Never thought mineral hardness was important until I tried the scratch test myself.

3 comments

3 Comments

My buddy Jake thought his kitchen countertop was granite until he tested it with a quartz sample. Left a huge scratch right down the middle, his wife was not happy.

oscarc534d ago

My quartz countertop at the old apartment taught me the same lesson. I tried to scratch it with a regular kitchen knife just to see, and it didn't leave a single mark. That's when I finally understood the whole Mohs scale thing for real. Have you tried testing any other materials around your house?

piper_carter804d ago

At Lincoln High, our chem lab used Mohs kits for mineral tests. Kitchen knives can have different steel hardness, so not scratching quartz might not prove much. I saw a cheap knife leave a mark on my cousin's quartz countertop. The scale works best with standard tools, not random objects. Home tests can be misleading if you don't know the knife's hardness. That's why I see the knife test as incomplete.