金刚石为什么会有如此大的硬度呢？
Why does diamond have such a high hardness?
直到18世纪后半叶，科学家才搞清楚了构成金刚石的“材料”。如前所述，早在公元1世纪的文献中就有了关于金刚石的记载，然而，在其后的1600多年中，人们始终不知道金刚石的成分是什么。
It was not until the second half of the 18th century that scientists clarified the "materials" that make up diamonds. As mentioned earlier, there were records of diamond in literature as early as the 1st century AD. However, for over 1600 years thereafter, people never knew what the composition of diamond was.
直到18世纪的70至90年代，才有法国化学家拉瓦锡(1743～1794)等人进行的在氧气中燃烧金刚石的实验，结果发现得到的是二氧化碳气体，即一种由氧和碳结合在一起的物质。这里的碳就来源于金刚石。终于，这些实验证明了组成金刚石的材料是碳。
It was not until the 1970s to 1990s that French chemists such as Lavoisier (1743-1794) conducted experiments on burning diamonds in oxygen, and found that the resulting gas was carbon dioxide, a substance composed of oxygen and carbon combined together. The carbon here comes from diamond. Finally, these experiments proved that the material that makes up diamond is carbon.
知道了金刚石的成分是碳，仍然不能解释金刚石为什么有那样大的硬度。例如，制造铅笔芯的材料是石墨，成分也是碳，然而石墨却是一种比人的指甲还要软的矿物。金刚石和石墨这两种矿物为什么会如此不同？
Knowing that diamond is composed of carbon still cannot explain why diamond has such a high hardness. For example, the material used to make pencil leads is graphite, which is also composed of carbon. However, graphite is a mineral that is softer than human nails. Why are diamonds and graphite minerals so different?
