Rowan, that doesn’t really help me too much.
I now have more questions than I started with
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Look up how to make rock candy
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Can someone just give me an answer without telling me to look up something else? I was looking at rock candy formation two hours ago.
ROCK CANDY is supersaturation based crystal formation which I’m NOT asking about. That’s live resin diamonds. Fully understand how those work. HARD CANDY is created by temperature-specific formation, but I’m not sure how that applies to THCA and CBD when the heat applied from a vaccuum oven is primarily for solvent purging and not crystallization (again, to my knowledge)
I’m asking about shatter formation and the role crystalization plays in that. This tempering chocolate information isn’t helping - does THCA have polymorphous crystal development at different temperatures? You’ve also sent me information about the crystallization of fats when THCA isn’t a fat.
Really very lost here guys
From my understanding and experience you need to whip shatter to get it to crumble
Crumble is a bunch of little tiny diamonds mixed in with terpenes and whatever else was extracted
Shatter is the oil itself uncrystallized with everything intact
Theres no nucleation site when you make shatter, if there is then your slab will butter up
Im sure if you left some shatter long enough it would butter up because with enough time diamonds will start to form.
Thc a is much more stable then cbd which makes it harder to crystallize
Cbd will crystallize on itself and can easier because it has a bond that can rotate
Thc a doesn’t have this bond so its harder for the molecules to come together to form bonds
This doesn’t mean you can’t get it to crystallize, it just explains why cbd crystallizes so easy and thc a doesn’t
The ability to freely rotate and move allows for better and easier crystallization
Then it could easily be made from CBDA or THC, no? Multiple sources claim this not to be the case.
Clearly, some form of crystallization needs to occur, but not the closely-packed crystal lattice structures we think of in diamonds. I’m just trying to figure out what that “form of crystallization” looks like in scientific terms
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_crl5Bn-KA/?igshid=ikqvft1bh5di
@AshevilleExtracts makes cbd a shatter it sounds like.
Have you ever seen proper d9 disty? If done correctly d9 will be hard as a rock and shatter like glass
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Sounda about right.
And excess of terpenes will promote nucleation, as well. And pretty much all shatter will eventually sugar/budder. Like compounds want to be with themselves, so they will naturally separate
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Glass-like vs crystal-like molecular packing
That’s the answer I was looking for
Crystallization relies on intermolecular forces to form tightly packed, repeating lattice structures. This is not found in Shatter. Shatter, instead, increases in viscosity as it’s purged of solvent, and rather than allowing these intermolecular bonds to form, prevents atomic diffusion and keeps the molecules disordered internally as it solidifies.
You still need intermolecular bonding forces to find low-energy arrangements to form stable product, but need to keep the molecules far enough apart and stable in their positions that they don’t start forming crystal structures
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It comes down to how easy the molecules can move and how pure your product is
Shatter has no solvent so the molecules can’t move as easy as if you were in a solvent trying to crystallize
This is why cbd crystallizes so easy and thc a wont
Besides the cannabinoids in your shatter you also have impurities (unless you’re really good at crc) and terpenes. These help prevent crystallization IMO because they don’t allow the cannabinoids to move around easy enough to form the lattice structures needed to form crystals
Shatter is a non crystalline glass. It shatters when below it’s glass transition temperature which i assume depends on the terpene, wax content etc. THC too is a glass, but the transition temperature seems to be lower. Put a sheet of thc in a freezer and you will certainly see shatter-like behavior.
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Again, where is the “ask a chemist button”?
Thank you sir!
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By the way this also relates to why “pull and snap” is a thing. In a glassy material, stretching something fast at a high temperature is physically the same as stretching it slow at a cold temperature. The faster you move it, the more “cold” it’s behavior is. If you pull something fast enough, it acts as if it’s so cold it’s below it’s glass transition and snaps. You can easily see this effect with silly putty. It is called time-temperature superposition and let’s you measure the behavior of substances at a given temperature without actually having to reach that temperature.
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Are you suggesting that THC (not THCA) can form glass-like shatter states but not lattice-structured crystals?
To my knowledge this is incorrect. I am fully under the impression that decarbing Shatter to THC is a non-reversible process that permanently alters the physical consistency of the Shatter to an oil-based form. THCA is a solid at room temperature, THC is a highly viscous oil at room temp.
If this is the case, then the decarbing of the molecule alters its ability to form intermolecular bonds, such as is described by @Photon_noir
@MagisterChemist Are you suggesting that THC can be forced into a shatter-like state at very cold temperatures? If so, is there a limit on what molecules can form glass-like states, or is temperature and contamination the two major factors?
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Practically speaking, the difference is temperature. THC and THCA both form glass. The difference is THC isn’t glassy at room temperature but needs to be cooled somewhat for you to see this. If you take pure THC distillate and lay it on wax paper like shatter, you’ll be able to bend and deform it. But if you cool it down to like -20C (typical freezer) it will definitely shatter, just like glassy THCA does at room temperature.
A non-crystalline substance doesn’t have any discrete melting point. It has a soft transition from a hard-glass “shattering” state to a malleable state that gradually increases in flow with temperature. At the fuzzy boundary of this state the behavior is unstable. It seems the glass transition of these impure THCA extracts is very close to room temperature. That accounts for why people have such difficulty getting stable shatter. The slightest change can lower the Tg to where it’s malleable at room temperature, and even stable shatter will start to be malleable on a really hot day.
Decarbed THC seems to have a lower Tg so in most circumstances it does flow at room temperature (not much though… THC distillate is a very tough solid, and you don’t have to cool it much to make it glassy).
Absolutely, and I wouldn’t even call a kitchen freezer “very cold”. I bet if you laid some THC distillate in the snow on a winter day, that would probably be enough to make it shatter.
Almost any liquid can be turned into a glass. For things that don’t form crystals, it is their natural state as they cool. For things that do form crystals, you need to cool them very rapidly, fast enough that they pass the Tg and harden before there’s been a chance to crystallize.
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When I read about making hard candy and thought about how it relates to making shatter, these are the conclusions I made.
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@MagisterChemist said it best already, but pure (decarboxylated) THC and the semi-solid solution of THCa that is raw Cannabis resin are both dilatant fluids (i.e. shear-thickening or non-Newtonian) when warmer and amorphous solids (glass) when colder. Hit them hard and fast and they will both chip and break. Press them slow and gentle and they will both smush and ooze.
Pure THCa is capable of crystallizing. It can also crystallize by precipitation and nucleation from solutions. Crystalline solids are not the same as amorphous solids. They do not behave the same way, either.
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This is the statement you said before that I was refuting to before of thc-a beeing a slight diffrent crystal
Never was able to find it on here but I was sure I read it
Thx
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