Diamonds are known for being the toughest gemstone on the planet, but do they actually scratch?
While real diamonds are intensely durable and resistant to damage, they can be scratched on rare occasions. However, these scratches are likely to be minuscule and cosmetic, and won’t compromise the durability or even the quality of the stone.
Read on to learn more about diamonds and how they’re marked as the toughest gemstone on Earth.
Yes, Diamonds Are Forever
There are plenty of tough things in the world – titanium, tungsten, and perhaps advanced algebra. However, nothing comes close to the toughness or resistance factor of a diamond.
As a material, diamonds are unequivocally the most resistant and toughest on the planet. There’s nothing that can rival the hardness of diamonds, whether natural or manmade.
There’s a common scale used to judge the hardness of a material called the Mohs Hardness Scale. It’s a ranking from numbers one to ten, and it starts with things as soft as talc, or the human fingernail.
As you transition up the scale, you’ll come across materials like apatite, quartz, and topaz. At the very top of the scale are diamonds, famed for millennia for their intense resistance to most forms of damage.
In fact, diamonds are so tough that they’re often used to cut other gemstones or durable materials. While diamonds make up the majority of the jewelry market, they’re also used in industrial and high-end handheld tools.
It’s these durable aspects that contribute to the phrase ‘diamonds are forever’, because they quite literally are. You can lose a diamond or have it stolen, but it’s likely that it won’t ever break unless something extremely drastic happens to it.
Although, we should point out that the ‘hardness’ factor only really pertains to scratching, and that diamonds are inherently quite brittle. If they’re placed under intense pressure or heavily impacted they can shatter or fracture.
That fact is discussed at length in another article on this site, wherein we explored the potential to repair damaged diamonds.
The Science Of A Diamond
So, why exactly are diamonds so hard?
It all comes down to molecular science and the base composition of the gemstone itself. Diamonds are made of pure carbon, which is an element found in every single organic material known to man.
The carbon molecules that make up a diamond are placed under intense and extreme pressure over extremely long periods of time. It’s estimated that a diamond has a formulation period of anything from one to three billion years.
That’s right – the diamond sitting on your engagement ring, or inlaid into your bracelet, started forming at least one billion years ago.
Under the immeasurable levels of pressure – and heat – the carbon molecules pack so tightly together that they simply cannot move. This forms unbelievably rigid bonds, called covalent bonds, and voilá, the diamond is complete.
These rigid bonds ensure that the surface of a diamond is almost completely scratch resistant.
Exception To The Rule
As you might know, diamonds have been fairly popular since they were first uncovered in India some two thousand years ago. However, if we fast forward two dozen centuries or so, the methods behind their extraction, preparation, and transportation haven’t changed much.
The most common thing that causes scratches to the surface of a diamond… Is another diamond. When they’re transported, diamonds are often clustered together, carried in jewelry boxes, or wrapped up in bundles.
It’s a result of their often minute size; they’re not going to be given individual storage compartments. As a result of this almost inconsiderate mode of transportation, diamonds can clash and unfortunately scratch one another.
It seems bizarre that something so valuable would be transported so carelessly, but that’s just the way it goes. Ultimately, run-of-the-mill clear diamonds aren’t all that rare when put into perspective.
The rarest diamonds are colored diamonds, with some pink and blue examples making up some of history’s most expensive gemstones. These rare examples would be transported in a much more considerate manner, especially as they tend to be much larger than standard jewelry diamonds.
The best example of these ‘legendary’ diamonds would be the Pink Star, an incredible sixty-carat stone found in South Africa in 1999. It’s an incredibly rare color and led to the stone being worth more than seventy million dollars at auction.
However, the overwhelming majority of diamonds mined around the world are bog-standard crystal-clear diamonds. Although it doesn’t matter if the diamond is clear, pink, yellow, or blue – they’re all as tough as the next.