Is a lab-grown diamond as good as the real thing?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English. Here at Plain English, we use stories to help you upgrade your skills in English. We like using stories because they help you engage with your new language. That means you’ll build a real connection with English, and you’ll remember more of what you learn.
Today’s story is all about diamonds. Specifically: is a lab-grown diamond as good as the real thing? And we’ll also talk about how these lab-grown diamonds are affecting the prices of mined diamonds.
In the second half of the lesson, we’ll talk about the English word “intangibles.” It’s Thursday, so JR has selected a song of the week for us. And speaking of JR—he’s the producer. And he has uploaded the transcript of this lesson—and all the other exercises and resources—to PlainEnglish.com/617. So check that out. PlainEnglish.com/617.
Let’s get going.
Lab-grown diamonds: as good as the real thing?
Diamonds are special. Among all gemstones, they are the most brilliant and beautiful. They reflect the light in magical ways, and many have unique colors due to other chemicals or impurities in the stone. Diamonds are versatile and timeless; they go well in bracelets, earrings, and necklaces, in addition to engagement rings.
They are also extremely hard: the only mineral that can scratch a diamond is another diamond. That makes them durable: they can last a lifetime—or, more accurately, several lifetimes. The word “diamond” comes from a Greek word meaning “unbreakable.”
So diamonds are beautiful and durable. But diamonds are also expensive. The average diamond engagement ring in the U.S. costs $6,000. The average masks a lot of variation; many diamond rings cost $50,000 or more.
Diamonds are expensive because they are rare. They formed between one and three billion years ago, the result of millions of years of extremely high heat and high pressure, deep under the earth’s surface. Volcanic eruptions then brought them close to the surface, where humans, many years later, would discover this limited supply of diamonds. Long story short : Mother Earth is not making any more diamonds.
For many years, just one company, De Beers, controlled the majority of the diamond mines in the world.
The South African company employed a unique strategy to keep its profits high. De Beers purposely mined fewer diamonds than it could have, with the purpose of maintaining scarcity and keeping prices (and profits) high.
But now, two things threaten those perpetually high diamond prices. The first is that other companies have started to enter the market, mining and selling their own diamonds. And they’re not holding back. This means that the old De Beers strategy of limiting supply to keep prices high—that’s not working as well anymore.
The other change is the improvement of lab-grown diamonds. Yes, you heard right: it’s possible to “grow” a diamond in a laboratory.
There are two methods for doing this. Both require starting with a sliver of an existing diamond and adding carbon—one method uses chemicals and the other uses heat and high pressure. In both cases, the gem grows slowly, just about a millimeter per day.
That means it can reach one carat in a month. The average engagement ring is one to two carats once it’s cut and polished. So a few months in the lab can produce a stone big enough to make an engagement ring.
The best news is that a lab-grown diamond, when set on a ring, is indistinguishable from a natural diamond to the average observer. Lab-grown diamonds have been around for a while, but the quality is starting to improve and the costs have been falling.
Lab-grown diamonds used to represent only a 20 percent savings over the cost of a true diamond; a twenty percent savings was good, but not groundbreaking. Now, though, a lab-grown diamond can be 80 percent cheaper than the real thing.
Now, there’s a lot more to the cost of an engagement ring than just the stone, so engagement rings with lab-grown diamonds aren’t exactly cheap. But prices are falling and consumers can expect to enjoy the benefit of cheaper diamond engagement rings—if they’re willing to accept a stone created in a lab.
Some people will see this as a compromise. The value of a diamond is not just in how it looks, but in the fact that it came from deep within the earth, that’s it’s old, and that it’s scarce. A lab-grown diamond is just as beautiful, but doesn’t have those intangibles .
There is another side to this story, however. The world’s biggest diamond reserves are in Russia, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Africa—all countries that are ethically problematic.
Not all diamonds are mined in an environmentally friendly way. Many miners are paid very poor wages and work in inhumane conditions. Children are sometimes forced to work in mines. The sale of some diamonds can finance rebel or terrorist groups. And that’s before we get to Russia, the country with the largest deposits.
So buying a lab-grown diamond can be cheaper, and it also avoids contributing to the serious social and environmental costs of mining in problematic places.
A classic De Beers advertising campaign popularized the phrase, “A diamond is forever.” But high prices for diamonds may not be.
A couple of diamond facts for you. I read that wealthy couples have been buying lab-grown diamonds for a while. They buy a real-diamond engagement ring, and then a lab-grown replica that they can take while traveling. Must be nice!
The other fact is that you can turn your ashes into a diamond. We mentioned this back in Lesson 543, about alternatives to burial . And one thing you can do—well, not you, but your heirs—you can have them turn your ashes into a diamond. And the way this works is with a lab-grown diamond. A lab-grown diamond uses carbon to grow the stone. That’s the material. So in that case, the carbon that they’d use would be the ashes of a person.
So when you die, you can have your remains turned into a lab-grown diamond.
JR’s song of the week
It’s Thursday, so JR has selected a song of the week. Today, it’s “The Bones” by Maren Morris. If you say something has “good bones” you’re saying it has good structure. Like a good skeleton. So even if it’s not in good shape at this moment, if it has good bones, it can always be improved.
One line in the song says, “The house [won’t] fall if the bones are good.”
This was one of the most popular country songs of 2020—they say it’s country song, but it gives me some pop and R&B vibes. Check it out—“The Bones” by Maren Morris is the song of the week.
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