Make Your Own Diamonds! | Earth Lab

it's two and a half thousand degrees in there and inside that flame there's all sorts of chemical chaos all the time different carbon compounds are forming than burning away again but if I get the conditions just right the hardest molecules will survive the diamonds I really have no idea if this is gonna work but if diamonds are gonna grow they'll grow right there where the flame meets the plate and they're gonna grow some by Adam so it could take a long time as far as I know no one in Britain has ever managed to do this and I need to run it for hours before I even know if it's working you can actually see Berkeley stuff keeping up albeit only slightly in the middle of that metal plate so far this has taken 8 hours 7 hours and it's a long long stint just to get that but the longer you leave it it's like gambling do I let it go further with the chances of bigger diamonds or do I quit now before I lose everything I don't want to quit now I want to keep it going if I've got this right those tiny crystals are going to grow as layer after layer of carbon atoms are laid down forming lovely sparkling diamonds but only if I've got this exactly right these diamonds if in fact they are diamonds may be tiny but they are the start of something very big because it's only by growing diamonds in this steady controlled way that we stand a chance of being able to take advantage of all their other amazing properties beyond just being very hard and very shining so now I'm gonna try and get these things out of here without destroying them [Music] still shine it's just for the black and sheen now I need to do is tape these little fellas somewhere where somebody can tell me but certain weather we've made diamonds or not so we have dr. Martin Newton at Warwick University should know he's at the cutting edge of diamond research and starts by showing me a large bonafide he gemstone there is a diamond looks like a diamond cut along like a diamond so if you pop that in your machine will be able to see exactly what it is we're hoping to see I've my dog exactly there's one very easy test a technique called Raman scattering by shining a laser light on the sample yep and looking at the light that's scattered back from the sample so diamond is really simple there's one characteristic Raman frequency 13:32 really nice diagnostic if it comes out with the correct kind of ram and frequency it is unequivocably diamonds unequivocally done all right let's see what the real thing looks like it just pop it underneath the microscope so you can see the diamond you can see the nice sharp edges underneath switch the laser on it set to run there we go a really sharp peak in fact so sharp butter it's just ticked off the top bang on that's time so that's what I'm hoping for with this show me a look yes there definitely sparkly I think we might be in danger for getting carried away here right I'm not massively heartened okay we can see we're sitting on top of crystal laser on it now lay this is eat this is the moment of truth hey is time you

Channel: BBC Earth Lab

Views: 172,934

Rating: 4.7707191 out of 5

Keywords: earthlab, experiment, education, learning, studying, chemistry, physics, bbc, make your own diamonds, diamond, diamonds, what are diamonds made of, what are diamonds, bang goes the theory

Id: NdsMIG04vHA

Length: 4min 10sec (250 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018