Many people think CZ is cheap.
It is. couple bucks for a fine carat sized gem. Good value for the
money. In part, because it’s cheap…
But the fact is that CZ is the most realistic diamond simulant ever
produced because of it's beauty!!
It is, indeed, one of the more convincing simulants for diamond.
That doesn’t automatically imply it’s more beautiful. Just close in
visual appearance.
It's beauty not only can compare to diamond, it's superior to
diamond.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently, you’ve got
some CZ stuck in your eye. Most people I know, while they like and
appreciate CZ, and use it when appropriate in their jewelery, do not
happen to feel it’s more beautiful. It’s a subjective judgment, not a
matter of fact, especially not facts as strangely mangled and tangled
as you’ve managed to present.
CZ can be very beautiful and special and deserve to exist as jewel
in their own right.
And indeed it already does. As a fine synthetic material. It doesn’t
have the appeal that some feel for rare natural gems, since it isn’t
one. But for a synthetic, it’s well appreciated. You can show this to
be true simply by noting that CZ set jewelry is usually sold
accurately described, not sold masquerading as something else.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: When talking about luster, CZ is better than
natural diamond for sure.
False. Luster is a property related to hardness, perfection of
polish, reflectivity, and refractive index. Diamond exceeds CZ in all
these properties, and has a slightly higher luster.
Don't believe it? Just look at the facts: The word "luster" traces
its origins back to the Latin word "lux", meaning "light", and
generally implies radiance, gloss, or brilliance.
True enough.
Dispersion is often known as "fire" or "luster" of a stone, the
higher the better. Why a CZ gives more luster than a natural
diamond? The answer is simple: CZ has a HIGHER dispersion of 0.06
while a natural diamond got only 0.044. A diamond owes most of its
beauty to its high dispersion. So which is more beautiful when
talking about "luster"?
No. Fire or dispersion is NOT luster. It’s the degree to which a
material refracts red light a different amount than blue light, (and
the rest of the spectrum, which results in white light being broken
apart into seperated colors as it’s refracted around and through a
gem. CZ is indee higher if dispersion, and this results in more of
the light reflected to the eye of the viewer being in the form of
colored flashes of light rather than white light. All these rainbow
flashes of light are indeed pretty, but when there too much, can
actually look a bit garish. Again, it’s a matter of taste. More is
not necessarily and automatically better, unless you happen to like
it. Many people, comparing diamond to CZ, prefer the somewhat more
subtle fire of a diamond to the sometimes garish colors of CZ. Others
will like all that color in the CZ and prefer it. Again, it’s a
subjective choice, not a mathematical or factual certainty to
determine which is more beautiful.
Now you already know that CZ has higher dispersion than Diamond,
but the more stunning fact is that the ratio of dispersion of
natural diamond to CZ is almost the ratio of resolution of CRT TV
to HD TV. Can't believe it? Look at the facts: The resolution of a
CRT TV usually refers to 480pixels in vertical lines. The
resolution of a HD TV usually refers to 720 pixels or higher in
vertical lines. The ratio of the vertical resolution of a CRT TV to
HD TV is 1.5 : 1. The ratio shows that the vertical resolution of
HD TV is 1.5 times higher than CRT TV. So, by the same way of
calculation, you will get a ratio of 1.36 : 1 which implies that CZ
owns a dispersion which is 1.36 times more than natural diamond !
Luster which natural diamond can give is just like the resolution
of an old CRT TV when compare to CZ's higher velocity of luster!!
Even the highest quality natural diamond is no match to a well made
CZ when talking about Luster.
Ok, now you’re delving into the realm of the twilight zone. The
performance of televisions has nothing to do with, and isn’t related
in any meaningful way, to the optics of CZ versus diamond. Your
statement is about the same as claiming with much enthousiasm that
because the paint on your car has more blue pigment than the skin of
a nice ripe red apple, it thus would stand to reason that the fish
you buy next time you go grocery shopping will end up tasting more
like mutton. It’s utter nonsense, of course, and so is your mangled
set of numbers there.
The Luster Velocity of a single CZ stone is 1.36 times more than
natural diamond. How about more than 100pcs of CZ set on a single
surface?
Luster velocity? There’s a new one. Congratulations. Not only have
you managed to mangle gemstone optics to a heretofor unprecedented
degree, but now you’re inventing your very own gemological properties
and terms. Nobody else in the world who knows anything about gemology
has ever heard the term “Luster velocity” so perhaps you’d better
define it for us. Perhaps it’s the speed with which an otherwise nice
gem like CZ looses it’s appeal and luster when promoted by someone
who doesn’t know what he or she is talking about?
or perhaps your whole article started out as a reasonably accurate
document written in, for example, Chinese. and you’ve generated your
Orchid post by feeding it to an online translation engine? Could
that be it? Some of the results one can get that way are lots of fun.
Recently I heard of a Chinese restaurant owner who, wishing some of
the tourist dollars during the Olympics, decided to put an english
language sign on his restaurant giving the name, etc. So he entered
his retaurant name into an internet translation site, and carefully
copied the returned result to his sign. His restaurant is now clearly
labeled for all the world, “Translate server error”. I don’t know, of
course, if this is true. Just a story from the net. But I’m guessing
your article about CZ started in some other form, and this posting
might be called “gemology translate server error”… Because frankly,
Ray, you need to either proofread better, or go take some gemology
classes. You’ve got a lot wrong here. Too bad, because CZ is a useful
and pretty gem material. It deserves better than this.
Peter Rowe
