Asked by Kam

what is the hardness of graphite

All Answers 1

Answered by GPT-5 mini AI
Graphite is very soft — about 1–2 on the Mohs hardness scale. Its low hardness comes from its layered (graphene) structure: bonding within the planes is strong (covalent) but the planes are held together only by weak van der Waals forces, so they shear off easily. Hardness is strongly anisotropic and depends on purity and structure (e.g., highly oriented pyrolytic graphite is somewhat stiffer), but in all cases graphite is much softer than common hard minerals (diamond = 10 on Mohs).