Sep 6 2022 - Tiffany time in the lab

 

Jewellery ads on our radio stations advertise lab grown diamonds.  This sounds interesting and exotic.  Things "grown" in labs. They used to be known as synthetic diamonds. They are created in a laboratory environment. These diamonds can be a more ethical choice than natural diamonds, as mining is not needed to produce them.   Here's what the BBC had to say in their article on lab-made diamonds: "On a grey January morning in 2019 Meghan Markle emerged onto a London street on her way to a meeting. She wore a smart coat and heels, but it was not her clothing that caught the attention of the world. It was a pair of glittering drop earrings embedded with diamonds that had been grown in a lab.  It took just five days to grow the diamonds adorning Markle’s ears according to Sidney Neuhaus, co-founder of Kimaï, the company that made them. Based in Antwerp." A lab-grown diamond is a diamond: chemically, physically and optically identical to a mined diamond.  There are two ways to grow a diamond. Both involve starting with the “seed” (a flat slither) of another diamond. The first lab diamond was made using a High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) system, where the seed is then placed amidst some pure graphite carbon and exposed to temperatures of about 1,500C and pressurised to approximately 1.5 million pounds per square inch in a chamber. More recently, another way to grow a diamond was discovered, called Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). This involves putting the seed in a sealed chamber filled with carbon-rich gas and heating to around 800C. Under these conditions the gases begin to “stick” to the seed, growing a diamond carbon atom by atom. The article goes on to demonstrate how mined diamonds are unethical making lab-grown diamonds a likely better choice.  So did the comics and Superman making a diamond out of a lump of coal foretell that lab-grown diamonds would happen?   I look this up and have to be reminded that neither process for forming natural diamonds nor synthetic diamonds uses coal.  Diamonds created in laboratories are formed using graphite.  Here's the conclusion:  " If you hand Superman a stocking full of coal, best case scenario, he can make some real low-grade diamonds that really aren’t gonna fetch you much. A more realistic outcome is that he’s gonna hand you back a fistful of black powder. The good news is if you have an aunt or a grandma that gave you a pack of pencils for Christmas, now we’re in business."

And definitely ice crystals will not result in diamonds in the lab.  These ones looked wonderful to me, inspiring the title of the image Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

It Glistens, Glitters and Shines

What is shiny? This is a word that was first recorded in 1580 - 90 -  a smooth surface reflecting light, typically because very clean or polished.  I wonder how many shiny things an ordinary person saw in a day in 1580 - even those who lived in the Royal Palace? this topic came about as Gerry's car was perfectly polished this past week and became exceedingly shiny. Doesn't the star on the front gleam 'shiny'? This word has taken on sizeable proportions in our current usage - movies, music, video games, software development frameworks, Pokemon, and all manner of things.  Fro example, one headline is "How to build R Shiny apps that update themselves". In the wiktionary definition, there is a slang usage of the word that points to its current usage.  It is a contraction of a disparaging term "Shiny arses",  originating during World War Two to describe a desks worker. We might look to Shakespeare as giving us this insight into things that are 'shiny'.   “All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold Had you been as wise as bold, Your in limbs, in judgment old, Your answer had not been in'scroll'd Fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost!” ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare's words have been referenced over time.  All that shines is not gold - has become a well-known phrase.  So we come to how shiny is used today.  It seems similar to Shakespeare - though hundreds of years have passed. "A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last. Jeff Bzos "I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly. Alice Walker "I'm not a particularly shiny, happy person. I'm fairly cynical, and that's what draws me to comedy. Elizabeth Banks "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? Jack Kerouac These come from brainyquote.com So we look at Gerry' shiny car - while that beautiful shine won't last, it's been captured forever.

Farewell to Winter

I was at Toronto Botanical Gardens this past Sunday and the snow was melting into beautiful crystal patterns, and I was able to capture a few in the courtyard garden.