Question:

Diamond is really strong, but if you had a really thin, really big sheet of diamond...?

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would you be able to smash it?

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  1. technically .. no unless you had a diamond hammer but then maybe the hammer would shatter also...


  2. Actually a diamond is very hard but not necessarily strong. Do not confuse the two. If you take a normal diamond and hit it with a hammer, it will shatter.  

  3. THere is a myth about diamonds being strong and it is just that, a myth.  Diamonds have surfaces that can not be scratched except by other diamonds (and some synthetics recently produced).

    But they are not strong, they can be fractured faily easily.  Jewelers do fracture diamonds with tiny chisels and hammers.  This used to be a widely used method but is used less now.  Because most diamonds are flawed (flaws are what give individual diamonds their special traits) and have chemical inclusions the fracture is not quite as predictable as one would like.  So, nowadays diamonds are usaully ground down (this grinding is called cutting, but it is still really grinding) on grinding wheels embedded with very fine diamond chips.

    So, yes.  A big thin sheet of diamond will break with only slightly more effort than a comparable piece of glass.

  4. Just Imagine,  a diamond is ten times as hard as a metal sheet (May be even more) then 1 diamond sheet equal to 10 metal sheet lie on top of each other, will you be able to break that with a hammer? No, unless the sheet is as thin as a paper, which is impossible to make something like that

  5. Diamond is the hardest substance in the world and is a solid mass, but I suspect that if it were to become as you describe "a really big sheet" it would become brittle and shatter given a hard blow.

  6. Diamond is the hardest natural substance but that by no means makes it strong. You can whack an ordinary diamond with a hammer and it will shatter.

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