What feature will you use to identify hyaline cartilage?

Question

a. Densely packed parallel collagen fibers

b. Predominantly freely branching elastic fibers

c. Scattered cells and fibers in gel-like ground substance

d. Glassy-appearing matrix; cells hosted in lacunae

Answer 1

Hyaline cartilage contains an extra cellular matrix that contains type 2 collagen fibers and GAGs which contain sulfated groups. Due to this, the matrix contains a similar refractive index of light bending giving it a "glassy" appearance which is the key identifying characteristic that separates it from other cartilage like elastic on histological examination.