Happy Birthday Friedrich Mohs!

Friedrich Mohs Birthday

Today is German Geologist Friedrich Mohs’ Birthday!

Geologist Friedrich Mohs was born on January 29, 1773, in Gernrode, Germany. Born Carl Friedrich Christian Mohs, he was a geologist and mineralogist who during his career worked at a mine, as a mineralogist for a private collector, and as a geologist for a museum. During his career at the museum, Friedrich began to identify minerals using their physical properties. One of these physical properties was the hardness of a mineral, which led him to create the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness in 1812. Friedrich Mohs died on September 29, 1839, at the age of 66.

Still today, we use mineral hardness as a clue to the identity of a sample. The Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness is a relative hardness scale with 10 mineral samples and several common items such as glass, fingernail, and a pre-1981 penny. Each item on the scale has a specific hardness. Talc, number one on the scale is the softest and diamond, number 10, is the hardest. The Mohs mineral scale and common object are:

Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness

In this video we discuss how to use the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness with your own samples.

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