Diamond Combustion

Factual Questions
1

When it comes right down to it, Wild Wild West was just good television. It makes me sad to see what movie producers will do with classic shows.

Anyway, whilst watching an old black & white episode of WWW the other day, a question popped in my mind I felt the kind people of the SDMB could answer for me.

You! Stop laughing! Yes, I said kind. Well, it’s all relative, I guess.

In this episode of WWW, some diabolical genius (is there any other kind?) devised a formula to burn diamonds at 400F and used it to spead his metabolism up so fast he couldn’t be seen by the human eye.

Question 1: Do diamonds burn? Is there a particular temperature to achieve this?

Question 2: I dimly remember in my past life as a physics major hearing that diamonds indeed combust by mere exposure to air, and are constantly “burning” at a rate which makes glass flow like Kool-aid. Is this true, or just a delusional fantasy?

Thanks, any and all…
inkblot

“Stercus, stercus, stercus, moritus sum!”

2

Of course. Recently I saw a NOVA special in which two geniuses heated up a top-quality one carat diamond with a blow torch, then dropped it into a puddle of liquid oxygen. Whoosh! Nothing left but C02.

3

Diamonds are generally pretty stable, but do burn. You need to get them pretty hot to ignite, but they are made up of the same substance as coal, after all.

“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.

www.sff.net/people/rothman