EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -The Mohs Hardness Scale is used as a convenient way to help identify minerals. A mineral’s hardness is a measure of its relative resistance to scratching, measured by scratching the mineral against another substance of known hardness on the Mohs Hardness Scale.

Detailed explanation-2: -Hardness. The ability to resist being scratched-or hardness-is one of the most useful properties for identifying minerals. Hardness is determined by the ability of one mineral to scratch another.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Mohs scale is based on relative scratch hardness of different materials; with talc assigned a value of 1 and diamond assigned a value of 10.

Detailed explanation-4: -Hardness is a mineral’s resistance to abrasion or scratching. We determine relative hardness (symbolized by H) using a scratch test: we try to scratch a surface of one mineral with an edge or corner of a second mineral. If a scratch or abrasion results, the first mineral is the softer.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Mohs scale of mineral hardness (/moʊz/) is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material.