Dumb Question

[Nast]

The loss in mass is attributed to evil thieving magpies.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

According to DeBeers, a .2 gram diamond was formed from 2.8 grams of pure carbon.

So, 1/14th.

Where does the rest of the carbon go?

If it's anything like sapphire, it doesn't go anywhere.  The atoms all line up in perfectly straight lines, and the mass is in fact stored as energy bonding the atoms so rigidly.

I am unsure of the physics involved here, because diamonds don't explode when you crush them. Of course, what you're really doing is just making smaller diamonds, so I guess they wouldn't.

That makes no sense at all to me, but I haven't taken physics and I only have four terms of chemistry.

Thing is, I'm not an actual material science geek.  I'm a technician.  I don't understand it, either.

Changing the chemical bonds won't change the mass. That's one thing I know for sure. Making and breaking bonds never changes the mass of an element. The mass of a quantity of pure carbon is determined solely by how many carbon atoms are present.

See, I don't know.  I DO know, though, that to make 4 cubic cm of sapphire, weighing .3 kg, you need 1 kg of high purity alumina.  I was led to believe that the high temperatures involved caused the mass to be used up making bonds, and I was obviously misled.  Where does it actually go?  NO IDEA.

Perhaps that is the amount of usable sapphire product after processing.

Naw, sapphire manufacturers are like proper Scotsmen.  "NOTHING GETS WASTED 'ROUND HERE."  The RF pots they use to attain 3500C are like never-ending stew pots, but they are measured between each batch, so the amount actually used is known.  Also, I asked a friend of mine over there what the LOI mass loss was, and he said it was about 3-5%.

I have also been digging on the DeBeers thing.  Nobody knows how much - if any - wastage happens during the natural formation of diamonds, but apparently the numbers they gave for synthetic diamonds are net numbers.

Well, here is the thing. When atomic mass is converted to energy, that's fission. If you don't have any actual atomic decay, a mole is a mole is a mole.

Perhaps in your process you lose some mass in a gaseous state. Who knows? Not me.

Well, mass doesn't disappear.  So there's obviously something we don't know.

This is gonna bug the shit out of me until I figure it out. 

[minuspace]

According to DeBeers, a .2 gram diamond was formed from 2.8 grams of pure carbon.

So, 1/14th.

Where does the rest of the carbon go?

If it's anything like sapphire, it doesn't go anywhere.  The atoms all line up in perfectly straight lines, and the mass is in fact stored as energy bonding the atoms so rigidly.

I am unsure of the physics involved here, because diamonds don't explode when you crush them. Of course, what you're really doing is just making smaller diamonds, so I guess they wouldn't.

That makes no sense at all to me, but I haven't taken physics and I only have four terms of chemistry.

Thing is, I'm not an actual material science geek.  I'm a technician.  I don't understand it, either.

Changing the chemical bonds won't change the mass. That's one thing I know for sure. Making and breaking bonds never changes the mass of an element. The mass of a quantity of pure carbon is determined solely by how many carbon atoms are present.

See, I don't know.  I DO know, though, that to make 4 cubic cm of sapphire, weighing .3 kg, you need 1 kg of high purity alumina.  I was led to believe that the high temperatures involved caused the mass to be used up making bonds, and I was obviously misled.  Where does it actually go?  NO IDEA.

Perhaps that is the amount of usable sapphire product after processing.

Naw, sapphire manufacturers are like proper Scotsmen.  "NOTHING GETS WASTED 'ROUND HERE."  The RF pots they use to attain 3500C are like never-ending stew pots, but they are measured between each batch, so the amount actually used is known.  Also, I asked a friend of mine over there what the LOI mass loss was, and he said it was about 3-5%.

I have also been digging on the DeBeers thing.  Nobody knows how much - if any - wastage happens during the natural formation of diamonds, but apparently the numbers they gave for synthetic diamonds are net numbers.

Well, here is the thing. When atomic mass is converted to energy, that's fission. If you don't have any actual atomic decay, a mole is a mole is a mole.

Perhaps in your process you lose some mass in a gaseous state. Who knows? Not me.

Well, mass doesn't disappear.  So there's obviously something we don't know.

This is gonna bug the shit out of me until I figure it out.

Though it remains controversial and unclear, I'd guess it may have something to do with the energy involved for the reaction making the carbon react with oxygen.  That then begs the question if oxygen is nescesary for the production of energy.  Maybe it's convenient to use combustion because it can also increase pressure, however I'd bet we also have the technology to create those conditions in a vacuum.

[edit:  seems like current transmutation techniques involve using an oxygenated environment, in alternation with non-oxygenated.  Maybe going from hexagonal to cubic arrangement also requires electron scavenging, donated by the oxygen, though I'm really not sure about this last point]

[Pæs]

Okay, you fuckers got me. I've been hoarding the extra mass. It started small, scraping a little ash here and there and squirreling it away in my pockets, hoping that nobody would notice. Signora, you must understand, nailed to the floor the worm who brings me my cocaine and I needed a little something to TIDE ME OVER, OKAY?

This is how it started, but soon enough it ESCALATED. Pretty soon I'm ferrying out handfuls of ash to the car and stuffing the glovebox full. Transporting it home and shoveling it into ash piles behind the garden shed (and then filling the garden shed). I'm hopped up on ash all day at this stage. It suggests to me that I do terrible things. It helps me dream up methods of better harvesting and secreting it. It helps me scheme more and more brilliant uses of this under-appreciated material.

At first these were purely entrepreneurial ventures. Many foods, you see, contain "ash" as ingredient. So I figure, if ash is one ingredient, why can it not be all ingredients? And I sell 100% ash burgers and ash soda from my food truck. I serve ash cones to delight and amaze children. As my appreciation for ash increased, I began to treat it less as a business and more as a religious pursuit. I began to get carried away.

It is good that I live in this little country on the bottom of the planet. It becomes easy to tell the fourteen-odd others "why, yes? There always has been a second island, friend. We do not live there simply because it is too dusty" and they agree and struggle to pull their feet free from the floor.

It has been long since I visited the North Island, but they remember me still. They think of me when a southerly snatches powder from the surface of my ashen desert, obscuring their green fields and polluting their clear waters and carrying my hysterical shrieks into their homes. And they look at one another knowingly, say nothing, and try not to think too hard whenever they notice a little mass missing here and there.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I love you people.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Okay, you fuckers got me. I've been hoarding the extra mass. It started small, scraping a little ash here and there and squirreling it away in my pockets, hoping that nobody would notice. Signora, you must understand, nailed to the floor the worm who brings me my cocaine and I needed a little something to TIDE ME OVER, OKAY?

This is how it started, but soon enough it ESCALATED. Pretty soon I'm ferrying out handfuls of ash to the car and stuffing the glovebox full. Transporting it home and shoveling it into ash piles behind the garden shed (and then filling the garden shed). I'm hopped up on ash all day at this stage. It suggests to me that I do terrible things. It helps me dream up methods of better harvesting and secreting it. It helps me scheme more and more brilliant uses of this under-appreciated material.

At first these were purely entrepreneurial ventures. Many foods, you see, contain "ash" as ingredient. So I figure, if ash is one ingredient, why can it not be all ingredients? And I sell 100% ash burgers and ash soda from my food truck. I serve ash cones to delight and amaze children. As my appreciation for ash increased, I began to treat it less as a business and more as a religious pursuit. I began to get carried away.

It is good that I live in this little country on the bottom of the planet. It becomes easy to tell the fourteen-odd others "why, yes? There always has been a second island, friend. We do not live there simply because it is too dusty" and they agree and struggle to pull their feet free from the floor.

It has been long since I visited the North Island, but they remember me still. They think of me when a southerly snatches powder from the surface of my ashen desert, obscuring their green fields and polluting their clear waters and carrying my hysterical shrieks into their homes. And they look at one another knowingly, say nothing, and try not to think too hard whenever they notice a little mass missing here and there.

[Freeky]

Paes, you glorious bastard. 

[Cainad (dec.)]

My understanding of the process of making synthetic diamonds is that it is accomplished by taking a miniscule diamond seed crystal and putting it in a vacuum chamber. That chamber is then filled with vaporized carbon, which sticks atom by atom to the diamond surface to make it bigger. I would assume that a certain amount of the carbon sticks to the walls of the chamber.

[Cainad (dec.)]

QG keeps asking things about rocks and stuff. Gets me all weird around the collar.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

1lb = .453 kg

1000 lb = 2207.50552 kg

2207.50552 kg = 2207505.52 g

density of diamond = 3.5 g/ml

2207505.52 g / 3.5g/ml = 630715.863 ml

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

According to DeBeers, a .2 gram diamond was formed from 2.8 grams of pure carbon.

So, 1/14th.

Where does the rest of the carbon go?

presumably lost as assorted waste products

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

QG keeps asking things about rocks and stuff. Gets me all weird around the collar.

A girl can't plot smashing a planet-wide blanket of ash into shiny rocks to make into weapons anymore?

[Vanadium Gryllz]

1lb = .453 kg

1000 lb = 2207.50552 kg

Shouldn't that be 1000 lb = 453 kg?

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

1lb = .453 kg

1000 lb = 2207.50552 kg

Shouldn't that be 1000 lb = 453 kg?

Yes it should. In retrospect I don't know where the extra division step I did came from.

EDIT:
OK
435kg = 435000 g

diamond density = 3.5g/cc

435000g / 3.5g/cc = 124285.714 cc

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

According to DeBeers, a .2 gram diamond was formed from 2.8 grams of pure carbon.

So, 1/14th.

Where does the rest of the carbon go?

presumably lost as assorted waste products

Have you considered reading the rest of the thread before shitting a SGitR answer out of your idiotic face?