Straight Dope: Can you squeeze coal into a diamond — with super strength?
July 26, 2009 at 11:38 am by Wayne Garcia
Illustration by Slug Signorina
From this week’s Straight Dope column:
Superman is able to use his super strength to squeeze coal into diamonds. Theoretically, if someone had unlimited strength in real life, would it be possible to do this? –marcusbrute
You realize, Marcus, we’re talking about what (a) a fictional character of virtually unlimited powers (barring kryptonite-related issues) could, (b) if real, be (c) theoretically but (d) realistically expected to do. Even by Straight Dope standards this takes us into a pretty abstruse realm. That’s probably why I got into a big argument on the subject with my assistant Una, who’s normally as tranquil as a September morn.
Admittedly I started off behind the eight ball owing to my scandalously inadequate knowledge of artificial diamond making. I submitted that squeezing coal into diamonds was impossible. Somewhere I’d gotten the idea that fake diamonds were all made by a process known as chemical vapor deposition, and that CVD approximated how natural diamonds were made. CVD involved heat and pressure, but the main thing was you started out with a seed crystal you bathed in carbon-rich vapor and from this the diamond was basically grown. That was a far cry from the scenario in the comic books, where Superman grabbed a chunk of coal, squeezed, and voila, a diamond. For one thing, growing a diamond via CVD could take two or three days. Not to slight this
Read the full Straight Dope answer.
