. This allows big, low strain crystals to form. Solid state phase transitions generally involve lots of deformation and recrystallization. Were coal to be metamorphosed into diamond, it would probably form a diamond rock with micron-scale crystals. Impact diamonds have grainsizes that are micron to sub-micron, and the source of the carbon is difficult to determine. But they are tiny, and it is theoretically impossible for them to be more than a few carats (they need to be small enough to cool off before the shockwave dissipates, or they will revert to graphite).

Of course, it is theoretically possible to synthesize diamonds from coal in a lab. But this is unlikely to occur for several reasons. If the diamonds are being grown in a traditional metal catalyst belt apparatus, then a low sulphur carbon source should be used to prevent the nickel catalyst from being attacked. If coal was sulphur free, then trout in the Adirondacks would have nothing to complain about. In the case of Chemical Vapor Deposition diamond, a gaseous source- usually methane- is used. With either method, nitrogen from organic compounds in the coal would impart a yellow-green color in the diamond due to the absorption of the single N defect. So coal would be a poor source material for synthetic diamond production.

To summarize: Diamonds are too old to be squished coal, and even if they weren’t they contain the wrong sort of carbon and form through different processes. Furthermore, coal is a poor choice of precursor for synthetic diamond production, as spectroscopic graphite is best for metal catalyst diamonds, and methane is preferred for CVD.