Diamonds

The structure of diamond is shown at the right in a "ball-and-stick" format. The balls represent the carbon atoms and the sticks represent a covalent bond. Be aware that in the "ball-and-stick" representation the size of the balls do not accurately represent the size of carbon atoms. In addition, a single stick is drawn to represent a covalent bond irrespective of whether the bond is a single, double, or triple bond or requires resonance structures to represent. In the diamond structure, all bonds are single covalent bonds (σ

bonds). The "space-filling" format is an alternate representation that displays atoms as spheres with a radius equal to the van der Waals radius, thus providing a better sense of the size of the atoms.

Figure 1.1 : Rotating model of diamond cubic. Figure used with permission from Wikipedia

Notice that diamond is a network solid. The entire solid is an "endless" repetition of carbon atoms bonded to each other by covalent bonds. (In the display at the right, the structure is truncated to fit in the display area.)