Hardness is the ability of a material to resist abrasion when a pointed fragment of another substance is drawn across it without sufficient pressure to develop fracture or cleavage.
Differential structure is related to both the crystal and atomic structure of the diamond crystal.
Diamonds have differential hardness which means the hardness differs with the direction of scratching in certain gem materials. This differential hardness is due to the arrangement of the atomic bonding in crystal structures.
In various directions along the octahedron faces of diamond, hardness is great.
Although a diamond is the hardest know substance, the fact that it can be cut and polished is due to the phenomenon of differential hardness.
Damage by continual scratching is called abrasion. In the mineralogy world, only a diamond can scratch another diamond.
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