Happy Pi Day!!!

And very appropriate for a jeweler specializing in custom engagement rings, Happy International Marriage Day!  What an exciting time!

Now you might be asking yourself, what in the world does Pi have to do with diamonds? 

Firstly and foremost, Pi is necessary in order to gain many of the measurements of diamonds that allow us to cut them to such perfection, and to use them as some of the most valuable tools we have. 

Diamond cutting is a precision art form that has taken millennia

to develop. Pi, which is used to measure anything circular, obviously comes in handy when working with Round cut diamonds, but even in other cuts it is useful, and that's without mentioning the round band the stone or stones are attached to. 

Even the cutting wheel- the scaif- uses Pi in order to determine the area of the wheel, and therefore how much diamond dust is needed on the wheel for it to polish rough stones. 

Let's take an even closer look, literally. Did you know that because of the unique nature of a diamond's atomic structure, we treat each unit of atoms like a sphere when measuring the “packing fraction?” The packing fraction measures the number of atoms in the volume that one atomic unit takes up.  That might sound confusing, but think of it this way: A diamond's atomic structure is made up of interlocked tetrahedrons, as you can see below.

Each area that contains one unit, also contains the ends of several others because one carbon atom will always be in the center of four others. So there are more atoms in the same volume of one atomic unit than there are atoms in that single unit. This density of packing contributes to the hardness and strength of diamonds and requires Pi to measure.

We’ll be back next year with some more fun Pi day trivia. For now, enjoy the strength of your diamonds, and eat some Pi(e)!!!