• Question: Why can't we force carbon atoms to bond in a certain way to form, let's say, diamond?

    Asked by chardo to Jo, Mark, timcraggs on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      We can – people make industrial diamonds for drill bits etc – but it takes a lot of energy to force the atoms into the correct configuration

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hi Chardo,

      Good question! I think we can make artificial diamond. We can certainly make artificial sapphire, but the process requires very high temperatures and pressures, so it quite expensive!

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hello again, Chardo. Ace questions and I especially like this one as it’s a chemistry one! 🙂

      We can make diamonds by arranging the carbon atoms. You can make synthetic diamonds but they’re generally not as popular as geological diamonds.

      Just by changing the arrangement of carbon atoms and the way that they’re bonded you can get diamonds, graphite, just your average everyday carbon and something called a buckyball! They are known as allotropes so all of those things are allotropes of carbon.

      In diamonds the carbon bonds are very strongly bonded together with one carbon being bonded to many others. This is why diamond is so stong.

      In graphite, the carbons are arranged in flat planes. A bit like a load of plates being stacked up. It’s very easy to knock these plates over and that’s why graphite is soft. These flat surfaces can slide over each other very easily and that’s why graphite is a natural lubrucant. My Mum always told me that if a zip got stuck, you could use a pencil on the teeth of the zip and that would work. She was right! 🙂

      Buckyballs (or buckminsterfullerine, to give it it’s proper name) are amazing. in 1996, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for their discovery. They’re like minute footballs, with 60 carbons forming a hollow ball (hence the name!) 🙂

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