Friday, March 20, 2009

Kimberley Octahedron ( Yellow Diamond )






Yellow diamonds were once thought to be inferior. Paler yellows, such as canary yellow, are more common but are not as desirable as their darker counterparts. Intense fancy yellow diamonds are the most rare and valuable of the yellow diamonds. A tiny .25-carat yellow diamond can be priced as high as 10,000 dollars depending on its clarity and cut. Several larger 6 carat Fancy Vivid Yellow diamonds have just recently been sold for $57.000 per carat.
Yellow diamonds are colored because of the impurities that are trapped inside diamonds when they are created. If a few of the millions of carbon atoms have been replaced by nitrogen atoms, then structure of the diamond will not be significantly altered but the clarity will be changed. The amount of color displayed is dependent on the amount of nitrogen involved.
When we see color it is because the object we are looking at reflected a specific wavelength of the light spectrum. A good example of this is a yellow flower. The flower absorbs all of the light except the yellow light, which is reflected by the yellow flower.

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