Is that one of those big lenses that can focus the sun’s light to be super hot? I have seen videos of people melting things like rocks with them. I kinda want to play with one, but then again I get distracted easily…
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Annoyingly, Davy doesn’t give a lot of information about the furnace:
‘During a stay that I made at Florence in the end of March and beginning of April, I made several experiments on the combustion of the diamond, and of plumbago [graphite], by means of the great lens in the Cabinet of Natural History; the same instrument as that employed in the first trials on the action of the solar heat on the diamond, instituted by Cosmo III…’
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May your distracted feeling of spreading warmth be a pleasant toasting on the sous vide.
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I just saw a video where a guy took his solar lens and melted glass and lava rock. He tried it on amethyst and while it didn’t melt, it turned WHITE!
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At room temperature and surface pressure, diamonds are in repose on an extremely narrow thermodynamic shelf. They want to be graphite, and with a relatively modest boost of heat graphite is what they would become, if atmospheric oxygen did not incinerate them first. They are, in this sense, unstable—these finger-flashing symbols of the eternity of vows, yearning to become fresh pencil lead. – John McPhee, Annals of the Former World
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