| SYNTHETIC GEMSTONES A
synthetic gemstone shares a natural stone's physical, chemical and
optical qualities, but it is created in a laboratory. It's kind
of like making a high tech batch of cookies we know the ingredients
and we know how long to cook them. There are synthetic versions
of nearly all popular gemstones and many versions have been available
for a long time. Older synthetics were fairly simple for gemologists
to detect, because they were often too perfect. Some modern synthetic
gemstones look more natural and are more difficult to identify,
but an experienced jeweler or gemologist can usually classify them. |