If anyone is in or around Arkansas it is a fun place to visit especially with kids. For a small price of admission you get to go onto the property and dig around in the dirt as much as you want. There are people in the area that do it as a hobby bringing shovels and 5-gallon buckets to see what they can find. A park ranger told us the same thing from the article that the best time to find diamonds is right after a large rainfall when the ground shifts and diamonds can be seen on the surface in the sunlight.
the same can be said about those who want to find seashells, the beaches after very large storms are fascinating and rewarding.
with regards to ruby, diamond, and other precious gem, mining the part I find enjoyable is most of these places are off the beaten path and a day spent in the country playing in the mud can be rewarding for lack of distractions of everyday life
Especially in Arkansas. It's a really beautiful state. There is a bunch of other natural beauty to see like hot springs and cave tours. Our family has vacation in Arkansas quite a bit.
Blanchard Springs Caverns in Arkansas are truly a site to behold. Pictures cannot do it justice. And I have been to many well known caverns throughout the world to compare.
As far as a cave that you can simply take an elevator down to and walk through on paved sidewalks, it is one of the best in the world. (There are also other portions for the more adventurous. Some that are completely underwater and require scuba gear.)
Another thing fun for kids is panning for gold out west. The sunlight glitters on the gold flakes and catches your eye.
I think there are even places you can buy a bag of dirt to be shipped to you.
Another interesting thing you can do is buy unsorted/unwashed roman coins from europe. There are techniques to soak and reveal the face of the coins. Where else can you uncover 2000 year old human artifacts?
We went recently and had a good time. It was very hot and we took a few breaks, we didn't find any diamonds. The kids had a great time, the facilities are quite nice, and we got to see more of Arkansas which is quickly becoming a favorite state.
I went on a school field trip as a kid, def something fun to do once for like half an hour to an hour. Though might be interesting to go back as an adult, though I'm only back in that part of the country for the holidays now which leaves me with little time to drive all the way there.
I'm in Harrison, and have been meaning to get down there.
Is there a way to know ahead of time when they plow the field?
Also, I seem to recall that at least at one time there was a private individual who offered something similar to the park itself. Is that option still around?
But here's a tip-- they say if you go looking right after a rain, the dust is wetted down and the diamonds are easier to find. So they say, I can't say for myself.
Density of rocks seems to top out around 3.2 g/cm³[0], but if you could find a way of scanning for material that was 99%+ Carbon and which had the density of diamond (3.51 g/cm³) and you could detect very small buried items, then that might be a start.
I didn't see it on the first run through, so had to go back. From the article:
> There are a ton of factors that go into appraising a diamond like the one that Hollingshead discovered, but it’s likely worth somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars.
There are plenty of diamond-bearing sites in California which are publicly accessible. You just need to know how to find kimberlite pipes on BLM lands.
In the modern era, diamonds are not all that rare or hard to retrieve to begin with, and now we have mass-produced synthetic diamonds that are actually higher-quality (fewer flaws) than mined ones. The idea that a tiny pebble, however artfully cut, is rare and precious and worth thousands of dollars is 100% marketing.
When I was looking at diamond rings the synthetics available to me were at a high cost, not much less than a "traditional" diamond. Same goes for alternate stones such as Moissanite which HackerNews has discussed below. So, not being pro-diamond here, but simply stating it looks like marketing has brought up the prices of these alternate methods too.
Perhaps you were shopping with an unscrupulous jeweler then, because, all else the same, a Moissanite stone is significantly less expensive than a comparable diamond
It is rarer than many minerals, yes, but not enough to justify the astronomical prices. The global diamond supply chain is controlled by a handful of powerful companies that cooperate to maintain scarcity and keep prices high.
The idea that engagement rings "must" have a diamond only dates back to the '40s and is entirely down to De Beers' marketing. The same company spent a fortune promoting the idea that synthetic diamonds are somehow inferior and developing tests to distinguish them, even though they're chemically identical and the only way to tell them apart is that natural diamonds are lower-quality, with more flaws and less clarity.
Yes. While diamonds have always been valuable, in the 19th century, DeBeers bought most/all known large mines and exercised their monopoly position to control the market. They also launched massive marketing campaigns touting diamonds as the "best" stone for an engagement ring.
