Gemology

Dia­mond is a type of car­bon iso­mer which is known and ap­pre­ci­ated for its ex­cep­tion­al hard­ness and thermal con­duct­iv­ity, as well as for its light dis­per­sion and re­frac­tion rate. One of dia­mond’s dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures is lu­min­es­cence, which is an abil­ity to emit rays of light when ex­posed to ul­tra­vi­olet, cath­ode, or X-rays. The main para­met­ers af­fect­ing dia­mond's qual­ity are the col­or, clar­ity, weight in car­ats, and cut. These are also known as the dia­mond's 4 C's. To learn more about those, please check the fol­low­ing art­icles: Bril­liant Cut, Car­at, Clar­ity, and Col­or.

Typ­ic­ally, dia­monds are trans­par­ent, clear gems of a clas­sic­al white tint, but there are also the so-called fancy colored dia­monds which can be pink, blue, yel­low, red, green, and even black. The cheapest are the pale yel­low­ish and brown­ish stones; their tint is con­sidered al­most a flaw which de­creases their value. However, brightly and fancy colored dia­monds are also very valu­able, some­times even more than the white gems. More in­form­a­tion is avail­able in Col­or.

Clas­sic­al dia­mond cut is round, and, com­monly, this is what we ima­gine dia­monds look like. Be­sides the clas­sic­al cut, there is a great vari­ety of oth­er types of dia­mond cut. The choice of one cut over an­oth­er de­pends on the gem's size and its nat­ur­al shape. For ex­ample, a bril­liant is a dia­mond with 57 fa­cets, cut and spe­cific­ally shaped for en­abling the stone’s light-play abil­it­ies and em­phas­iz­ing its nat­ur­al beauty. The clas­sic­al bril­liant cut is round, but there are oth­er pos­sible shapes with the same num­ber of fa­cets. Some­times, on very rare oc­ca­sions, a dia­mond of a large size and ir­reg­u­lar shape is cut asym­met­ric­ally in or­der to pre­serve the large por­tion of the gem's pre­cious mass. To learn more about cut­ting styles and shapes of dia­monds, you can check Bril­liant Cut.

Un­til the middle of the 18th cen­tury, the main dia­mond min­ing was loc­ated in In­dia; the oth­er loc­a­tions were dis­covered later in Brazil and South Africa. In the middle of the pre­vi­ous cen­tury, dia­monds were found in Siber­ia. Now, all five con­tin­ents are in­volved in dia­mond ex­trac­tion, sup­ply­ing these gems to the rest of the world. Nev­er­the­less, the ma­jor­ity of the stones ex­trac­ted are of or­din­ary, small size and of me­di­um qual­ity. The truly large, high-qual­ity dia­monds are very rare, which is why they of­ten bear per­son­al names and are nor­mally sold at auc­tions. To ac­quire more in­form­a­tion about such dia­monds, please check art­icle about fam­ously known dia­monds.

Nowadays, ar­ti­fi­cial dia­monds are be­com­ing in­creas­ingly pop­u­lar. These stones are ar­ti­fi­cially syn­thes­ized from cu­bic zir­coni­um and fian­ites, and look so dia­mond-like that even pro­fes­sion­als face cer­tain dif­fi­culties when at­tempt­ing to tell the dif­fer­ence with the na­ked eye. Nev­er­the­less, the ar­ti­fi­cial gems can­not com­pete with nat­ur­al min­er­als in hard­ness, and their value is sig­ni­fic­antly lower than that of the nat­ur­al ones.

An­oth­er kind of dia­mond, which is also con­sidered ar­ti­fi­cial, is the class of so-called “Love Dia­monds.” These gems con­tain a small amount of car­bon ex­trac­ted from a hair of the per­son you love. As men­tioned above, car­bon is the chem­ic­al ele­ment of which dia­monds con­sist, and it has the same crys­tal struc­ture. This car­bon is used to cre­ate a real dia­mond in an ar­ti­fi­cial way. Love Dia­monds are quite pop­u­lar these days; they have be­come a com­mon dec­or­a­tion for wed­ding and en­gage­ment rings, sym­bol­iz­ing pur­ity of love and faith.

Since an­cient times, dia­monds have been ob­jects of fas­cin­a­tion and ex­cite­ment be­cause of their out­stand­ing beauty. They were con­sidered to pos­sess mys­ter­i­ous and mys­tic­al fea­tures. People in Europe be­lieved big dia­monds would in­hib­it pois­ons and provide their own­ers with su­per­nat­ur­al powers and in­vin­cib­il­ity. In In­dia, dia­monds were sym­bols of pur­ity and vir­gin­ity. They were be­lieved to cure stom­ach and liv­er dis­eases, to cleanse a per­son from sins, to provide etern­al youth, and to fa­cil­it­ate spir­itu­al growth.