You’ll never find this in the text books, but if you know where to look there are some rather fascinating information about industrial diamond and its uses.

A. More than a hill of beans - In 2000 world consumption of industrial diamond passed the one billion carat milestone.

B. Bean Economy. Diamond weight is measured by carat, thought to have derived from the fact that the seeds of carob plants are always the same weight of 0.2g. Traders had a standard system of measurement which avoided sharp practise and it is still the standard for today’s industrial diamond.

C. Alien Hole - A specially designed diamond drill made its first hole on the surface of the planet Mars on Friday 6th February 2004. The drill made a 45 mm diameter hole 2.7 m in depth as part of research into the history of the red planet’s evolution.

D. Man-made. The sales of synthetic diamond material overtook that of natural industrial diamond products as long ago as 1978.

E. Motoring on - Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors was one of the first industrialists to become interested in the industrial uses of diamond. He sponsored research into its applications for the manufacturing sector, especially as a low-cost abrasive, and the Detroit area became a hub for dealers of diamond tools.

F. Listening with Diamond. Using synthetic diamond for tweeters, the high frequency part of a loudspeaker, has improved the sound quality in one top manufacturer’s products.

G. Computing with light – researchers are using diamond for the development of new types of faster, smarter computers based on quantum theory. They hope to build the tiny computing elements qubits, the quantum equivalent of today’s computer bits, in diamond.

H. World’s tiniest diamond circle. In March 2008, scientists from the University of Melbourne in Australia announced they had made a ring from diamond measuring 5 microns in diameter and only 300 nanometres in thickness. This component is the first step in detecting single photons that will be needed for making quantum computers.

I. Mass hysteria – Scientists will use synthetic diamond detectors as part of the key safety systems in a research machine called the Large Hadron Collider. This huge machine is hunting for evidence of a fundamental particle called the Higgs’ Boson. This missing link in the world of quantum physics is reckoned to be the reason things have mass.

J. Dental Hygiene – For clean, bright teeth some toothpaste manufacturers now incorporate fine synthetic diamond particles – called nanodiamond – into their products.