Ruby Or Garnet How To Tell

This simply means that a ruby is a more durable mineral than the garnet.

Ruby or garnet how to tell.

To do this hold your stone up to a bright light source and move it around until the stone creates a rainbow. Now look at the rainbow or spectrum and if there are yellow and green bands then your stone is likely not a ruby. If the light reflects a rainbow of colors including bands of yellow and green the odds are you are looking at a garnet. They are light but not bright if the gem is more of a dark red then it may be garnet instead of a ruby.

Another way to determine if your stone is a ruby or a garnet is to examine the spectrum. Rubies red corundums that contains aluminum oxide and chromium generally are more valuable than red garnets so it is important to be able to tell the difference between them when buying gemstones. Tell by the color and the shine. Real rubies glow with a deep vivid almost stoplight red.

The rainbow image you see within a garnet will be much more clear due to its singly refractive property. If you are holding a ruby the rainbow image you see will be blurred and appear almost as one rainbow on top of another. This is because a ruby s makeup is such that it absorbs yellow and green and will not reflect them in that. A real garnets will change colors in both lights.

Fake gems are often dull. In terms of their colors while a garnet has a wide variety of colors other than red such as green brown and orange a ruby is usually red. Ruby is one of the four most precious stones in the world along with diamond sapphires and emerald. A ruby is a doubly refractive stone so it refracts light in a much different way than a garnet which is singly refractive.

Garnets are a 7 7 5 on the mohs scale. Even though garnet is also a gemstone it is a semiprecious gemstone with a significantly low value compared to ruby. If you are mistaking a ruby for a red garnet this is an easy way to distinguish between the two as rubies will not display green or yellow bands. Starting with their toughness a garnet has only been given 6 5 to 7 5 on the mohs scale while a ruby has been given a solid 9 0.

Since the most common color of garnet is red it is important to know how to spot the difference of ruby and garnet. If it is a real ruby however know that darker stones are usually worth more than lighter stones. Garnets can be be found in a variety of colors. Pyrope almandine and andradite are the most common red garnets.