GENERAL GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -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-2: -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-3: -Hardness (H) is the resistance of a mineral to scratching. It is a property by which minerals may be described relative to a standard scale of 10 minerals known as the Mohs scale of hardness.

Detailed explanation-4: -Two minerals with equal hardness will scratch each other. This gives an advantage to the hardness testing kit that includes real minerals over rods.

Detailed explanation-5: -It uses a scale of ten minerals, each corresponding to a hardness number. The scale ranges from 1 (talc) which is scratched by all the other minerals, to 10 (diamond) which can scratch all of the other minerals.