Hey everyone, it’s your boy back again with another one of my little experiments. Today, I’m messing around with garnets, yeah, those pretty red stones you see in jewelry sometimes. I got curious about how hard these things actually are, so I did a little digging and, of course, some hands-on testing.
Getting Started
First off, I grabbed a few pieces of garnet I had lying around. Don’t ask why I have garnets just lying around, okay? I’m a collector of many things. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could scratch them, figuring that would give me a basic idea of their hardness.
The Scratch Test
So, I learned that there’s this thing called the Mohs scale that rates how hard minerals are. Garnets are supposed to be somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 on this scale. That means they’re pretty tough, but not as tough as, say, a diamond.
Armed with this knowledge, I took a piece of glass and tried to scratch the garnets. Why glass? Well, glass is usually around 5.5 on the Mohs scale, so it shouldn’t be able to scratch a real garnet. If the garnet got scratched, I figured it might not be a real one or maybe there’s something wonky with the scale. But here’s the thing with this test – you gotta be careful because you can actually damage the stone if you press too hard. So, gentle does it.
- Tried scratching the garnet with glass.
- Glass didn’t leave a mark, which is a good sign.
Digging Deeper
Then I started reading up more about garnets. Turns out, they’re made of this stuff called silicate, and their chemical formula looks like something out of a high school chemistry textbook – Mg3Al2(SiO4)3 or Fe3Al2(SiO4)3. I’m no chemist, but that looks complicated.
Anyway, the main takeaway is that garnets are pretty resistant to scratches from things that are softer than them. But they can still be scratched by materials that are harder or have the same hardness. I didn’t have anything harder on hand to test that out, but it’s good to know.
- Read up on garnet’s chemical composition.
- Discovered that garnets can be scratched by harder materials.
Final Thoughts
After all this, I’m pretty convinced that my garnets are the real deal. They held up to the glass test, and everything I read confirmed what I saw. It’s kinda cool to think about how these little stones can be so tough. Makes you appreciate the jewelry they end up in a bit more, right?
So, that’s my little adventure with garnets. Hope you guys found it interesting. Catch you all in the next one!
