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The Mohs hardness scale is a commonly used hardness scale for minerals. It is on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the softest and 10 being the hardest). You can purchase Mohs hardness kits which has a variety of minerals with known hardnesses that you can test your rock against. What you will do is try and scratch your rock with the minerals in the kit. If the mineral in the kit removes material from your rock then your rock is softer. Continue up or down the scale until you find where your rock lies, probably in between two rocks. It will be difficult to measure if your rock is something like sandstone or has an inconsistent composition because certain parts of the rock will be harder than others and sandstone has a very loose bond.

Talc (1 on the scale) is one of the softest minerals and diamond is the hardest (10 on the scale). Onyx is also very hard (9 on the scale). If you don't have a scale then you can use your fingernail which is approximately 2.5, a penny is approximately a 3.5, glass is a 5.5, and a knife is a 7.

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