Can You Break Diamonds
Can You Break Diamonds
From the day I got engaged, I've been obsessed with the little sparkling rock on my finger. It's a diamond, of course. Not just any diamond, but one with a story—a tiny piece of carbon that took billions of years to form deep beneath the earth’s crust. My fiancé chose it not only for its beauty but also for its legendary strength. After all, diamonds are the hardest natural substance known to humans. But as I did more reading and asked a jeweler a torrent of questions, I was confronted with a fascinating truth: despite their hardness, diamonds can indeed break.
The hardness of a diamond, often touted in Hollywood movies and jewelry commercials, refers to its ability to withstand scratches. On the Mohs scale, a system used to measure the hardness of minerals, diamonds score a perfect ten. This is why they’re used in industrial applications like cutting and grinding. However, hardness doesn't equate to toughness, which is a different property altogether. Here, diamonds fall short. They have a characteristic known as brittleness. Much like how a strong but brittle twig will snap when bent, a sharp blow at the right angle can cause a diamond to chip or even shatter.
I remember a story from my college professor, a geologist with a penchant for peculiar anecdotes. He once recounted how, during a field trip, a student accidentally dropped a diamond onto a concrete floor. The gasp that followed was universal. The students watched in horror and surprise as the diamond displayed its vulnerability, showing a small but undeniable crack. It was a poignant lesson in the complexity of materials and human assumptions.
Diamonds are also cut along specific planes to maximize their brilliance and fire. These planes are known as cleavage planes and are areas where the atomic bonds are weakest. Jewelers rely on this property when cutting raw diamonds into intricate shapes. Yet these same cleavage planes are also the diamond's Achilles' heel. With enough force, and the right angle, a blow to these planes can result in breaking. That notion does add a layer of anxiety when I accidentally bump my ring against something hard, but it also makes me appreciate the craftsmanship involved in making such a resilient yet elegant piece of jewelry.
So, can diamonds break? Absolutely, if certain conditions are met. But let's be honest—the average wearer isn't walking around with a hammer poised to strike their jewelry. Still, knowing this has made me cherish my diamond even more, for its beauty as well as its imperfections. Each time I glance at it, I'm reminded of the balance between strength and vulnerability, a mirror of life itself. For something that is so hard, and yet so delicately strong, the diamond is a perfect metaphor for how we navigate the world—gracefully, even amid occasional cracks.
