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Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be 3 Al 2 (SiO 3) 6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. [1] Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale. [1] Most emeralds are highly included, [2] so their toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor. Emerald is a cyclosilicate.
Chrysoberyl is the third-hardest frequently encountered natural gemstone and lies at 8.5 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, between corundum (9) and topaz (8). [ 7 ] An interesting feature of its crystals are the cyclic twins called trillings .
The word "emerald" is derived (via Old French: esmeraude and Middle English: emeraude), from Vulgar Latin: esmaralda/esmaraldus, a variant of Latin smaragdus, which was via Ancient Greek: σμάραγδος (smáragdos; "green gem"). The Greek word may have a Semitic, Sanskrit or Persian origin.
Some solid substances that are not minerals have been assigned a hardness on the Mohs scale. Hardness may be difficult to determine, or may be misleading or meaningless, if a material is a mixture of two or more substances; for example, some sources have assigned a Mohs hardness of 6 or 7 to granite but it is a rock made of several minerals ...
Musgravite or magnesiotaaffeite-6N’3S is a rare oxide mineral used as a gemstone. Its type locality is the Ernabella Mission, Musgrave Ranges, South Australia, for which it was named following its discovery in 1967. [2] It is a member of the taaffeite family of minerals, [2] [1] and its chemical formula is Be(Mg, Fe, Zn) 2 Al 6 O 12.
The Mohs hardness scale [25] is a commonly used tool in lapidary to help measure a mineral's scratch hardness. A mineral's scratch hardness is measured by seeing how easily scratched it is, and what other minerals on the Mohs hardness scale can scratch it.
The Rosiwal scale attempts to give more quantitative values of scratch hardness, unlike the Mohs scale which is a qualitative measurement with relative values. The Rosiwal method (also called the Delesse-Rosiwal method [ 1 ] ) is a method of petrographic analysis and is performed by scratching a polished surface under a known load using a ...