User blog comment:Zolnir/Dust, The Ultimate Theory (Refined)/@comment-15108745-20130815150111/@comment-11188061-20130815152533

1) I'm basing this off Weiss' words, 'Fire, Ice, Thunder, Energy!' rant, which was mentioned by you in the previous theory lol. As for light blue Dust it's just a diluted version of the blue crystal (The more blue the more pure it is, so to speak).

2) Refer Answer 1.

3) The difference? White basically combines all the elemental energies as one, so you can assume that the enemy is burned, frozen, and electrocuted all at once. While we can't actually see the lightning, I remember people describing the Giant Armor disintegrating as, "shattered into fragments of ice while burning" or something (check the wiki). That's the proof.

The difference? White is all colors of Dust combined together. Just refer to White trailer and you'll see what I mean; near the end Weiss activated all the Dusts in Mrynaster at once to form the pure White energy. Red is just, well, red lol. Refer to a basic color/light diagram in Wikipedia should help you understand better.

4) Between Blue and Red. Again, just search on Wikiepedia. There's really no mistake to this, because there's no way the writers or Monty Oum are going to screw with the laws of color themselves. For this matter at least they must refer to real life.

As we can see from the Episodes, Violet produces directed and controlled kinetic energy. We can assume that the Blue Dust stabilizes the volatility inside a Red Dust, thus providing control and allowing a surge of powerful energy to be manipulated in every possible direction.

Examples: The Violet Dust Glynda used was so powerful that each bolt could knock an airplane unbalanced. When Weiss used it (if I remember correctly) she produced platforms underneath her feet that propelled her forwards in a much more smoother manner as compared to the usual ones (Yang, Ruby). In the end she also created a massive platform that practically repelled the huge golem into the air.

5) Glynda was using Violet Dusts - it should be obvious just by looking at the color - and through Dust technology and her own skills she manipulated shards like homing missiles.

Even though the shards were exploded by Crimson a number of times, there were enough residue that Glynda could still control them until Crimson was forced to explode all of them to near ashes, thus eliminating any possibility for Glynda to continue controlling them. As I've mentioned before, Glynda was probably on a simple patrol and thus did not bring that much Dust, nor did she expect to fight an opponent that strong.

She probably has other Dusts in store, but very likely they're not suitable for the task (capture) she had in mind, and so she was forced to let them go. Ruby's reaction with some follow up shots was good though, even if it's completely ineffective.