Is there anything stronger than diamond?

is there anything stronger than a diamond plenty of convincing cases have been made through the years ranging from the great wall to your grandmother over baked cookies still when it comes to naturally occurring substances diamond and it's compact crystal structure of carbon atoms is currently considered to be the strongest known material in the world or is it in order to know if there's anything stronger we first need to determine what strength is historically strength or hardness was defined as the ability of one material to scratch another rank from zero to ten on something called the most scale devised by German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs diamond of course scored an all-round perfect 10 to give you an idea quartz got a seven steel a 4.5 and ice marked as low as 1.5 the scratch hardness measure is considered too arbitrary and not precise enough another measure called the micro indentation test is often preferred it uses an indenter impressed into the surface of the tested material using a known applied force of 1 to 1000 kilogram here again diamond came out of the absolute unquestioned WBN which stands for wurtzite boron nitride had a similar structure to diamond but is made up of atoms of boron and nitrogen like diamond long steli itís made from carbon atoms but their arrangement is slightly different which makes it a sort of cousin material both of these are very rarely found in nature the first can be brought to the surface during volcanic eruptions while the second is sometimes formed when meteorites containing graphite strike the earth when stressed both of these substances flip their atomic bonds and rearrange into stronger structures resulting in better resistance to the pressure of the indenter WBN is thought to withstand up to 18% more stress than diamond while Lonsdale eh reaches an astonishing 58% making them both especially the latter way stronger than diamond these super hard superstar materials can exhibit other superior properties which make them very useful for industrial purposes you can place them on the tips of cutting tools devise corrosion resistant coatings from them for space rockets or use them to create the electronic circuits of microchips that go into your phone diamond might have lost its title as nature's strongest substance but it will always shine bright in everyone's mind as the king of all gemstones and let us remember that diamonds are formed only because they were once able to resist external pressure

Channel: What makes it tick?

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Keywords: Science, technology, Huawei, Europe, animation, educational, explained, huawei ban, huawei crsis, huawei kick back, diamond, w-BN, Friedrich Mohs, Mohs scale, wurtzite boron nitride, lonsdaleite, volcanic eruptions, meteorites, strength, hardness, Microindentation, w-bn

Id: zy6imRBVOug

Length: 3min 15sec (195 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 01 2019