borrofburi
New Member
Not at atmospheric pressure and surface heat, down in the mantle it turns out diamond is the lowest state, but up here graphite is a lower state so diamonds over long periods of time turn into graphite. I can't remember if it was my chemistry teacher or my thermo teacher who gleefully exclaimed "diamonds are not forever!" Anyway, I did a quick google search and came up with this: http://www.qondio.com/diamonds-are-not-foreverJacobEvans said:Isn't it the other way around?borrofburi said:It can't explode, there's no oxygen. I suppose if there were some other reactive component that lead to exothermic reactions it might explode, but that seems unlikely. Potential energy goes untapped all the time, for instance diamonds at atmospheric pressure have potential energy, and yet we never see a diamond explode, rather over scores of years it slowly turns into graphite.
Doesn't graphite become diamond?
Which of course says "millions of years", so perhaps I was somewhat ill-informed, though I do remembering doing calculations confirming that graphite is indeed the lower state (of energy? No I think there's a technical term I can't remember in there somewhere (which probably simply means "lower state of energy")).