they're going to let me touch it with my
hands
watch carefully only time in my life I'm
going to wash my hands in diamonds we're
now in the chief experts Department and
they have brought out some really
special diamonds for us brought them out
from a vault somewhere and I'm amazed by
them this one here is the biggest
diamond that is here it is 240 carats
but it's rather a shapeless lump but
down here there are some really amazing
shapes I never realized that a diamond
when it's not even cut is a almost
perfect octahedron it looks like out of
the textbooks I just can't believe that
nature can make anything quite so
beautiful
if you look down here you can see this
one here is a big yellow I think because
of an impurity and then you can get some
quite strong colors this one here is
purple and this one is pink these ones
here have grown into an almost perfect
cube and this little one is really as
far as I can see a perfect cube and then
there's one that looks like a football
very important World Cup was here in
Russia last year though I don't play
football myself and then there is
another one that looks like a skull and
if you turn it over its Hollow I think
because it dissolved during the
geological deposition maybe in very high
temperature high pressure water that it
dissolved but it's got a rather strange
bowl shape with eyes might be a bit grim
having a dam and shaped like a scowl on
your ring
these ones here I think perhaps are the
chemically the most interesting they're
black because they're a combination of
diamonds and also graphite we have a box
with 1490 crystals of diamonds it's very
interesting to me that they'd actually
count them so carefully you can see even
these tiny crystals a rule of Sahid rule
and if you look under the microscope you
can see these little octahedron
I looked in the microscope not very good
in microscopes with my glasses but even
I could see that they were really nice
and crystalline this one here is a
so-called twin where two octahedra have
grown simultaneously in different
directions so you get a less interesting
shape and at the same time I was
fascinated that in this one there's a
crack down and such a strong material
but even so sometimes it can crack and
then down here is a an interesting
crystal tiny but it has three twins that
have grown simultaneously so you have
sixth octahedra won't close together
these are the different qualities of the
diamonds some diamonds are clearer nicer
shaped crystals than others and again
they have standards to make sure that
they classify all of them correctly
because once you've got a big box of
them if you've made a mistake you have
to sort them all over again these
diamonds are not completely pure carbon
they contain traces of nitrogen you
can't see this with the eye but you can
see it by using a UV light so Natalia
will just put the biggest diamonds onto
a UV lamp and you can see suddenly it
gives out blue light
and you can tell that different diamonds
fluoresce different amounts and
occasionally you can get a different
type of nitrogen center which instead of
being blue is yellow so Natalia will
show you one now one of the cubic ones
and you can see it's a greenish yellow
color again this is a really nice
demonstration of spectroscopy and you
could analyze it even better looking
through a spectrometer to get the
precise wavelengths of the emissions so
here you can see there's a nice blue
glowing octahedron can we try the pink
diamond you can see that one doesn't
fluoresce at all so it probably doesn't
have any nitrogen sensors in it or at
least none that will absorb but again
this is a nice way of categorizing the
different diamonds so that you learn
more about their structure learn more
about their chemistry let's try the pink
diamond as well I think that's really
interesting the pink diamond fluoresce
is blue but you wouldn't have guessed
that
I'm in the sorting Department where the
raw diamonds are graded it's really
amazing the diamonds that come here look
rather like sand if you look here in
this bowl I can just pour some out but
what's amazing is that people go through
this literally grain by grain they have
about 8,000 different grades which they
know they remember and they classify
each of the grains according to the
grade and here we have about 26 or 27
thousand karats in weight of diamonds
the total value of this doesn't look
very much is more than a million dollars
that's why people are watching me
carefully I'm wearing a special coat no
pockets and even these tiny grains look
like little octahedra tiny crystals and
you've got to remember that these grains
have been obtained from a solid mass of
rock which has been ground up and out of
the rock they filter off these special
diamonds and what's interesting here is
that you can see different colors some
of the grains look a bit yellow some
look really clear one or two a grain so
it's like my hair but my hair should be
graded in color particularly interesting
for me is that all of this is sorted by
hand because they are so valuable that
it's worth people looking at each one
individually that's why every diamonds
should be to you
really special
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it's amazing I've never seen anything
like this it's it's unbelievable
they're going to let me touch it with my
hands watch carefully only time in my
life I'm going to wash my hands in
diamonds feels just like sand it's quite
strange it feels a bit like metal
because diamonds conducts heat very well
so it feels as if I'm holding metal I
think I could do this for quite a long
time if they let me but still here
you've got a million dollars worth of
diamonds literally running through my
fingers some of them are sticking to my
hand no lividity she is there yes I
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think this is the most extraordinary
thing I've ever done on periodic figures
and certainly the most fun the gold is
an exciting element it has interesting
chemistry and it's just sitting here
doing nothing
its enormous ly impressive but it's a
bit sad rather like a mausoleum