Moissanite awareness post
Everyone knows about DeBeers, diamonds are a scam, etc, so I want to tell you about moissanite (gem-quality silicon carbide), the cool shiny rock that’s like diamond but better in pretty much every way that matters.
Look at that fire!
Moissanite straight up has more brilliance and fire than diamonds. “Brilliance” is the technical term for a gem’s ability to reflect light back, that is to say, its sparkliness. “Fire” is the technical term for a gem’s ability to split light into a rainbow of colors. Diamonds were long valued because few other natural crystals have appreciable fire, and those that do (like red sphalerite, which you really want to look up) are too soft and fragile to make good gems. But modern chemistry means we can make new kinds of crystals, and diamond is no longer unique.
Oh no, moissanite has greater brilliance and fire, but it isn’t as hard as diamond! This isn’t actually a drawback though because it’s still harder than virtually anything other than diamond, and for that matter Mohs hardness only measures resistance to scratching. Moissanite actually has greater toughness, so it’s less likely to explode if you drop it on say, concrete.
Other differences that don’t matter: moissanite is denser than diamond, burning moissanite leaves silica ash instead of pure carbon dioxide, diamond is somewhat more thermally conductive, and only synthetic moissanite is available. Or, as the jeweler whose site I took these images from puts it:
“Cons: it isn’t identical to diamond?? i guess????”
While I’m talking up moissanite, I want to point out that not only does it sparkle like diamond while being less fragile, it is naturally found only in meteorite craters. Fantasy moissanite swords and armor are long overdue!
Now if you’re looking at this and saying “yes, good, but I’m still too poor to afford gems” then let me direct your attention to cubic zirconia. Unlike moissanite it does have real drawbacks compared to diamond, but it still shows substantially more fire than diamond, and more importantly it’s dirt cheap. You can buy it by the bushel and it hardly costs more than beads. Either way, there’s no reason to even think about diamonds when there’s alternatives like these.
