Date:
January 28, 2010 - 5:30pm - 8:30pm
Glen Sanders Mansion - Thursday January 28th , 2010 5:30pm-8:30pm
Talk by Paul Hlava (Sandia National Labs, retired) at 7:30pm - Gemstone Synthesis
Visit www.cdmms.org for more information
Cost is $20 professional
Agenda:
- Cocktail hour at 5:30pm
- Dinner will begin at 6pm
- Business meeting at 7pm
- Talk by Paul Hlava (Sandia National Labs, retired) at 7:30pm
Gemstone Synthesis By Paul Hlava – Sandia National Labs
From antiquity, gemstones have been so very highly prized for their beauty and rarity that they have always been difficult and/or expensive to acquire. Therefore it seems only natural that people would try to mimic them with less costly, artificial materials, often with noble intentions, sometimes with not so noble intentions. In olden times, let us say before 1800, these artificial materials were mere substitutes or simulants of variable quality. It wasn’t until the end of the 18th century, when the science of analytical chemistry was well developed, that people knew what elements and contaminants were needed to form the desirable stones. From then on the race was afoot to produce synthetic materials identical to the best, perfect, natural stones. These quests benefited science and technology in that the researchers had to develop/perfect and control means of producing and stabilizing very high temperatures, medium to very high pressures, and extremely pure starting materials.
In this colorful talk I will discuss many of the technologies used to produce true synthetic gemstones as well as simulants. I will follow a more or less chronological path to briefly cover the various techniques and the materials they create.
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