Diamonds in Africa

South Africa is a beautiful landscape, with amazing wildlife. South Africa is also home to diamonds, gold, platinum reserves. It was the late 1800s when diamonds were discovered in South Africa. It changed the diamond industry worldwide. Erasmus Jacobs, a young man at the time, discovered the first diamond near Hopetown on the bank of the Orange River. This had a huge impact on the diamond industry and he would go on to be a millionaire. The diamond weighed 21.25 carats and was named the Eureka Diamond. After the first diamond was discovered it had a big impact on the industry as well as South Africa.

Diamonds come in several different color shades such as, yellow, blue, green, or pink. One reason why a Diamond has different colors is through the processes involving heat and radiation. Another reason is that 99.5% of a Diamond is Carbon and the rest are different trace elements. These 0.5% of elements are the reason why a Diamond has different color shades. For example Nitrogen causes it to have a yellow tint , and Boron a blue shade. The pink color in some Diamonds are thought to be caused by deformation of the atomic structure of the diamond crystal. A pure Diamond , which would be 100% carbon, is colorless

Diamonds were created million years ago, when the earth was formed, the material experienced pressure of 5million times the atmosphere at sea level and temperatures between 1000~1200 degrees C. These conditions caused carbon in the layers inside the planet to crystallize into diamonds. The diamonds moved up to the earth’s surface through volcano eruptions. This is why many Diamond mines are near volcanoes. Diamonds occur in two types of rock: Kimberlite and Lamproite. Diamonds are mostly found in South Africa, India, Brazil, Russia, Australia, and Arkansas. Right now about 100 million carats are mined each year. Today the largest cut Diamond in the world is the Cullinan I at 530.2ct .

The unit cell