The diference between Carat and Karat

Carat and Karat are similar words, both used in the jewelery industry. Often they are making confusion for the ordinary people because this two words have completely different meaning.

Carat is a measure for measuring the weight of the diamonds. One Carat is weight of 200 milligrams.

Karat is measure for the purity of the gold or platinum. Gold is very soft metal and for practical applications need to be mixed with other harder metals. Because the mixed gold need to be marked for the % of other alloys there are many measures developed but Karat is most popular. 24 karats (kt.) is standing for 100% pure gold. 18kt. means stand for 18 parts of gold and 6 parts of other metals or alloys mainly copper, silver, nickel and etc... 14 kt. is 14 parts gold and 10 parts other alloys. 10 kt. stands for 10 parts of gold and 14 parts of other alloys. Anything less than 10 kt. can not legally be sold as gold. Some producers (like Italians), instead of Karats are using measure by thousands. One thousand or 1000 means pure gold. Because it is very hard to extract 100% pure gold sometimes instead of 1000, 999 is used to mark 100% pure gold.