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Crystal cleavage is of technical importance in the electronics industry and in the cutting of gemstones. Precious stones are generally cleaved by impact, as in diamond cutting . Synthetic single crystals of semiconductor materials are generally sold as thin wafers which are much easier to cleave.
Mohs hardness kit, containing one specimen of each mineral on the ten-point hardness scale. The Mohs scale (/ m oʊ z / MOHZ) of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material.
Because of diamond's perfect and easy cleavage, it is vulnerable to breakage. A diamond will shatter if hit with an ordinary hammer. [12] The toughness of natural diamond has been measured as 2.0 MPa⋅m 1/2, which is good compared to other gemstones like aquamarine (blue colored), but poor compared to most engineering materials. As with any ...
Only about 20% of all diamonds mined have a clarity rating high enough for the diamond to be considered appropriate for use as a gemstone; the other 80% are relegated to industrial use. Of that top 20%, a significant portion contains an inclusion or inclusions that are visible to the naked eye upon close inspection.
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 boundary between gem-quality diamonds and industrial diamonds is poorly defined and partly depends on market conditions (for example, if demand for polished diamonds is high, some lower-grade stones will be polished into low-quality or small gemstones rather than being sold for industrial use).
Rhodolite garnets appear as transparent red-pink-purplish gemstones, including all the different colour shades between violet and red. The colors from different rhodolite sources may vary from a lavender pink to raspberry rose or raspberry red and from purplish-violet (grape) to purplish red.
Chrysoprase, chrysophrase or chrysoprasus is a gemstone variety of chalcedony (a cryptocrystalline form of silica) that contains small quantities of nickel. Its color is normally apple-green, but varies from turquoise-like cyan to deep green. The darker varieties of chrysoprase are also referred to as prase.