By holding a diamond close to a source of light, such as a flashlight, you can tell whether or not it's real. Watch closely for the shimmers of light that shine from the stone. A real diamond will reflect light easily, and provide you with a disco ball or rainbow-like display.
Fake diamonds do not reflect spectral rays from the beam of the flashlight. This is because a diamond's refractive index is high; it makes the white light entering the diamond split into multiple colors before it exits on the other side of the stone.
Real diamonds sparkle rainbow colors when their light is deflected to other surfaces. In other words, colors shoot from the diamond when the direct light hits the stone. This flash of colors from a diamond is called “fire.” Of course, brilliant multicolor sparks are appealing to most jewelry lovers.
As straightforward as it sounds, fill a glass of water at home to roughly three-quarters full. Separate the stone so that it is loose, and drop it into the water. Diamonds are highly dense and a genuine gem will sink to the bottom – every time. If it hovers to the surface or only partially sinks, then it is a replica.
A real diamond appears gray and white inside (brilliance) when held to the light and can reflect rainbow colors (fire) onto other surfaces. A fake diamond will display rainbow colors within the stone when held up to light.
Natural diamonds have a property known as fluorescence. This phenomenon enables diamonds to produce glows of varied colors when exposed to black light (also known as ultraviolet light). A pure and natural diamond is known to produce a blue glow when exposed to black light.
Fluorescence is the glow you sometimes see when an object emits visible light. Some diamonds fluoresce when they are exposed to long-wave ultraviolet (UV) rays from sources like the sun. This can cause them to emit a bluish light or more rarely, a yellow or orangy light.
The differences between Natural Diamonds and Lab Grown Diamonds cannot be seen with the naked eye. Natural Diamonds have tiny amounts of nitrogen, while Lab Grown Diamonds have no nitrogen. This is actually one of the signifiers gemologists use to identify if a diamond is lab grown or natural.
The free 4Cs app for Android is downloadable in English and Simplified Chinese. The GIA app is also available for iOS. A retailer version, designed for use at point of sale, is downloadable for free from GIA's retailer support site www.retailer.gia.edu.
A dirty stone doesn't sparkle because light simply can't enter the diamond and causes it to appear dull. So, if you notice your diamond jewelry getting cloudier overtime, it's likely due to a dirty surface and there's an easy fix to restore their luster.
An ideal cut diamond shows only a few intensely bright flashes in direct sunlight. A diamond that actually looks good in sunlight splits those few flashes up into ten or twenty smaller sparkles.
Despite its ruggedness, diamond can lose its sparkle with oil or dust deposited on it. To maintain the sparkling of this indestructible gemstone is a tough job, but a possible one!
By holding a diamond close to a source of light, such as a flashlight, you can tell whether or not it's real. Watch closely for the shimmers of light that shine from the stone. A real diamond will reflect light easily, and provide you with a disco ball or rainbow-like display.
The Density Test Real diamonds are incredibly dense, and often outmatch the fakes in density tests. To confirm this, fill a glass up with water and drop your diamond in. A fake diamond will most likely float on top or only sink to the middle while a real diamond will sink to the bottom thanks to its density.
Visit A Trusted Jeweler
Many jewelers will appraise your stone free of charge and experts will often be able to tell immediately if your diamond is authentic or not. If your stone came with a certificate, your jeweler should be happy to take a look at it and tell you whether it is from a trustworthy source.
Professional jewelers and gemologists cannot tell the difference between a lab created diamond and a natural one just by looking at it with the naked eye. They will have to use a microscope to look for the tiny differences in its inclusions that indicate how it was formed.
Use a sandpaper against the 'gem': Diamonds, the world's hardest stones, cannot be scratched by the rough surface of the sandpaper. The most common “fake” diamond is cubic zirconia and if you scratched it with sandpaper, it would scratch up just like any other material that is not a diamond.
No other colorless gems show such a magnetic response except some synthetic Diamonds, which can be ferromagnetic. Other than GGG, magnetic testing cannot be used to distinguish natural colorless Diamonds from colorless imitations.
The test is to simply scratch the loose stone against a mirror. The idea is that if the stone is hard enough to scratch the mirror, it's probably a diamond.
Ultraviolet Light: About 30% of diamonds will glow blue under ultraviolet lights such as black light. Fake diamonds, on the other hand, will glow other colors or not at all.
The phenomenon that causes a diamond to glow under black light is called fluorescence. Around 35% of diamonds grown naturally have this component in them, and 95% of them glow a bluish color when exposed to a black light.
You will see a glow in 30% of diamonds under a UV light. When exposed to UV light, there will be a diamond glowing in different colors. 99% of the time, the glow is blue, but on rare occasions, diamonds glow white, yellow, green, or even red in color.
Roughly 30% of diamonds contain a certain level of boron, which causes the precious gems to glow when they're exposed to ultra violet, also known as "blacklight." The level of boron present in the diamond determines how much light the diamond will emit when exposed.