It is a promotion for a book entitled “Bling” about the history of hip-hop jewelery. In it, the two authors make diamond-like stones by microwaving peanut-buttered charcoal and then burning off the soot with lighter fluid.
Anyway, I was fascinated by the entire process, and I was told someone here might be able to explain it from a scientific standpoint. What is actually happening here? I know diamonds are formed from coal of course, and that artificial diamonds can be produced from ash/coal in lab settings…but what is actually being formed here? Also, what’s with the peanut butter?
They take a microwave outside.
Burn peanut butter in it.
Take out burned peanut butter and burn it some more on the BBQ.
Add water.
Dump contents into strainer.
(here’s where the science comes in)
By the use of video editing, they produce a jump cut and remove the section where they introduce cut glass (or perhaps CZ) into the mix.
Presto. Diamonds from household goods.
What’s funny about this is how many dumb people are going to try it and screw up their microwaves. It would have been better if they used broken safety glass instead of something cut to look like a diamond.
While I’m fairly certain peanut butter and charcoal into diamonds is a joke, I know for a fact that peanut butter plus worms makes a hair growing solution.
Warning: do not use around kidnappers who want to make paintbrushes.
The two diamonds next to the two faceted ones are uncut if you look closely. I had simply assumed they were putting them next to the faceted diamonds for comparison.
I actually googled this and read about how the initial expeirments with creating fake stones DID use peanut butter, but under scientific conditions and 3000 degrees plus however many hundreds of atmospheres of pressure.
I’m normally a skeptic, but somehow, in this case, “I want to believe.”
And let’s not forget that when the teeming minions have to clean their microwaves after trying this mess, they will need to clean their sponges ahead of time by putting them into the same microwave ovens . Dry.
>(After GE told Tracey Hall to go to hell, they used his
>tetrahedral anvil press to grow a diamond from peanut butter.
>It was the last recorded time anybody had any fun down in the
>trenches.)
also, from a PBS transcript:
“The Diamond Deception”
PBS Airdate: February 1, 2000
Go to the companion Web site
____: During the following program, look for NOVA’s Web markers which lead you to more information at our Website.
H. TRACY HALL, SR.: We can take some of this material and put it in this tube which is constructed out of graphite. And we will be heating this in a high-pressure, high-temperature press. And in the process, the peanut butter will be carbonized.
NARRATOR: Cooking peanut butter at temperatures of 3000 degrees under pressure of over a million pounds per square inch is a recipe that won’t fill your stomach - but it might make you rich.
H. TRACY HALL, SR.: So, peanut butter to diamond.
and another youtube video:
etc etc, if you google diamonds + “peanut butter” there are numerous results. Unless this is some kind of memetic hoax dating back years, I feel like there’s some support here.
Man, that movie terrified me as a kid. Now I’m gonna have nightmares. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Wouldn’t it be fun if this were true, though? Think of the questions next time someone shows off their engagement ring:
“Oooh, is that a Canadian diamond?”
“No, my boyfri…oops! fiancé just burned his lunch the other day!”
Support that it’s possible to make diamonds from peanut butter, or indeed from any organic material? Sure. Support that it can be done in an hour in your backyard with a microwave and a BBQ? Laughable. A home microwave oven can’t get anywhere near the thousands of degrees or millions of PSI needed to produce diamonds. If it could, don’t you think it would be common knowledge? Wouldn’t the market be flooded with Skippy stones? Wouldn’t it be a standard demonstration in every single high school chemistry class?
I’ve said for years that you could shove a charcoal briquette up my Uncle Terry’s backside and have a diamond a half an hour later. I’m thinking peanut butter would be a perfectly reasonable substitute for lube.
