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Sec. II, Ch. 1: The Diamond

Sec. II, Ch. 1: The Diamond Page of 366 Sec. II, Ch. 1: The Diamond Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
72
The Diamond.
partial oxidization, the hydrogen being converted into water and part of the carbon into carbonic acid, while the residual carbon might be deposited in a free state, just as sulphur is set free on the oxidation of emanations of sul-phuretted'hydrogen. Rousseau has obtained black Diamond by heating acetylene in the electric furnace.
It is well known to metallurgists that molten iron will dissolve carbon, and that the excess beyond that which forms cast-iron will separate, on cooling, in the form of crystalline plates of graphite, known to the iron-workers under the curious name of " kish." M. Moissan has shewn that the physical condition which the carbon assumes is dependent to a large extent on the pressure to which it is subjected at the time of consolidation, and that under enormous pressure it is liberated in the form of Diamond. This discovery has given fresh interest to some observations made in Edinburgh about the year 1880 by Dr. Sydney Marsden. He found that molten silver dissolved carbon, and that this separated, on cooling, partly as amorphous, or un-crystallized matter, and partly in the crystalline states of Graphite and Diamond. The use of the electric furnace has enabled M. Moissan to confirm and extend these observations.
In order to secure the separation of carbon, in the adamantoid form, Moissan saturated the iron with pure carbon, and suddenly cooled the mass by plunging it into a bath of molten lead, when the exterior consolidated as a crust around the molten iron : this then slowly solid­ified, and by its expansion in cooling an enormous pressure was secured. The experiment has been successfully repeated by several chemists in this country.
But though Diamonds have thus been artificially produced they are of such minute size, being merely
Sec. II, Ch. 1: The Diamond Page of 366 Sec. II, Ch. 1: The Diamond
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