“Hardness” is the resistance of a material to being scratched. The test is conducted by placing a sharp point of one specimen on an unmarked surface of another specimen and attempting to produce a scratch. Here are the four situations that you might observe when comparing the hardness of two specimens:   1. If Specimen…

Friedrich Mohs, a German mineralogist, discovered the hardness scale in 1812. He selected ten minerals of distinctly different hardness that ranged from a very soft mineral (talc) to a very hard mineral (diamond). With the exception of diamond, the minerals are all relatively common, easy to obtain, and inexpensive. See the accompanying table of the…

If you have a mineral specimen of unknown hardness, and reference mineral #5 can scratch it, then the hardness of your specimen is less than or equal to a Mohs hardness of 5. Similarly, if your specimen cannot be scratched by reference mineral #5, then its hardness is greater than or equal to a Mohs…

The Mohs Hardness Scale is a set of ten reference minerals (numbered 1 through 10) that are used to determine the relative hardness of minerals and other objects. In this test the hardness of a mineral is defined as its “resistance to being scratched”. A list of the Mohs Hardness Scale Minerals is shown in the table…