I have noticed a few threads on here that mention liquid DMT floating although DMT is reported to be more dense than water.

Now usually the response from the scientific minds is that the solution in which the DMT is floating is more dense than standard water and this causes the DMT to float.

I would like to add my own observation to this.

In a previous life somewhere where it was legal I was attempting to do a re x and I had a pan of hot water with a shot glass in it. I had pre warmed the shot glass in an attempt to prevent thermal shock. I removed the shot glass from the water and added around a gram of DMT this melted on contact with the warm glass. When I put the glass back into the hot water (80c) it cracked and split in two. DMT all floated to the top of the water just like an oil.

At the time I was unaware of the density of DMT and recovered my DMT with naphtha a mini A/B and thought nothing more of it.

After reading about the relative densities of H2O and DMT I understand that this should not happen. So what's up?

These are my hypothesis starting with in my opinion the most likely one.

1 - DMT becomes more dense as a crystal (it will sink in this state) and less dense as a liquid.

In this case the heat could be causing the DMT to expand reducing the molecular bond and causing the DMT molecules to become less tightly bound with one another as would be expected from a substance on its way to entering a vapour phase.

2 - Could it be some strange property to do with surface tension and the amount of DMT being small. Think of floating a small paper clip on the surface of water (as children do to to make a compass).

3 - More bizarre yet could the DMT be "trying to escape the heat" and performing one of its gravity defying attempts as is regularly seen in pipes where DMT can be seen to flow up glass away from the source of heat.

I suppose a test could be conducted with pure freebase crystal DMT placed in pure water at 4*c (this is around to temperature water attains its maximum density) and slowly heated with an accurate hot plate and monitor at what temperature it began to float.

Is this the same point at which the crystalline structures break down and it becomes a liquid?

This could be compared against pouring cold water on DMT in a liquid state. The DMT should not be able to instantly crystallise and if it is less dense in a liquid state should float regardless of temperature.

Another better but more difficult test to perform would be to measure the volume of space a gram of crystalline DMT occupied compared to that of a gram of warmed liquid DMT.

Would love to hear from someone with a more in depth chemistry background what could cause this to happen.

If this process was fully understood it may be helpful to drive DMT into the NP layer when performing an extraction.

Mmmh, food for thought, nice...thanks!

I'd say hypothesis 1 is an obvious winner

Hypothesis 2 makes sense but I do wonder though - a paperclip will float if placed on top of the water, but if you push it to the bottom, does it come back up? If not, that would be an indication that surface tension is not a factor when "pulling" dmt to the surface is concerned... At least that's what makes sense to my uneducated mind

Hypothesis 3 - I've yet to see this happen, so for now I'm not touching it with a ten foot pole

I haven't done any experiments yet with dmt in "pure" water - only in basic/saline solutions in which case i'm trying to make dmt float by increasing the solutions density... As of yet inconclusive - still in progress I'll update if there are any conclusions to be drawn

PLUR

Yeah the hypothesises were in order of perceived likelihood.

I think it is likely the first one myself but thought I'd put a few alternative ideas across. My line of thinking was that if no 1 was wrong then no 2 seemed the next most plausible(ish) being as this is the only example (other than boats and idiots) I can think of where a material floats on something less dense than itself. If both no 1 and no 2 are wrong then crazy no 3 gets a shot.

For no 1 to work DMT has to behave opposite to water/ice and condense upon crystallising. I see no reason this couldn't be the case. No 1 would also allow for slow precipitation of crystals at the bottom as can be observed during water crystallisation.

Try putting some DMT in to some hot RO water and see what happens. It won't contain anything to salt the DMT and if my observations are correct DMT should melt and subsequently float if the water is hot enough.

Yes, especially since the reduced density of ice vs water is a peculiarity. Transition from liquid to solid increases density for most of the substances.

Good to know that I'm not to far off track I assumed that compounds could react differently on becoming a solid. I assume this is to do with the way the atoms or molecules arrange themselves as they change state and form a lattice.

Exactly. In solid state molecules are closer to each other therefore taking less volume which by default increases density (density = weight / volume). Ice is an exception.

I've seen samples that have some parts floating on the surface, and some parts sinking to the bottom. I assumed it was a bit of residual solvent keeping the spice in solution on the surface, thus making it lighter.