Wildepad wrote:
> The ultimate garbage disposer is built -- whatever is put into it is
> broken down to its component elements which are then separated by
> type.
>
> The inventor admits there are some minor problems with the process,
> and number 1,896 on his list of things to change is that the carbon
> comes out as flawless 36 pound crystals.
Doesn't seem like something that needs changing. Bulk diamond would be
very useful. A better thing to work on would be to make the process spit
out even larger diamonds.
> What do you do with it?
Diamond crystals are octahedral, IIRC. 36 pounds is 4640 cubic
centimeters of diamond, which is the volume of an octohedron with edges
21.4 centimeters long. That puts severe limits on the size of a pane you
could get out of it, so making windows for submarines or cover sheets
for computer monitors might be out.
It'd make an excellent computer chip substrate. A great lens-making
material, too. Eyeglasses would be thinner (diamond has a high index of
refraction) and inherently scratch resistant. You could perhaps make
bearings out of diamond.
They'd make for neat bricks. Octahedra and tetrahedra can be alternated
to form a vertex, edge, and face-uniform tessellation of space, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedral-octahedral_honeycomb>.
If you
wanted to make the structure entirely out of diamond you'd need to carve
the tetrahedra, which would be expensive, but it looks like you could
substitute some other opaque material to make the tetrahedra out of and
still get plenty of light through the wall. The insulating power of
solid diamond is nil, of course.
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