is there anything stronger than a
diamond plenty of convincing cases have
been made through the years ranging from
the great wall to your grandmother over
baked cookies still when it comes to
naturally occurring substances diamond
and it's compact crystal structure of
carbon atoms is currently considered to
be the strongest known material in the
world or is it in order to know if
there's anything stronger we first need
to determine what strength is
historically strength or hardness was
defined as the ability of one material
to scratch another rank from zero to ten
on something called the most scale
devised by German mineralogist Friedrich
Mohs diamond of course scored an
all-round perfect 10 to give you an idea
quartz got a seven steel a 4.5 and ice
marked as low as 1.5 the scratch
hardness measure is considered too
arbitrary and not precise enough another
measure called the micro indentation
test is often preferred it uses an
indenter impressed into the surface of
the tested material using a known
applied force of 1 to 1000 kilogram here
again diamond came out of the absolute
unquestioned WBN which stands for
wurtzite boron nitride had a similar
structure to diamond but is made up of
atoms of boron and nitrogen like diamond
long steli itís made from carbon atoms
but their arrangement is slightly
different which makes it a sort of
cousin material both of these are very
rarely found in nature the first can be
brought to the surface during volcanic
eruptions while the second is sometimes
formed when meteorites containing
graphite strike the earth when stressed
both of these substances flip their
atomic bonds and rearrange into stronger
structures resulting in better
resistance to the pressure of the
indenter WBN
is thought to withstand up to 18% more
stress than diamond while Lonsdale eh
reaches an astonishing 58% making them
both especially the latter way stronger
than diamond these super hard superstar
materials can exhibit other superior
properties which make them very useful
for industrial purposes you can place
them on the tips of cutting tools devise
corrosion resistant coatings from them
for space rockets or use them to create
the electronic circuits of microchips
that go into your phone diamond might
have lost its title as nature's
strongest substance but it will always
shine bright in everyone's mind as the
king of all gemstones and let us
remember that diamonds are formed only
because they were once able to resist
external pressure
