Fandom High School

Class was meeting in the computer lab today. Yes, there'd been a handwavy email. "Yo, today we're doing things a little more personalized," Kate said, by way of greeting. "And/or random. When you each get on a computer, you'll find it open on the WikiHow main page. From there, I want you to search for a how-to on something you're interested in learning about. Or, you can just click the option that gets you a random article if you can't think of anything in particular you wanna learn, because you might run into something fun that way."

Had she just pretty much revealed how she came up with over half of the class topics she used? Oh well.

"Also, if you wanna share what you learned with the class, you're totally welcome to, but it's optional if you don't want to. So, get to it, kidlets."

Class was meeting in the Danger Shop, and the simulation looked like the interior of a fancy jewelry store. Dark wood, shiny display cases, expensive looking jewelry, the works. And of course, Kate in a hipstery dress with a polar bear print on it, leaning against the counter. Next to her, there was a case of diamond rings.

She waved at the students. "Hi, welcome to Whatever 101," she said, "where you'll basically be learning whatever strikes my fancy any given week, because my off-island job is still a mess and I had to submit a class proposal at the very last minute. It will be fun, I promise." Fun for her, at least, but she hoped it would be fun for them as well! "Today, we're gonna do introductions, and you're going to learn about how to tell a real diamond from a fake one, because you just never know when you're going to need that skill. Like if a skeezy person is trying to propose to you and you're trying to figure out whether you should at least take the ring."

Because that was so likely to happen. She picked up a ring off the counter.

"Anyway. I'm Kate, please call me that and not Miss Gregson or anything because that will just weird me out and I probably won't realize I should react. Kate's fine." She held up the ring. It had a nice, sizable, glittering diamond on it. "Super basic diamond ring testing. Three options: check the mount, check it with a loupe, or breath on it. That first one's pretty obvious, right? If the setting and mount are made of like some cheapskate metal and not either gold or platinum, it gets preeeeeetty unlikely the stone is real." Duh. She inspected the inside of the ring. "Basically, look at the stamps on the inside of the ring. If it has like a number with K after it, that means it's so-and-so carat gold, and you're doing okay that far."

Now, she indicated to some jeweler's loupes on the counter next to the rings. "Next up, you can use a loupe to look at the diamond close up. It might make sense for you to assume that a real diamond is all clear and totally uniform and perfect, but actually real diamonds have like these tiny flecks of minerals and super slight color changes and stuff, so look for those. Fakes are more likely to look perfect." Seriously, that had surprised her when she'd found out. "And finally, the breathing test. Super easy. If you breathe on a real diamond to fog it up, it stays clear or at least clears way faster than a fake. If you breathe on a fake repeatedly, it's gonna start building up condensation, because that's just its thing."

There were better reasons for that, sure, but she liked to simplify.

"So, there you have it," she said. "That's how you can tell whether that skeezy dude or lady proposing to you at least has an actual diamond ring. Not that I'm advocating getting married to skeezy people, but anyway. Now, I want you all to tell me your names and grades, and then grab a ring and use one or more of the methods I just explained to figure out if it's fake or not." Technically they were all fake since this was a simulated environment, but you know. Some of them were simulating the real thing and some were simulating fakes. Kate nodded at one student from the group at random. "You first."