What’s in a diamond?
When you see a diamond, generally the first thoughts people have are wow that’s a sparkler, I wonder what the carat is perhaps or even just that’s gorgeous, but have you ever thought how was that made?
Diamonds are in fact carbon, in its most concentrated form. Inside the diamond the carbon atoms are arranged in a structure called a crystal lattice. What this means is that the diamond expands outwards at the same rate in all directions during its formation.
How is a diamond made
A diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material on earth and it can be contaminated by very few things. Most diamonds in question are colourless or appear clear but there are those rare few that have a colour. How do diamonds get their colour? It’s actually caused by a reaction to impurities, blue diamond’s come from boron impurities, yellow diamonds from nitrogen impurities, brown diamonds from lattice defects, and green diamonds from radiation exposure.
We’ve covered what a diamond is made of but how is a diamond made, and ends up on your beautiful ring, necklace, bracelet or earrings? Diamonds need extremely specific conditions to be made and these are found in only two places on the earth. The first is in the crust of the Earth and the second is at the site of a meteor strike – now to google when the meteor shower to Ireland is! Diamonds form in the earth’s crust about 80 to 200 miles down from the surface, but as you can imagine the temperatures there vary depending on location and depth and diamonds need a specific temperature and pressure to be made. The perfect place for a diamond is found in the stable parts of continental plates, and the longer the diamond is there the larger it gets.
Diamonds make their way to the surface through deep volcanic eruptions, these eruptions need to be extremely deep to carry the diamonds from their location to the surface and as a result it is rare that they happen. Once on the surface diamonds can be also mined, each year it is thought that nearly 130,000,000 carats are mined for consumption. Due to the lack of volcanic eruptions that bring diamonds to the surface, these minds are very few and are in specific locations namely Central and Southern Africa, although substantial diamond sources have been discovered in other areas throughout the world, including India, Canada, Brazil, Russia, and Australia. X Rays of fluorescent lights are used to locate the diamonds in the mines and then they are found by hand. Before the invention of X Rays, grease belts were used to find them as diamonds stick to grease stronger than other minerals in the dirt.
Here at Volatire Diamonds we have taken the hassle out of you searching for a meteor shower or mining your time away, and have an incredible selection of diamonds to choose from. So the big question is, now that you know what diamonds are made of and how, when will you be getting your next diamond?
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