if a mineral has a specific gravity of 7.0. What does this mean?

Answer 1

it is 7 times as heavy as water. water is 1, if you put something with .99 in water it would float if 1.1 it would sink.
water weighs 62.5# per cubic foot or 1gm per cc. the object would weigh 7 g per cc

Answer 2

Specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of a substance and that of EQUAL VOLUME of water. Practically it is equivalent to density, if you know and understand Archimedes Principle. At least it is numerically equal to density, only being a ratio, it does not have any unit.
A mineral of sp.gr. 7 means it is seven times heavier than equal volume of water.
It further means the mineral is either cassiterite or pyromorphite (or may be impure galena) - if I remember the properties of minerals correctly. This is because specific gravity is an identifying character of a particular chemical compound, like a mineral.

Answer 3

Specific gravity is a relationship of density compared to water. If you have a mineral with a specific gravity of 7, that means is 7 times as dense as water.

Answer 4

It means that it is 7 times as heavy as the same volume of water. A synonym for the term is density. Very few minerals are this heavy - basically iron or heavier metals and their chemical combinations. Iron is about 7.5, gold about 19.

Aside - I Googled specific gravity 7.0 and found that that tabular data from www.reade.com for quartz is wrong. Quartz is actually only about 2.65 density, not 7.0 as listed - that's actually the hardness.

Answer 5

7 times as dense as water.

In the metric world, this is great:

1 cc weighs 7 grams

1 litre (if it is a fluid) weighs 7 kgs

1 cubic metres weighs 7 metric tonnes.

Not sure how all those 'Mercans get on with all that old imperial stuff.

Answer 6

it has a density that is 7 times that of water, or 7 grams weight for every cc of volume.