Four of the world’s most unusual, naturally colored diamonds make their public debut in Diamonds: Rare Brilliance. The museum’s president and director, Lori ettison-Varga, says that the beautiful pieces offer a history of our planet. How they offer that history is one of the big learning ops of the exhibit. It's estimated that there is only a one-in-10,000 chance that a diamond will possess any natural color. The four diamonds featured in this exhibit, from the collection of New York-based L.J. West Diamonds, include the show-stopping 30-plus-carat Juliet Pink diamond and the equally awe-inspiring 2.83-carat Argyle Violet diamond.

The Juliet Pink diamond—suddenly the Pink Panther makes sense. (Photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum)

There is also the Rainbow Necklace, which features 88 multicolored diamonds and shows fluorescence, and the 1.64-carat fancy vivid purple Victorian Orchid. The four pieces are on display in the museum’s Hixon Gem Vault in the Gem and Mineral Hall.

“The fact that they keep pulling such beautiful finds out of the Earth … it’s the idea that there are still things to discover,” says Aaron Celestian, the museum’s associate curator of mineralogy. “It’s the idea of hope and intrigue, of what is still out there.”

All diamonds are at least a billion years old, making them fascinating little mineral time capsules. The gems are formed as the products of high stress and intense heat, upwards of 100 miles deep in the earth’s mantle, and they're brought close to the surface through deep volcanic eruptions. Pretty cool stuff.

For kids in the older elementary grades, learning about diamonds goes hand in hand with science lessons on rocks and minerals. Diamonds’ formation are also of interest to middle schoolers looking at the geologic time scale of Earth, and high school students in chemistry courses might be interested in the science still under active research behind the rare properties in the natural color diamonds on display.

Scott West of L.J. West Diamonds says the museum’s public exhibition of the pieces is the culmination of three generations of work by his family. The Juliet Pink and Argyle Violet, in particular, are “once in a lifetime” finds.

Kids will likely enjoy the story of how the Argyle Violet, one of the world's rarest gems, came to be found. The story involves some industrious Australian ants—but I won't spoil it for you.

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Checking out the Gem and Mineral Hall

The multi-colored diamonds in the Rainbow Necklace offer another interesting science moment. The stones contain impurities that allow them to exhibit fluorescence, and museum visitors can see this phenomenon as an ultraviolet light shines on the necklace in intervals.

Beyond the featured exhibit, families can check out the more than 150,000 items on permanent display in the Natural History Museum’s Gem and Mineral Hall. The entire collection of gems is considered to be one of the best of its kind in the world. The museum’s transparent Mineral Sciences Lab, in which visitors can watch mineralogists as they work, is planned to open by mid-2017.

The Diamonds: Rare Brilliance exhibit is open now and runs through March 19. It is free with a general admission ticket to the Natural History Museum.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is open daily from 9:30am to 5pm, except on major holidays. For more details on visiting, go to NHM.org.

All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted