Gemstone Identification: MOHS SCALE OF MINERAL HARDNESS

If you’re a fan of gemstone, there’s one name you definetely need to respect. Friedrich Mohs (1773-1839),German Geologist/mineralogist. Mohs, studied chemistry, mathematics and physics. He started classifying minerals by their physical characteristics, in spite of their chemical composition, as it was done before. He created a hardness scale that is still used as Mohs scale of mineral hardness. The scale goes from 1 to 10. Diamond is at the top of the scale, with a rating of 10, Talc is the softest, with a rating of 1. You can use minerals of known hardness to determine the relative hardness of any other mineral.  A mineral of a given hardness will scratch a mineral of a lower number. For example one of your fingernail(2) can scratch a talc(1)...

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