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Two octahedral faces of a large very perfect diamond have been studied optically and interferometrically. On the surfaces have been found a hundred crater-like features each about 50 μ wide and a few hundred ångstrom units high. It is shown that these are the analogue on diamond of the long familiar ring crack Hertzian cones formed on glass subject to local pressure. It is possible that impact with other diamonds is responsible for the ring crack formation. The cracks on the diamond are crystallographically oriented and the profiles of some are measured interferometrically.
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Tolansky et al. (1954) studied this question.
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