Composition
Diamond is carbon in its most determined form. Except for outline impurities like boron and nitrogen, diamond is composed solely of carbon, the chemical element that is fundamental to all life.
But diamond is distinctly different from its close cousins the general mineral graphite and lonsdaleite, both of which are also composed of carbon. Why is diamond the hardest surface known while graphite is especially soft? Why is diamond transparent whereas graphite is opaque and metallic black? What is it that makes diamond so distinctive?
The key to these questions lie in diamond's particular arrangement of carbon atoms or its crystal structure--the feature that defines any mineral's basic properties. A crystal is a solid body formed from the bonding of atomic elements or compounds in a repeating collection. Often, crystals have smooth external faces. Due to their symmetrical and finite nature, the building blocks of crystals are limited to relatively small numbers of atoms, and their chemical compositions to easy numerical combinations of elements.
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