When it comes to natural things, it doesn’t get much harder
than diamond. The carbon-based material can be used to cut through steel, wood
and glass, and, under ordinary circumstances, it's so rigid that it can’t be
burnt. But in this British Royal Institution testing, researcher Peter Wothers demonstrates
that there is a quite straight way to destroy diamond, and he shows a cool
little prank on Nobel prize-winning chemist Sir Harry Kroto in the procedure. In
the set-up, Wothers re-forms a typical experiment for testing whether a
material comprises carbon, which includes burning it in a compartment with clean
oxygen. But he then adds an exciting twist, by gathering the gas that's unconfined
in a tube and running it through limewater. If the material being burnt holds
carbon, the resultant smoke will contain carbon dioxide, and when this come
across the limewater it'll produce calcium carbonate and turn the whole thing
milky white. You’ll have to see the experiment to see what comes next. I don't
want to spoil anything, but i will say that Kroto is an extremely worthy sport.
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| Image Credit: The Royal Institution |
