Diamond Industry Research Into a Brilliant Book

This is a book that you should consider to have it own if you want to know deep inside a diamond industry. The biggest question that occur for centuries is how to fabricate diamonds, as the earth's diamonds lie deep underground silently and totally unaccessible to us. By reading this book, you will find a comprehensive, interesting, and fair history of the development of synthetic diamond. His treatment of some of the controversial historic elements is even-handed and accurate and he presents complex scientific information in a way that is easy to understand. This is a must read  and brilliant book for anyone interested in high pressure research, especially a diamond industry research.

In this book, Dr.Robert M. Hazen as the author of fifteen books, including the bestseller, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy, will  introduce us to the brilliant, often eccentric and controversial, pioneers of high-pressure research who have harnessed crushing pressures and scorching temperatures to transform almost any carbon-rich material, from road tar to peanut butter, into the most prized of all gems.

Here we'll learn how peanut butter can be made into diamonds, how bombs are exploded underground to make ultra-fine diamond crystals, and how the highest pressures ever obtained by science are done with an apparatus that can fit in the palm of your hand. An absolute must for students of science and technology.

Review 

Scientists tried for about a century to produce them in a laboratory for about a century before they succeeded in a General Electric lab in 1954. This is the story of that quest. It is told with a liveliness and thoroughness quite unusual and delightful. Hazen describe the failed attempts of the early researchers, in some detail, and shows how one of the legends taught to me long ago as a child are bogus. Moissan could not have produced diamonds by the method he described.

The story of Charles Parsons' (the inventor of the steam turbine) attempts was new to me and made me respect him all the more. Thirty years of failed attempts by one of the foremost mechanics of the early twentieth century showed the world just how challenging the synthesis was. Hazen gives a lively account of Percy Bridgeman's exploits in opening up the whole field of high pressure research to systematic study. His clever double-piston apparatus is clearly described, and I was entertained to learn how he published a couple of papers on how to measure pressure in it without divulging its geometry.

The final breakthrough by Hall and coworkers at GE is described in some detail, and the controversy over credits and rewards is laid out for all it is worth. The personalities and their foibles and eccentricities of giants are always quite something. I hugely enjoyed this, and wound up sympathizing with Hall. Then Hazen goes into the modern developments of the scale-up to a quite profitable business, which is very impressive stuff. This is all still developing and changing decades later, and Hazen even includes some well-informed speculation on the importance of the newer vapor phase processes as well.

I really enjoyed the fact that the book included lots of pictures and diagrams of the apparatus. Adds a lot. This is thrilling science and you'd have to be quite the cynic to think otherwise. ( Donald B. Siano )




See more result of  The Diamond Makers (Abebooks : Diamond Industry Research Into a Brilliant Book)

by Robert M Hazen
(ISBN: 0521654742 / 0-521-65474-2 )

Bookseller rating * * * * *

Book Description: Cambridge University Press 1999-07-22, 1999. Book Condition: Used - Very Good. USED PAPERBACK IN PROTECTIVE SLEEVE; VERY GOOD CONDITION; CLEAN TIGHT TEXT; EX-LIBRARY WITH USUAL STAMPS ETC; FRONT FACING PAGE REMOVED; Bookseller Inventory # FCLAA1075L5-155

Contents include:

1. Mysteries
2. Attempts
3. The legacy of Percy Bridgman
4. Baltzar von Platen and the Incredible Diamond Machine
5. The crystals of Loring Coes
6. Project Superpressure
7. Breakthrough
8. Secrets
9. Risky business
10. The rivals
11. The new diamond makers: diamonds by explosion
12. The bew diamond makers: diamonds from a vapor
13. The diamond breakers


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