April Gemstone

The Diamond, which is the birthstone for April, represents:

• Enduring love

There are many kinds of Diamonds: transparent, translucent, or opaque; ranging from colorless to sooty black, with many colors in between. Mostly transparent Diamonds, colorless, or tinted, are used as jewelry. The color of a Diamond depends on the kind of impurities embedded inside it. Yellow Diamonds, for example, betray minute quantities of nitrogen, while boron imparts a bluish hue.

Diamonds are found in in many places including:

• Mixed in with gravel that has been swept up by streams, rivers, glaciers, and ocean currents
• Sedimentary rock, where gravel deposits and organic material have been compressed into rock
• Samples of volcanic rock
• Tiny flecks of Diamond have even been found inside meteorites that have landed on Earth

Essentially, Diamonds are crystals. Crystals are the ultimate form of symmetry in nature. Their shape reflects the internal orderly arrangement of atoms within the crystal. In Diamonds, atoms of carbon are held tightly by covalent bonding, where two neighboring atoms share an electron, endowing the Diamond crystal with great strength. But despite that hardness, Diamonds can be cut with saws and polished with grinding wheels coated with tiny industrial Diamond fragments. In their natural form, Diamonds can appear quite unimpressive, so they are cut and polished by skilled craftsmen in a pattern that reflects and refracts the light among its facets to reveal the hidden beauty of the stone.

Soldiers believed that a Diamond carried into battle would keep them safe from harm and even render them invisible. Like the Emerald, the Diamond was reputed to be a reliable test for fidelity.

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