Question #2571e
1 Answer
Jan 9, 2018
Because 1 characteristic may be common to many minerals, not just one.
Explanation:
For example, you have 20 people in front of you. 10 with black hair, 7 with red hair and 3 with yellow hair.
If I tell you that I'm looking for someone with black hair, you wouldn't know about which person I'm talking about, because there are 10 people with that characteristic. I need to tell you more things, so you can identify that person among those 20 people.
In a similar way, each test will give you one of the characteristics of minerals. But many minerals might have that characteristic, just like many people had black hair in that example.
