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Step 9Admire the Finished Product
After the mugs have completely cooled, remove them from the microwave.
The oiled graphite will be broken. The others should largely be intact. You'll also find a small lump, slightly larger than a grain of sand where the oiled section was placed.
Congratulations! This is the product of your labors, a genuine diamond.
I took the raw diamond to a jeweler I know and had her test it. She confirmed that underneath the scale material, there's a tiny bit of diamond material. She said that its quality was pretty poor, but it did fluoresce like a "real" diamond.
Now, admittedly, this homemade synthetic diamond is too small and too filled with inclusions to make into jewelry. But, it technically qualifies as a diamond... and I made it, so that's pretty cool.
The oiled graphite will be broken. The others should largely be intact. You'll also find a small lump, slightly larger than a grain of sand where the oiled section was placed.
Congratulations! This is the product of your labors, a genuine diamond.
I took the raw diamond to a jeweler I know and had her test it. She confirmed that underneath the scale material, there's a tiny bit of diamond material. She said that its quality was pretty poor, but it did fluoresce like a "real" diamond.
Now, admittedly, this homemade synthetic diamond is too small and too filled with inclusions to make into jewelry. But, it technically qualifies as a diamond... and I made it, so that's pretty cool.
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I don't like being "that guy" but it seems there are plenty of others on this site so im going to say it anyway; thats not a diamond. Here are a few reasons why.
1. The pencil lead you used contains a large amount of clay, not just graphite.
2. Microwaves are not capable of generating the heat neccesary to recrystalize carbon.
3. Even if the microwave could reach the neccessary temperature, the pressure required to make a diamond is around 50,000 to 70,000 times that of earth's atmosphere.
4. How is it that you claim to have made a diamond in your microwave if diamonds weren't even synthesized until 1953, six years after the first microwave oven was made? If they had the technology in 1947, why not use it then?
Sorry for pooping your party, but it looks like im not the only one.
Apollo Diamond
You could use a microwave and an Absorber such as Silicon Carbide to absorb the microwave radiation and convert to heat.
You would need much lower pressures but you would have to have a controlled atmosphere to the Silicon carbide chamber and that chamber would have to have a suitable refractory and need to be kept cool such that its heat up does not cause ionization which results in it absorbing microwaves and heating up as well.
Apollo Diamonds are gem perfect they can only be identified by lack of any defects. Of Course if done at home you could vary input defects theoretically and they could never be identified.
Microwaves are ideal in this process because of the tight control of temperature in connection with the absorber. It is also more energy efficient.
They heat up and radiate in infrared. You need a suitable refractory and you probably want to keep it cool so that it does not heat up and ionize and start absorbing microwave energy.
The temp is achievable.
For small crystals you could use cavitation and therefore not need the high pressures. The crystals would be very small.
For Large crystals you need not have as high a pressure but you do need a controlled atmosphere.
They were using microwaves as early as 1953 at Y-12 to deal with radioactive materials processing.
You may have made Silicon Carbide in a process similar to the Acheson Process if you arced in non controlled atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_carbide
Hitler refused to allow his troops to eat food cooked it them because they were proven to mutate protein, and mutant proteins become cancerous, still a researched and proven fact, the old documents are still around for public review, online. Microwaves were around in studies years before they were launched, but they recieved passage into the public through a manipulative buy-off, against the will and recommendation of the reviewing doctors of the day on the panels.
So heads were not all about playing with microwaves in popular masses. A few were daring to launch experiments, but its main intention had some sinister purposes even though it was promoted for cool ones. Diamonds on the other hand would've been a lighter area of creative experimentation, dangerous as all science can be. I wish I'd known about the diamond thing earlier--it would've been fun to work with :D! Glad I no longer use a micro, though..
1. A real diamond placed in a CO2 atmosphere will dissolve into "nothing"--no pressure or heat involved.
2. Fake industrial diamond is not manufactured under such high temperatures or pressures either.
3. An Australian high-school student developed a way of coating materials in diamond micro-dust, using COLD and low pressures--great for making grinding wheels but hopeless for laser focusing devices.
Superheat and pressure is only theory.
You didn't quite bomb my party. I know that diamonds can be formed at much lower temperatures and pressure.(Microscopic diamonds can form on the surface of the sun where the temp. is only 10,000 and where there is little pressure) I was just saying that for a diamond of that size (visible to the naked eye) to be formed, it would take more than the pressure and heat a microwave can generate. Also, if i'm wrong, so be it, i'm only a sophomore in high school anyway and i'm taking physics next year.
Of course, if subsequently worthless "pure" diamond can be grown then lenses and other optics will take a massive left turn in efficiency. And yes, I confidently predict that such method will not only validly suck carbon out of the atmosphere, it will turn out rocks in such volume that the South African economy will collapse.
Go to a big jewelers and ask for yellow diamonds- they are tinted to distinguish them natural ones, but they can come in any colour depending on the material you poison the crystals with. They have the same colour as urine.
I haven't tried it, so can't say if this will work, but I'm skeptical of the chemistry.Once I've destroyed my microwave (it's crap anyway), i'll let you know. (^^)
If the "clay"in question is Clay Aiken, that only strengthens my case - his voice is like diamond.
Maybe you didn't notice the "doneness" button on my microwave... I think it goes to "11."
I assure you that the pressure I was under from my wife to NOT burn our house down exceeded 70,000 bars.
In 1953, President Truman announced we had developed the bomb. Later that month, Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" opened on Broadway. That's just too much of a coincidence for me to believe diamond-microwave technology hadn't been discovered.
Also... you should read the other comments to see how this story ended.
:) Well played. I thought there was something odd about this instructable. Also, pranking me isn't quite that difficult because im the most gullable guy in my county.
If you heat the graphite at 5000°C it should react with air to make carbon dioxide, also that temps would melt the coffe cups and if you claim that you got a lot of pressure, the cups would simply move and release what is in middle of them, or they would also broke.
The CVD isnt just ionizing carbon and letting it grow, because it should grow as graphite not diamond.
I don't want to ruin your article, but I don't want to see more people damaging their microwaves, wasting a lot of energy (and money)...
I will try in my microwaves...
Thanks!