Diamonds

Diamond: An extremely hard, highly refractive crystalline form of carbon that is usually colorless and is used as a gemstone and in abrasives, cutting tools, and other applications.

Does this justify the what the word diamond means to you ? It does not to me. Diamond to me means beauty, timeless, strong ... a girl's best friend. Although when it was first discovered it was appreciated as a substance for its physical properties of resistance to shock and fire; it has its name derived from hardness [Greek: adamas].

Strangely enough the diamond gets its visual beauty from a principle of physics known as reflection. The raw diamond is cut into many faces following a mathematical formula which maximizes the amount of light reflected which appeals to the eye. And they say that diamonds are forever; this reliability of diamonds comes from the fact that they are formed around 100 miles inside earth's surface where temperature are around 2200 F [very very hot], they are so strong and lasting that some of diamonds today are aged millions of years.

Diamonds today are the most marvelous jewelry items used in rings, Engagement Rings, earrings, pendants and loose diamonds. The quality of diamond today is classified as the famous 4-Cs: Carat, Cut, Clarity and Color.

Carat: This is the weight of a diamond. Simple. 1 carat = 200 milligrams.

Cut: This is the proportion/angles of a diamond [not shape], and it is the cut which defines the reflective nature of a diamond

Clarity: This is the presence of inclusions is a diamond, these are naturally occurring minerals which appear while diamonds are formed inside earth.

Color: This is the degree of colorlessness of a diamond. The most rare diamonds are colorless, but diamonds comes in various colors red, green, pink, blue and yellow [in order of rarity]

Buying a diamond is a very difficult problem mainly because of so many choices in terms of availability, personal taste and most importantly price. There are various shapes, sizes, colors, weight available in the market. These days the online stores of diamonds are becoming very popular as they provide an opportunity to compare these diamonds on all of the 4Cs. A good resource of this is : Buy Diamonds