I have to ask this: What's up with diamonds exactly? Ok they are the hardest thing on earth, but what does that mean? If my diamond ring falls, does it still break? And if I step on it?
Is a diamond sword really the best type of sword or was it all a lie just like with the cake?
Hardness in this case really just means “scratch or cut resistant.” There are no materials other than diamonds that are capable of cutting or scratching diamonds. That being said, they are also very brittle. A diamond sword in real life would be terrible because it would break relatively easily. A diamond edged sword might actually work well. This would be similar to diamond tipped drill bits or cutting wheels that have diamonds pressed into the metal edge.
A diamond-edged sword will actually be quite useless on soft objects. They're mainly used in industrial grinding applications to cut stones. Next time hold your finger up to a spinning diamond-edged tile saw and feel it do absolutely nothing to your finger.
Diamond teeth on a saw blade might be useful, but a diamond-edged sword would be terrible. One blow that strikes a shield or piece of armor, and you've likely cracked your edge. Also, due to the crystalline structure, it probably wouldn't even be able to hold as sharp of an edge as steel.
Why we value the hardness is because hard minerals are resistant to scratching and abrasion. This means you can make a very smooth and lasting polish, which is great for surfaces where you want friction reduced (moving parts in a watch, for example), or places where you want the diamond to abrade something softer, such as on drill bits.
This incidentally makes them great for jewelry. On top of that, diamonds with good color and no inclusions sparkle when cut and polished in ways to direct light. This is because crystals have optical properties that I took a whole horrible class on, and is why I'm in paleontology now and never want to look at a thin section again.
The optical properties of various crystals have lots of different uses, and lasers is one of them.
in short, diamonds aren't useless. They're no more useless on a ring as any other stone, for that matter, since the only properties we care about there are prettiness and not falling apart on you.
DeBeers really pushed the marketing of diamonds to the next level, but it's not like they weren't prized in antiquity. Diamonds are rare. If you stripped all the guff off of marketing and markup etc they'd still not be cheap.
lab grown diamonds are changing that, but DeBeers doesn't hold all the power anymore, and hasn't for some time now.
Lab grown rubies are very inexpensive, but again they're used in scads for lasers and fine moving parts.
You also need to factor in cutting the stones. That's an art and a hands-on skill that will always involve skilled labor, so there is a baseline cost that will always exist unless all you want is an unpolished lump. Those do not sparkle, and they break easily.
Diamonds are only found in the dregs of weird volcanic leftovers in 2 billion+ year old rock, as far as we know. So no matter what they will never be "common". Things like garnet, spinel, tourmaline, and amethyst are common, as they appear in many different rocks if you want an example of a "common" gemstone.
You can smash a diamond with a hammer or a hydraulic press. Hardness isn't toughness. Hardness is a measure of structural resistance to deformation. ("Squishing")
Take a piece of steel for example. Steel is wonderful because it can be hardened to a relately wide range of values.
Mild steel is relatively soft. If you hit it very hard, it will bend, and stay bent. If you harden it, however, it won't bend when struck, but will instead break. With the right amount of hardened steel and softer steel, you get a spring, which bends, but returns to its previous shape. Of course, you can still snap spring steel, it just takes a lot more work.
To answer the question above, a diamond blade would be sharp as fuck, but shatter if you hit anything substantial with it. The best way to use diamonds in sword design is the same way they do in industrial applications: use the diamond only for the edge.
There are a number of creatures that are immune to bludgeoning damage from non magical attacks, but the demogorgon seems to be alone in having immunity to non-magical bludgeoning damage regardless of the damage coming from an attack or any other source.
I think it would probably be slashing immunity and perhaps vulnerability to bludgeoning if you were to represent the properties of diamonds in mechanical D&D terms; they're very hard and pretty scratch proof, but will sheer or shatter far more easily
Hardness in this case is the resistance to being scratched. Diamond is a ten on the mohs hardness scale (the very top) which means if you try to scratch it with anything other than diamond it won't leave a mark, in fact, most likely the other thing you use to scratch it will most likely be damaged in some way. Diamond is still pretty brittle meaning it'll shatter if hit with enough force
Diamond is hard, which means it's difficult to scratch, and it scratches other things pretty well.
Your diamond could shatter or chip if it falls, but it depends on the specific structure of your stone. They all have specific cleave lines and can break if hit at the specific angle. There's a lot of luck involved.
If you step on it barefoot against carpet it would probably be fine, but as soon as there's something hard on either side of the diamond applying pressure I would guess there's a risk.
If you had a solid diamond sword in real life, it would break along a cleave line before the edge dulled.
As a general rule of thumb, hard things hold an edge well, but are brittle and either shatter or chip easily. Softer materials can absorb energy and deform rather than chip or shatter, but their edges dull faster. For some sort of blade or edge you usually want a balance of the two, or you combine two materials to get what you want (obsidian weapons for example use volcanic glass stuck into wood).
A diamond sword would probably be pretty awful, because although diamonds are extremely hard when it comes to scratching or other types of wear, they also have mineral cleavage, which would make them easy to break when subjected to lateral forces. You could probably snap a diamond sword in half with your bare hands.
You might be better off having a regular sword made out of metal but with some small diamonds along the edges. Maybe something like this, but with diamonds. Even then they'd probably break and get crushed against steel.
There's more to good physical properties for swords than hardness.
A macuahuitl ([maːˈkʷawit͡ɬ]) is a weapon, a wooden club with several embedded obsidian blades. The name is derived from the Nahuatl language and means "hand-wood". Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian. Obsidian is capable of producing an edge sharper than high quality steel razor blades.
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u/Fix_a_Fix Nov 13 '21
I have to ask this: What's up with diamonds exactly? Ok they are the hardest thing on earth, but what does that mean? If my diamond ring falls, does it still break? And if I step on it?
Is a diamond sword really the best type of sword or was it all a lie just like with the cake?