Shine and Fire--The Characteristics That Make Diamonds Glow and Sparkle

 

By Margi Jenks

 

When I give demonstrations of our diamond mining techniques, I also talk about the characteristics of diamonds that help us to find them.  One of those characteristics is the shine on the outside of the crystal.  Most people think that the shine looks like glass, but it really is more than that.  It has been compared to a pearl shine or a metallic shine.  Gemologists and geologists call the shine an adamantine luster.  Whatever you want to call it, it is the knock-your-socks-off characteristic that most of our visitors who find a diamond describe as “different” or “unlike anything else that they have found or seen”. 

 

The reason for the shine is the way that the diamond’s crystal structure deals with the light that comes into it.  It is a property that scientists call “refraction”.  Refraction means that the crystal structure of the diamond causes the light to bend as it goes through the surface of the rough or cut diamond.  Most of us are familiar with that bend when we look down into water.  We know from experience that if we see something in the bottom of a pool, and then dive down to get it, it won’t be in exactly the place where it looked like it was when we viewed it from above the water.  That change in position is because the surface of the water bends the light, and refracts it back to a different place.  Therefore the object that we see from the surface is “actually located” in a slightly different position.  Mineral crystals have the same refraction ability, and diamonds have a high index of refraction.  So, they have a shine due to that refraction characteristic. 

 

The other knock-your-socks-off diamond characteristic is the “fire” that we can see, especially in cut diamonds.  This characteristic is also due to the way light works when it shines into a diamond crystal.  In this case scientists call that property “dispersion”.  Dispersion breaks the light down into its component parts, causing us to see all of the colors that are within white light.  The affect of this is the rainbow in the sky that we see when light passes through the drops of water in a rain shower.  Gem cutters cut diamonds so that the light is reflected back to us, but now it is dispersed into all the different colors of the rainbow.  This ability of diamond crystals to split the light is what causes us to see the “fire” in diamonds. 

 

So, next time you come to the Crater to hunt for diamonds, keep that shine and fire in mind, because those are the characteristics that make diamonds stand out from our other crystals, like quartz and calcite.

 

Search area last plowed:  October 15, 2010; Trenching began on October 13, 2010 moving the East Drain farther to the west

Most recent significant rain:  October26, 2010

Total diamonds found in 2010: 509

Diamonds registered for October 30 - November 6, 2010 (100 points = 1carat):

October 30 - No diamonds registered

October 31 - Brandon Thomason, Friendship, AR, 62 pt. white; Steve Crutchfield, Friendship, AR, 9 pt. yellow; Kenny and Melissa Oliver, Rosston, AR, 3 pt. white

November 1 - David Anderson, Murfreesboro, AR, 1.31 ct. brown

November 2 - Kayla Long, Antoine, AR, 5 pt. white

November 3 - Chip Burnette, Killeen, TX, 32 pt. yellow

November 4 and 5 - No diamonds registered

November 6 - Kenny and Melissa Oliver, Rosston, AR, 15 pt. white, 24 pt. brown; Tony Bruss, Sterling Heights, MI, 6 pt. white

 

Crater of Diamonds Home Page
209 State Park Road
Murfreesboro, AR 71958
Email: craterofdiamonds@arkansas.com
Phone: (870) 285-3113

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