5 Interesting Facts About Diamonds

1.Diamonds come in almost every color you can imagine.

A diamond that is not colorless or near colorless is considered a fancy color diamond. Yellow and cognac diamonds are the most common fancy colors, followed by pink then blue.  The most rare colors are red, green, purple and orange.  Diamonds can also be black, and appear opaque because light cannot pass through them.  Instead, the light bounces off the faceted surfaces, giving them a very unique and beautiful sparkle.

2. On average, miners yield about 0.30 carat of rough diamond per metric ton of ore.

This means that a literal ton of rock must be processed at the mining site just to recover a single piece of diamond rough, not even weighing 0.50 carat. Even after the diamonds are mined, only about 20% are suitable for use in jewelry.

3. Diamonds are the only gemstone made up of only one element – carbon.

They are typically about 99.95% carbon. The remaining 0.05% can be one or more trace elements which are not part of the diamond’s essential chemistry. It’s these trace elements that can change a diamond’s color or crystal shape.

4. Diamond is the hardest material on Earth.

It is 57 times harder than anything else found in nature. As a result, diamonds can only be scratched by other diamonds.

5. Astrophysicists have discovered a diamond larger than Earth!

The diamond is a mass of crystallized carbon fifty light-years away that weighs 10 billion trillion trillion carats! After its discovery in 2004, astronomers named it Lucy, after the Beatles song “Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds.”