Kinds of crystal damage

[Ripheus23]

I have a theory that if we took categories of objective damage/change/w/e, to crystals, we could define all kinds of ways that Shards can diffuse their power. Like, there's a special process, in the same "genre" as Splintering, but we'd call it "Melting," maybe, like you'd be melting part of the Shard off, not splitting it off by "sheer force."

Here's a Wikipedia article with some options for the theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallographic_defect

So, second theory: Autonomy is causing avatars not by Splintering, not even a special form of Splintering, but by some other, commensurate process. Like, IDK, top-of-my-head I'll say the one described as 

Quote

Grain boundaries occur where the crystallographic direction of the lattice abruptly changes. This usually occurs when two crystals begin growing separately and then meet.

But who knows... I'm just thinking of Autonomy having a spiritual crystalline form for her/itself, and when she calls certain pockets of her outer Investiture under her umbrella/rubric more sharply, something along these lines might happen. (So I guess Spiritwebs would have crystal-like circuit representations, in principle, or could anyway (as with "a web of cracks").)

[Leyrann]

I don't think you can align crystals and Shards like that. Otherwise it could've been a very interesting theory.

[Ripheus23]

But why are they [Realmatically/Cosmereally aware people in-universe] constantly using crystallographic language with reference to Shards? Shattering, Splintering, Slivers, I mean "Shard" itself is along those lines. And I doubt Spiritwebs are woven by Spiritspiders, especially if they can have "cracks" in them.

I would qualify all this by saying that of course Sanderson would be using a rather technical definition of "crystal" at the end of this day, but I don't see that as an obstacle to extrapolating more from the terms we have (e.g. "Shard") by reference to more crystallographic terminology.