Question

Base your answers to questions 42 through 44 on the mineral chart below and on your knowledge of Earth

science. The mineral chart lists some properties of five minerals that are the major sources of the same metallic element that is used by many industries.
Which mineral might scratch the mineral fluorite, but would not scratch the mineral amphibole?
(1) brucite
(2) magnesite
(3) carnallite
(4) olivine

Answer 1

what you're looking for in here is the hardness: a material can scratch another material if it's harder than it.

So the desired material cannot be harder than amphibole, which has a hardness of 6.

But it has to be harder than fluorite, which has a hardness of 4.

So we're looking for a hardness of between 4 and 6 and from the table we see it's magnesite (we'll need a hard magesite) - this is the correct answer!