DIAMOND

Use

Diamond is the cubic crystalline form of carbon.When pure, diamond is water clear, butimpurities add shades of opaqueness including black. It is the hardest natural material with ahardness on the Knoop scale ranging from 5500to 7000. It will scratch and be scratched by thehardest anthropogenic material Borozon. It hasa specific gravity of 3.5. Diamond has a meltingpoint of around 3871°C, at which point it willgraphitize and then vaporize. Diamonds aregenerally electrical insulators and nonmagnetic.Synthetic diamonds are produced from graphiteat extremely high pressures (5444 to 12,359.9MPa) and temperatures from 1204 to 2427°C.They are up to 0.01 carat in size and are comparableto the quality of industrial diamonds.In powder form they are used in cutting wheels.Of all diamonds mined, about 80% by weightare used in industry. Roughly 45% of the totalindustrial use is in grinding wheels. Tests haveshown that under many conditions syntheticdiamonds are better than mined diamonds inthis application.