EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Color is the most unreliable diagnostic property, because impuritiesand chemical weathering can change a mineral’s color.

Detailed explanation-2: -Colour is the most unreliable diagnostic property of minerals such as quartz because it is affected by a lot of factors and is not diagnostic to any particular mineral.

Detailed explanation-3: -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. Federick Mohs, a German mineralogist, produced a hardness scale (table 5) using a set of ten standard minerals.

Detailed explanation-4: -Some minerals can be recognized by their color: azurite is always a deep blue and malachite is green. Generally, color alone is not the best tool in identification because color can be highly variable. Some minerals can occur in a variety of different colors due to impurities in the chemical makeup of the mineral.

Detailed explanation-5: -Color. Color is rarely very useful for identifying a mineral. Different minerals may be the same color.