Friedrich Mohs

Hi there, have you ever heard of rocks and minerals before? Friedrich Mohs was a man who loved studying rocks and minerals and he came up with a really cool way to tell how hard they are.

You know how some things are hard to break and some things are easier to break? Well, the same thing goes for rocks and minerals. Different rocks and minerals have different levels of hardness and Friedrich Mohs came up with a scale to show that.

He made a list starting from the softest things like talc (which feels like baby powder) and ending with the hardest thing, which is a diamond! There are 10 different levels of hardness in total.

Now, if we take a rock or a mineral and we want to find out how hard it is, we can use a special tool called a scratch test. We start with the softest material on Friedrich Mohs' scale and try to scratch the rock or mineral we're testing. If it scratches, then we know it's not as hard as the material we're using to scratch it with. We keep going up the scale until we find the material that can't scratch the rock or mineral.

Isn't that cool? Friedrich Mohs made it easier for us to understand how hard rocks and minerals are and how we can test it.