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I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The enviro
by ISL 8y ago
I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real.
Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! (Edit: It is also birefringent, which does require care when choosing a cut, size, and setting)
Cubic zirconia, too, can be stunning. Order a handful of 10-15mm stones and see for yourself. Or, for a little more money, synthetic rubies and sapphires can transform how you think about nature (they're the same crystal, except for differing defects). The real beauty of many stones is in the cut, not the base material. Diamond absolutely has its place, but it is but one in a spectrum of really cool offerings.
It is the rarity of materials that give them cachet, but the physical properties that make them beautiful. Platinum is a boring metal, visually, difficult to distinguish by eye from steels, aluminum, and titanium. The bloom of the commonest flower is far prettier, but we barely notice because they seem so commonplace and ephemeral.
Every one of these materials was born in the heart of a star or in the heat of an astrophysical cataclysm, each just as natural as the next.
Disclaimer/Caution: I've lost (so far) large fractions of small amounts of money betting long on SiC as a business venture.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago>> Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made diamonds down to the price of Moissanite, and create a artificial distinction between natural and man made dimaonds. > Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! As an investor you probably know this, but for the benefit of everyone else, Moissanite is a marketing term for (crystalline) silicon carbide. Similarly to how sapphire is a special term for crystalline aluminum oxide, but the word "sapphire" has a bit more tradition behind it.
- wlesieutre 8y agoMineral name wise, sapphires are a type of corundum. Usually blue, sometimes green, yellow, orange, or others, depending on various metals mixed into it. But if it’s red (via chromium) it’s a ruby instead. Clear crystalline aluminum oxide you’d generally just call corundum (or aluminum oxide if you’re not feeling fancy), but that doesn’t market as well when you’re making watch faces and camera lenses out of it, so I guess we’re calling that sapphire now too. TLDR: Gemstone naming seems a bit super arbitrary and marketing driven (not that I’m an expert on the subject)
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThe names ruby and sapphire are not marketing driven; they are color terms that long predate the development of chemistry to the point where we could determine what gems were. Many famous historical "rubies" are not corundum but spinel; they were called rubies because "ruby" was the term for any red gemstone. "Moissanite" is purely marketing, though.
- radisb 8y agoI can also verify this. I currently have 932 flawless imperial rubies in my stash and they are all red.
- logfromblammo 8y agoOne of the drawbacks of being dragonborn is the hoarding instinct.
- pierredewet 8y agoProudspire Manor won’t buy itself
- wlesieutre 8y agoLooks like a Diablo 3 reference to me. Put one of those in your hat for +37% exp!
- spraak 8y agoYour post is very poetic, thank you
- sigi45 8y agoWe as humans just need to be less stupid. Srsly no one cares if a stone is real or not.
- test6554 8y agoEveryone is "trying" to be less stupid. But selling my wife's diamond rings and buying cubic zirconia replicas at this point feels like a very stupid move even though I know I will net a bunch of money up front, I hear divorces are very expensive.
- sk5t 8y agoIf it's any solace, I understand the secondhand market for diamonds to be quite weak.
- kbenson 8y agoPurposefully weak, to my understanding, to discourage a secondary market. I remember an article years ago that went into detail about De Beers' manipulation of the market, and how change from "larger is better" to "clearer is better" happened just as a large mine outside of De Beers control opened that had quite a few large diamonds coming from it on a regular basis. That same article made some assertions about the secondary market being somewhat manipulated, IIRC, but this was close to a decade ago, so sourcing it might be hard, and I'm also unsure how accurate it was at this point. I think it was about how modern incarnation of idea of giving rings for marriage was also largely manipulated by De Beers.
- nsp 8y agoI believe “Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” (1982) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo... is what you’re thinking of - it’s a great article and feel ahead of its time in style/composition.
- nradov 8y agoNever mind about jewelry and fashion. Cheap synthetic diamonds would open up a host of industrial applications. Bring on "The Diamond Age".
- ISL 8y agoWhen the Diamond Age arrives, it's going to be amazing. For a sneak peek, look up "diamond-like coatings", already in use in physics experiments and industry.
- dontstopnowbaby 8y agoImagine coating my dick in diamond like coatings. My wife will still complain it is too freaking hard.
- jagger27 8y agoOne diamond crystal smartphone screen for me, please.
- dragontamer 8y agoThe chief problem with smartphone screens these days is not them getting scratched, but with them cracking. Diamonds, despite being very hard, are also very brittle. They'll likely crack much more easily than Gorilla Glass (another hard material that is hard to scratch).
- AstralStorm 8y agoDid you mean one that shatters on the first hit? Even Gorilla Glass is better than this.
- Vektorweg 8y agoIndustrial synthetic diamond production is around since at least the 80s and from all we know about De Beers, they are certainly not trying to get the price down.
- 8y ago
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoOr you know, just not buy gemstones, especially diamonds that cause many of the issues you mention.
- solatic 8y ago> The real beauty of many stones is in the cut, not the base material. If you can create the exact same rough/uncut synthetic diamond, and therefore can deterministically reproduce the same cut on each diamond, then the decision of how to cut that diamond becomes intellectual property and is potentially copywritable. If de Beers really can't hold back the synthetic market, they'll find a way to take it over, and legally-enforced monopolies sure isn't a bad strategy.
- Retric 8y agoYou can't get a copyright on simple geometric shapes, they would need something bizarre looking to not have been created in the past. Further, stones are both tiny and shiny so people can't really tell what they look like. A more realistic option is use nanoscale etching to get unique colors. Much like those blue butterfly wings that don't use pigment.
- oblio 8y ago> Platinum is a boring metal, visually, difficult to distinguish by eye from steels, aluminum, and titanium. Platinum has very low reactivity so it doesn't rust, corrode, whatever easy, unlike the others. That's why it's considered valuable, because it looks almost the same after a lot of time.
- Borealid 8y agoAnodized aluminum and titanium don't rust - and if by whatever means you DO allow them to oxidize, the oxygen-bound outer layer forms a protective barrier against further rusting. Neither of those metals becomes structurally weaker in any meaningful way over time due to oxygen exposure.
- jk2323 8y ago"Anodized aluminum and titanium don't rust - and if by whatever means you DO allow them to oxidize, the oxygen-bound outer layer forms a protective barrier against further rusting." So what? But they do melt. And you can't eat Titanium or Aluminum. We would starve to dead soon without Pt/Rh
- rocqua 8y agoBoth anodizing and oxidation of aluminum look different from polished steel. Notably, oxidized aluminium loses its shine. Moreover, anodization can get scratched after which you get the ugly oxidized aluminium. All of this is to say that as a "Symbol of lasting love" every-shiny platinum jewelry seems to make some sense.
- Borealid 8y agoAlthough in theory you could scratch anodized aluminum, the anodized layer is both harder and more abrasion resistant than the underlying raw aluminum. If you're thinking about scratching chrome-plated steel, let me ephasize that it is much harder to scratch a hard-anodized finish. The only anodized-aluminum object I have ever known to get scratched is the older iPhones (5?). That's probably a combination of people physically dropping them from heights and Apple's choice of a thin, relatively soft anodization process. A clear anodization finish leads to "bright aluminum" - the natural shine is absolutely preserved. Natural oxidization on the other hand does dull the metal. Yes, all forms of aluminum look different than steel. Gold and platinum do have the advantage of being homogenously non-oxidizing. But I think anodized aluminum is a great alternative with many advantageous properties for jewelry (low cost, wide variety of beautiful colors, high strength/weight ratio, low density, non-allergenic). I'm not sure why it's used so infrequently - perhaps because of the connection with aluminum cans and thus the image of "cheap"/"disposable"?
- mromanuk 8y agonew generations, probably, would appreciate the low environmental impact of man made stones