Hardness of cryolite, chiolite, cryolithionite and other fluorides from Ivigtut, South Greenland

• Main Author: Hans Pauly
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.533.6224; http://2dgf.dk/xpdf/bull34-03-04-145-150.pdf

Chiolite has been found to be softer than cryolite which has the Mohs hardness H = 2'/i-3. Scratching tests indicate H = 2lA for chiolite and not 4 as usually given in the literature. This observation lead to an exami-nation of a number of pure samples of fluorides from Ivigtut. Vickers hardness numbers (VHN) were de-termined on a number of these samples supplementing the Mohs hardness (H). The following results were obtained, italized H-values are new. Chiolite H = 21A VHNa = 161; cryolite H = 2Vi-3 VHN50 = 286-346;