# Can diamond be flammable under the right conditions?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-diamond-be-flammable-under-the-right-conditions/509053>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 6, 2009, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-diamond-be-flammable-under-the-right-conditions/509053 "2009-09-06T10:16:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-diamond-be-flammable-under-the-right-conditions/509053/21 "2009-09-08T17:56:05Z")

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By the way, that link to the Youtube video has an interesting sidebit. I used to show the entire film to my classes and it’s a great movie - lots of cool illustrations of many of the elements in addition to an explanation for the periodic table. But in the original movie, when the diamond is heated and dropped into the lox, the music on the sound track was from _Diamonds Are Forever_. Clearly, someone with a copyright issue got to the producers of the film and had that changed. If you listen, you can hear the sound track stop when the narrator introduces the illustration and some random music shows up to back up the demonstration. When he appears again, the original soundtrack resumes.

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**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\
**Post date:** [September 8, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-diamond-be-flammable-under-the-right-conditions/509053/22 "2009-09-08T23:49:30Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> You can’t burn diamond “to ashes”. Ashes are from trace components in whatever you’re burning that either don’t burn, or burn to a solid. But diamonds are about as pure carbon as you’ll ever find, and carbon burns to a gas.

Serves me right for not looking it up beforehand. She didn’t burn a diamond, she burned an elegant meal to black masses of carbon, to show that food is mostly carbon, like the diamond he burned in another segment.

The video of Julia’s segment is [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw-cZhTISBk).

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