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What happens when you cover an egg in soot? It gets super black, but also super shiny!

Diamonds are amazing crystals. A repeating pattern of pure carbon atoms, they’re famous for being the hardest substance in the world. Yet, an Australian team of scientists have just managed to bend diamonds. So how did they do it?

Diamonds hold a special place in our imagination: they’re valuable, extremely hard, and sometimes just really pretty. Chemically speaking, diamonds are simple – they’re carbon. Carbon is an important element. All living things are made of compounds that contain carbon. One property of carbon is its ability to form allotropes. Allotropes contain the same element,…