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The hardness of a material is its resistance to deformation, or to being scratched or deformed. Often just referring to the surface of the substance.

There are several methods for measuring hardness of a material.

One is Mohs scale, which consists of ten arbitrarily chosen reference materials. This assigns 1 to the hardness of Talc, and 10 to that of Diamond. It is a useful, but essentially non-arithmetic scale, without precise relationships between the steps. Not all Talc samples are equally hard, nor are all Diamonds of equal hardness either.

There are several scales that are more numerically sound, in which a hard object is pressed into the test material under a specific load. Brinnell, Vickers, and Rockwell are three common ones. The test 'point' may be a ball shape, a diamond pyramid, or a cone. Each system has its usefulness, but there is not an exact relationship between each system.

And particular industries have their own appropriate systems. Paint and Varnish hardness is measured by drawing a pencil of particular hardness down a cured coating, at an angle of 450.

And the hardness of even quite pliable materials is also measured. For measuring the stiffness of the Cornea, both a fine fibre, and a small blast of air is used.

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