Can diamonds actually cut glass? How does that work and why can’t other materials cut it as well?

Question

Can diamonds actually cut glass? How does that work and why can’t other materials cut it as well?

In: 4

Answer 1

Diamonds are among the hardest things in nature. In fact they define 10, the top of the Moh’s Hardness Scale. You can scratch all things with a number lower then your number.

Glass is pretty fragile but very uniform. If you introduce an imperfection, like a scratch, it will fail along that line much earlier. So diamond, being super hard, is useful for doing the cut and break sequence on glass without dulling very fast.