Big enough to measure hardness, and we've been able to make it ourselves since the 60s, but in measurements it's always less hard than diamond. Only in computer simulation is it actually harder.
I guess they glossed over that bit as it makes it sounds less exciting.
In common parlance "artificial" means man-made. Moissanite can be naturally occurring so it's a diamond-replacement or a "fake" diamond when used in rings and jewelry.
It depends. In case of Artificial leather it refers clearly not to lab grown animal skin but to a completely different product that just tries to emulate leather.
So the word is used in different contexts. And De Beers is more than willing to use the term artificial diamond. They can claim that they're not lying, but they're also very happy that it's also easy for customers to think its artificial in the fake sense, not in the man-made sense.
> In case of Artificial leather it refers clearly not to lab grown animal skin but to a completely different product that just tries to emulate leather.
Because lab-grown animal skin is not on the market (as far as I know), so artificial implies that it's fake. If it were, though, and at least roughly as common as fake leather. I'm sure no-one would try to refer to it as natural. It would still be artificial, and artificial would cease to imply it being fake.
If people choose to refer to fake leather as artificial leather, it's because artificial, real leather was hardly in the realm of the imaginable. Many would refer to it as impossible or at least as an act against God.
> So the word is used in different contexts.
What's being used in different contexts is the word "leather" to refer to both real and fake leather.
"Artificial" is always used to refer to the non-natural, the man-made. I can't think of any case where it's used differently.
Are the elephants bulls, cows, or a mixture? African elephants exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism. Female Loxodonta africana mass between 1 and 1.5 tonnes and males between 2 and 3 tonnes. 640 "African elephants" is somewhere between 2.6x10^6 kg and 3.8x10^6 kg depending on the sex mixture of the herd, a range of 6000 tonnes. That's the equivalent mass of over 30 American football fields filled with pickup trucks. Hardly negligible.
That part of a pointe shoe is called the platform it’s size and shape varies greatly based on the type and size of the shoe and the box (the part of the shoe where your toes sit in).
For most pointe shoes with a rounded platform there is much less than 10cm squared of contact.
Just to be more consistent with the rest of the prefixes, which are all (integer) powers of 1,000. And because engineering notation is a thing. And because we normally group digits by the thousands (e.g. 1,000,000). Curious if anyone has come across a mechanical drawing or electrical schematic with oddball units like cm, hN-m, or deciFarads, daOhms and the like (daPa, hH).
Fewer things to remember is important because humans are useless at that. Hardly anyone will have an intuition for how much pressure a kg/cm^2 is as well as a N/cm^2 and a N/mm^2 and a kg/mm^2 and a kg/m^2 and PSI and a kPa ...
The concrete number while it would be nice to include is a lot less helpful for the average reader than something more illustrative like the elephant number.
Speaking of US things, what's an engagement ring? :)
And yes, most wedding rings around here are plain gold. I only know one couple with diamonds on their wedding rings and they're kinda nouveau riche and snobby.
We're American, but living in Ireland, and when my wife announced she was engaged her colleagues demanded to see her ring, oddly. Cultural imperialism I suppose.
perhaps you should watch the video and read the article. It literally states several times it has nothing to do with the advancement in the manufacturing of the type of diamonds people wear as jewelry, but, rather the type used in industry for cutting.
While you are correct, there is no need to be snarky. One of the guidelines states that:
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
It might for diamonds, but many women will still want something expensive "just so that the man will prove that she matters to him by buying her something", which is sad.
Women will either move to more expensive diamonds or request something else. Business opportunity for someone with good PR just like how diamonds were pure PR and before that no-one was using them.
I think this is not sad, they are free to demand whatever they want, like you are free to accept that.
In fact, it is not a very good idea to accept that. You will be labeled instantly as "provider", not as a "lover".
Most women that have "providers" also have "lovers" and usually it is not the same person.
That is a lesson that I learned long time ago, when I met a very successful with women man, that actually treated them very badly. He had the mentality that it were women the ones that should prove their value to him.
Over the years I met other people with the same mindset, and even started applying it somewhat myself. I am physically attractive and educated, but I also was for some time too much polite with women, putting them on a pedestal for being successful with them.
The most attractive thing for women is character strength. Also things like being a world traveler helps a lot. You can be penniless, if you have those two things, attracting all the women you want is no problem.
Demand for diamonds isn't driven by gender. There are just as many men who want to show off that they can afford a big shiny rock than there are women who want their partner to buy them a big shiny rock.
Women have been sold on the idea from a very young age that they need a fairy tale wedding to live happily ever after: from toys to tv, from books to movies: the kneeling groom to be with the shiny ring and the large, grand wedding with a dozen bridesmaids. There are multiple industries selling this vision.
Reducing that to "but many women will still want something expensive "just so that the man will prove that she matters to him by buying her something"" .... this is pure sexism.
But there are differences in the sexes with regards to the process of conceiving and rearing a child. And it seems to me that a big part of our social constructs that were developed to deal with those differences can be reduced to "the man doing something expensive and hard to fake". Which isn't really that different from "the man proving she matters to him by buying something".
And there are plenty of women who find this custom distasteful. Some women want a wedding which displays opulence and in which they are treated like a princess. Others want one which more implies the equality of the wedding partners in responsibility and capability. Others want a humorous circus or something that emphasizes the roles of their community in their future lives. Many don't want to start their married life, or any stage of life, with a financial setback.
Oh, agreed. I'm just saying what the social environment is. The environment boys grow up in is just as toxic, if not more so, for entirely different reasons.
It would be better if they replaced the ugly rock with something prettier and then used the saved money on something that actually keeps its value like gold.
Synthetic diamonds for use in jewellery exist and are quickly gaining in popularity [0]. If buying a diamond ring, you might want to get a synthetic one instead of a mined one [1].
Fwiw, my wife wanted a synthetic diamond and we found they were much more difficult to obtain in practice than was acknowledged. Like going to a listing of many many stones but they were all unavailable because they were out of stock or backordered or no one would ever respond. My sense at the time the supply and/or market were inflated to attract investors and maintain attention.
I do hope that's changed because we were really interested. But at the time it was a big mirage.
We've had human-made diamong rings for years, and their existince highlights the preposterous nature of the whole diamond-jewelry industry
Lab-grown diamonds raise profound existential questions for the industry: for one, if chemically identical stones can be grown in a lab, what is the point of mining natural diamonds?
