I think I found a dimond in my backyard cause I live by the mountains and I hit it with a hammer against the concrete with all of my force ( and I can lift 300 pounds) and it only broke a little bit .
2007-09-01 08:23:22 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
Diamond is the stringest material on Earth. People use diamond knives to cut and shape diamond, glass and other materials !! Of course your hammer will not harm it much.
2007-09-01 09:15:44 · answer #1 · answered by Mr. Cool 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Well don't tell anyone where you live cause if its a real diamond they'll swarm ya...Realistically its probably not a diamond....But the other folks say you cant break a diamond with a hammer well i disagree. The hardness of many things are compared to diamonds ..Silicon carbide tools mimic the versatility of Diamond wheel grinders...However again diamonds are very brittle they trade ductility for hardness. You can break a Diamond with many objects(including your hammer) in fact a good rule of thumb is never where your diamonds while working or you might just break a piece off..Now diamonds like many other minerals have a Building block construction of carbon that lends itself to a very organized structure and because of this Diamonds can be fractured along these strata lines and that's how they get the best part out of the rough diamond.(they use a steel chisel to make this first cut)
.I wish you found a big real diamond in your back yard but if you can just have a jeweler look at it and they can tell you what you have........Good luck with the future...From the E..
2007-09-01 18:42:11 · answer #2 · answered by Edesigner 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Diamond is the hardest substance known. That means that no other materail can scratch it.
But it is NOT the toughest material, and is quite brittle, like any other glassy material (although it is a lot tougher than glass).
Hit a diamond with a hammer, and it will shatter. How do you think they crush up the less valuable diamonds to make diamond powder (for abrasives, etc)? - they grind them up in a small mill.
The early prospectors in West Australia didn't find diamonds because they mistook hardness for toughness. Whenever they found what they thought was a diamond, they hit it with a hammer! Needless to say, they missed out on finding one of the world's greaat diamond areas!
2007-09-01 21:01:33 · answer #3 · answered by AndrewG 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
if you hit a diamond with a hammer it would shatter. diamonds are hard, but brittle, they are not as strong as some people seem to think, simply hard, so they can't be scratched by anything other than another diamond but they can be broken.
and diamonds can be found in mountains just like they can be found anywhere, it all depends on what brought it to where you found it.
odds are it is simply a piece of quartz though. quartz is not as hard as a diamond but it is much stronger. the piece that broke off, was it smooth where it broke? or was it jagged and broken looking?
diamonds break along their cleavage, so if you break a diamond it comes apart in relatively smooth pieces, quartz will just break into small rough pieces.
2007-09-01 22:38:21 · answer #4 · answered by Tim C 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If it is hit in the right direction, yes you could break it. Diamonds are the hardest mineral on earth, so it takes the right amount of force and the right direction. If the diamond is hit in it's natural cleavage direction (where the atomic structure is weakest) it will break. Thats the direction diamond cutters look for when fashioning a rough diamond.
2007-09-02 12:36:57 · answer #5 · answered by Shauna P 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
diamond shouldn't break if you hit it with a hammer. It shouldn't even flake. Are you sure it's a real diamond, because there's a rock that looks like diamond but is really not. It's just like fools gold but looks like a diamond.
Diamond might break if you hit it with a diamond dust coated hammer. You should take it to a local museum and have them check it out cause, real diamond shouldn't break.
2007-09-01 17:44:15 · answer #6 · answered by nondescript 6 · 0⤊ 1⤋
jazzyboo,
I'm afraid what you found cannot possibly be a diamond, because they do not occur in the mountains. It's probably a weathered piece of quartz. Diamonds can actually be broken if a shock is applied to them in just the right way, but if you are able to damage it at all with your hammer, than it is not diamond.
2007-09-01 15:37:16 · answer #7 · answered by mnrlboy 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I don't know but they say that the only way to scratch a diamond is by using another diamond.
2007-09-02 01:35:32 · answer #8 · answered by chocoeclairs 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I dont know, people say the diamond is the strongest rock in the world ~_~
2007-09-01 15:31:48 · answer #9 · answered by gunslingerroses 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋