Questions on diamonds and hardness
Moh's scale says diamonds rate a 10. Various books I've read say that the scale is not accurate - that diamond is actually roughly a 42.
My father, a chemistry teacher, says that diamond has the hardest edges of anything because of the way its carbon atoms are arranged. The outer shell of electrons has 4 spaces and 4 electrons. In diamond, each carbon atom forms a covalent bond with each of 4 neighbors. This repeats ad infinitum in atomic terms. If a perfect diamond is found, that means that you can start at one edge and hop from carbon to carbon billions of times to reac hthe opposite edge.
Most materials have breaks in their structures. Crystals such as common salt also repeat large numbeers of times, but are not as strong for some reason - odd, since my memory of chemistry tells me that ionic bonds are stronge than covalent bonds. Hmm...
How do you cut a diamond? What could pierce a perfect diamon besides another diamond? Oh, answered my own question. They must use poor-quality diamonds to cut the important ones.
Has anything been found that is harder than diamond?
What is a diamond on the RC scale of hardness? My katanas are rated at 60 RC, and my Practical Katana has a little tag that says its edge is 64 RC.
I can't wait until someone discovers how to make macroscopic items out of cryhstal carbon. I thought that diamond was brittle and couldn't be used to build, but it's been suggested that the only material that can build the Star Ladder. A really long buckytube could do it too.
A diamond sword... THAT is probably too britlle. In order to be thin enough to have a reasonable edge... I dunno the numberrs.
My father, a chemistry teacher, says that diamond has the hardest edges of anything because of the way its carbon atoms are arranged. The outer shell of electrons has 4 spaces and 4 electrons. In diamond, each carbon atom forms a covalent bond with each of 4 neighbors. This repeats ad infinitum in atomic terms. If a perfect diamond is found, that means that you can start at one edge and hop from carbon to carbon billions of times to reac hthe opposite edge.
Most materials have breaks in their structures. Crystals such as common salt also repeat large numbeers of times, but are not as strong for some reason - odd, since my memory of chemistry tells me that ionic bonds are stronge than covalent bonds. Hmm...
How do you cut a diamond? What could pierce a perfect diamon besides another diamond? Oh, answered my own question. They must use poor-quality diamonds to cut the important ones.
Has anything been found that is harder than diamond?
What is a diamond on the RC scale of hardness? My katanas are rated at 60 RC, and my Practical Katana has a little tag that says its edge is 64 RC.
I can't wait until someone discovers how to make macroscopic items out of cryhstal carbon. I thought that diamond was brittle and couldn't be used to build, but it's been suggested that the only material that can build the Star Ladder. A really long buckytube could do it too.
A diamond sword... THAT is probably too britlle. In order to be thin enough to have a reasonable edge... I dunno the numberrs.
Comments
right?
Does that mean every carbon atom undergoes sp4 hybridization? Is that possible?
[ 06-05-2002: Message edited by: soulcrusher ]</p>
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