The diamond is the hardest material in the world. But why does the crystal of carbon grind nonetheless valuable gems? Quantum physicists have now found out a surprising answer: the carbon atoms are "liquid".
A team of German researchers has discovered why diamonds - can grind at all - after all, the hardest material in the world: When polishing its surface is soft, so to speak. It is formed between the stone and the diamond chips of the grinding wheel, a layer in which the individual carbon atoms are much less tightly bound together than in the crystal itself, this layer can then either be mechanically using the disk or removed chemically by the action of atmospheric oxygen . "The moment in which the diamond is cut, the diamond is not a diamond more," Michael Moser brings the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials in Freiburg, the results of the study to the point.
