Diamonds in Laundry Soap???

I love it when you clean a diamond ring and the client is gob smacked at how amazing it looks.  Then if they’ve never been warned, they put their finger on the diamond and their thumb on the back of the ring and slide it onto their finger.  AAAARGH!  Then I have to tell them to avoid touching the diamond itself to keep it looking best.

I tell them that even a minute invisible layer of oil can limit the amount of light a diamond can vacume into iteself.  I often continue that diamonds are “grease magnets” and the way they are separated from the kimberlite in which they’re mined is by running the crush over grease-belts.  The diamonds stick to the grease and rocks fall away.  Now, I have a new illustration for how strongly diamonds are attracted to grease.

A recent article on scienceblog.com describes an effort to reduce the need for hot-water in laundry.  By adding micro-diamonds to new formulations of cold-water laundry detergent, they found a much higher level of grease absorption, “Even at temperatures as low as 15 degrees centigrade, otherwise hard-to-remove fat could be solubilised from a test surface.”

Who knew?  Can you imagine the advertising campaign for diamond-laced laundry detergent?  I thought the stuff was expensive now!  At very least, we’ll have a good use for Gemesis diamonds…