The name of the diamond comes from the Greek adamas or adamantem which means "invincible". It is a natural mineral composed of carbon, considered as the precious stone with the highest economic value and the most hard natural matter.
Diamond is the crystalline form of carbon, which originates from extreme heat and pressure, crystallizing in the cubic system. Its crystals have the shape of granular, compact or rounded masses, frequently in octahedra and dodecahedra, rarely in cubes.
The identifying characteristics of a diamond are its extraordinary hardness (index 10, the highest grade on the Mosh scale), its perfect cleavage (except in the bort and carbonated varieties), and its brilliance and luminosity when well cut, because its index of refraction and dispersion are very high. The shine is of the adamantine type.
Regarding its color, it is usually colorless, white; It can also present pale shades of yellow, blue, red, brownish-green and even black. These colors are due to the presence of impurities of elements other than carbon. Diamond does not produce scratches, it is generally transparent to translucent, its toughness tends to be brittle, and it has a specific gravity of 3.52.
It is usually found in igneous rocks, which rise from deep areas of the earth's crust through volcanic chimneys (kimberlites and lamproites), or in places where it accumulates after a process of erosion and transport of materials from the primary deposit.
The largest concentration of deposits is in southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana), in central Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone), in Australia, in Siberia (Russia) and Minas de Geraes (Brazil).
The diamond can be classified into different types: genuine diamond (crystalline gem), which is of high quality and considered the most precious gem, "the queen of gems", widely used in jewelry. The small, low-quality specimens are used in the industrial manufacture of instruments for polishing and cutting other minerals.
The boart, is a mass of tiny diamond crystallization and irregular, typically yellowish green or gray tending to black, it is extremely hard, once crushed is valuable as a abrasive. The diamond called "ballas" or pellet boart, is spherical in shape and varies in color from milky white to steely gray. Lastly, there is carbon or black diamond, it is a cryptocrystalline material composed of graphite and amorphous carbon, very opaque, and gray or black.
