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Do You Know... About Diamonds
by Jackie Bridgford
http://www.ablediamonds.com

Do you know what diamonds and a chocolate substitute have in
common? Can you name the most popular cut of diamond? Do you
understand why size is only one-fourth the reason for a
diamond's price? Do you know what makes a diamond 'fancy'?

If you can't answer all of the above questions, count
yourself among the 95% or more of the population who only
know that diamonds are expensive and romantic. If you'd like
to learn some fun, interesting facts, read on.

Diamonds and chocolate substitutes? The origin of the word
carat, the unit of measurement for diamonds and other gems,
is the same as the origin for the word 'carob', the seeds
from which a popular chocolate substitute is made. In the
earliest days of gem selling, carob seeds were used to
weight the other side of a pair of balance scales to
determine the weight of a gem stone.

Despite that fact, it's interesting to note that some of
most well-known diamonds in the world are actually fancies.
These include the Hope Diamond, which weighs in at 45.52
carats, and is a deep, opaque blue. Others are the Dresden
diamond, 40.70 carats, which is an intense apple green in
color. The Tiffany diamond, on display at Tiffany's Fifth
Avenue in New York City, is a canary yellow diamond that
weighs 287.42 carats.

Diamonds are as unique from each other as fingerprints.
Their size, cut, clarity and imperfections all create a
'signature' that is recognizable. A certificate issued by an
accredited laboratory will give you all the information to
identify the uniqueness of your own diamond.

Black diamonds contain inclusions of graphite within the
crystal. Black diamonds of significant size and quality are
relatively rare. Gray diamonds, on the other hand, may be
caused by a number of different impurities in the diamond,
and those impurities often lend a tint of other color to
grey. Gray pink, gray blue and gray green are all fairly
common.

While jewelers often refer to clear diamonds as 'white',
there are also real white diamonds. They are colored by tiny
inclusions that can give them an opalescent inner fire. They
are not as rare as red/pink diamonds, which, until recently,
were only found in one place in the world. Still, truly pink
diamonds with intense color are rare enough that a 3/4 carat
pink diamond can cost upwards of $25,000.

Yellow diamonds are another fairly common fancy type, but
the intensity of the yellow varies widely. The various
impurities that can cause colors are often also tinged with
yellow, giving rise to colors like olive and yellow brown.
Despite the rarity of colored diamonds larger than one
carat, the largest cut diamond in the world, the Golden
Jubilee, is a canary diamond.

A rough diamond resembles nothing so much as a greasy, grey
pebble. It takes the artistry of a jeweler to bring out the
brilliance and fire that is inherent in the stone. And, as
any jeweler will tell you, the right cut can make the
difference between a common stone and a breathtakingly
beautiful gem. The Round Cut has been the most popular
diamond cut for centuries, but the squared off Princess cut
is gaining in popularity. New tools like lasers are making
fancy shapes like hearts, birds and flowers more and more
common, though they are still rare.

Like fancy diamonds, but not the price? It's now possible
for gemologists to create synthetic fancies by exposing the
diamonds to the impurities that cause the colored tinges in
natural fancies.

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