The mineral hardness depends on its resistance to being scratched. Mohs scale is used to determine the hardness of an unknown mineral.<em> The unknown mineral is harder than Orthoclase, but not harder than Quartz</em>.
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The hardness of a mineral is its resistance to being scratched or marked on the surface by another material.
Several elements are used to test the hardness of a mineral, like another mineral of known hardness.
Many different scales can be used to identify the mineral. However, the most commonly used is the Mohs scale.
Let us say that you have two minerals. You already know which mineral is one of them and its hardness.
- If the unknown mineral scratches the known mineral, means that the first one is harder than the second one.
- But if the unknown mineral does not get to scratch the known one, it means they are equally hard, or the known mineral is harder than the unknown one.
In the exposed example, the table must be as follows
<u> Mineral Was a scratch produced? </u>
Chalcopyrite YES
pyrite YES
Orthoclase YES
<u>Quartz NO </u>
Quartz is the hardest of these minerals. Its hardness level is 7 according to the Mohs scale.
Because scratches were produced using <em>Chalcopyrite, Pyrite, and Orthoclase</em>, we can assume that the unknown mineral is harder than these three ones.
However, no scratch was produced using quartz, suggesting that the unknown mineral is<em> between orthoclase and quartz </em>in the Mohs scale.
<em>The </em><em>unknown mineral</em><em> is </em><em>harder</em><em> than </em><em>Orthoclase</em><em>, but </em><em>not harder</em><em> than </em><em>Quartz</em><em>. It is between </em><em>6 </em><em>and </em><em>7 </em><em>hardness levels.</em>
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You can learn more about the Mohs scale at
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