Tell me something I don't know...?!

Tell me something I don't know...?

Make it interesting and appropriate.

First you don't know my answer!

I'd like to tell you something about gemstones that you might not know. Diamonds come in all colors including black and they are cubic (one axis) minerals created by volcanic eruptions; not by millions of years of creation. Incredible pressure and heat create them and trace elements such as magnesium, iron, nitrates and others cause the different colors. The same is true of garnets.

These gems "grow" from a single simplistic crystal the size of a grain of sand and only stop growing when the environment ceases to exist. That is why a diamond is either small or large, depending upon how long it is exposed to the ideal conditions that collect the atoms that allow it to keep growing larger.

As one who worked with the Smithsonian Institution in identifying and assigning value to many gems, I viewed a 3 carat diamond that had a perfect garnet crystal in the very middle of it as an inclusion. Garnets are not cubic, but dichroic (two optical axis) and they have a tetragonal lattice and form as what is known as a dodecahedron, which has 12 sides if developed without being distorted by unequal pressure.

There is only this one cut diamond that has ever produced this perfect garnet crystal; the one I mentioned. The diamond grew around the garnet which makes it most unusual. The diamond was graded as D in color and SI2 quality. D - flawless would have made this diamond worth about $80,000, but since the inclusion was so unusual and measured to be exactly in the middle of this cut stone, the value we assessed to be $1,670,000.

The gem was given to the National Appraising Lab for identification and value. is in the possession of a private collector whom I am at not liberty to disclose.

I have not copied and pasted any of this information since I was one of the three who valued it. I doubt you will find it on the web, but you might. I pride myself on writing original material and only three people I know have ever held this stone. My professor Antonio Bonanno (a published gemologist who is now deceased) and a colleague, Brian Brown.

Another interesting fact is that diamonds melt at a higher temperature than they burn. With a low content of oxygen, they will melt at a very high temperature, 2200 degrees, but will burn in an oxygen environment of 1800 degrees.