Let’s Talk Diamonds!

When you start to think about diamonds first understand what is meant by the word ‘Diamond’

Just remember three things.

• Diamonds are formed deep within the Earth, 900 million to three billion years ago, brought to the surface by natural forces millions of years ago and mined in only a few places on the Earth’s surface. Some may call diamonds ‘natural diamonds’ or ‘mined diamonds’. 

• Artificial diamonds can be manufactured in factories using two methods; within machines which create the extreme heat and pressures needed to grow them or in machines which use methane and other gases to grow them. Such products may be called ‘lab grown diamonds’, ‘laboratory grown diamonds’, ‘synthetic diamonds’, ‘man-made diamonds’, ‘created diamonds’. Other terms have been used. Artificial diamonds and diamonds have the same chemical make up, the same optical properties of lustre, brightness and ‘fire’, and the same physical properties of hardness, toughness and density. 

• There are artificial products that look to the eye at first sight like diamonds but do not have the chemical, optical or physical properties of diamonds or artificial diamonds. These products are called simulants. Examples are glass, rhinestone crystals, cubic zirconia and moissanite.

Global trade associations advise the word diamond should only be applied to those formed in the Earth.

Artificial:  “made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural”