賢者の海 ___贤者之海 ___ Mare Ingenii : Sea of Ingenuity: Polarized Light Microscopy

If you've eaten anything that was vanilla flavoured, then you know the smell of vanillin.
I purchased a bottle of what appears to be white crystals of synthetic vanillin from a baking supplies store. A small pinch of crystals were wedged under a cover slip and gently heated until they have melted. The solid-liquid melting transition is surprising sharp compared to sugar and yields beautiful fields of crystals.

The initial melt yielded circular crystal patterns due to crystal formation around random seeds

Unpolarized View of vanillin crystals

Vanillin crystals through crossed polarizers

Upon gingerly reheating and partially remelting 3/4 of the vanillin on the slide, the melt reform by using previously formed crystal boundaries from unmelted crystals from the previous melt.

Vanillin crystals on right are remelted crystals re-forming against boundaries from unmelted circular seed from initial melt.

Ripple-like formations. I speculate some mechanism akin to non-linearities in 2-d laminar flows at work here.

Remelt crystal fields (Above) recrystalize in a more uniform manner than crystal fields seeded by random seed cooling out of the melt(Below).

I spent hours examining the crystals. The variations in the landscape are myrid and mesmerizing. I was listening to Smetana's Moldau and it was a fittingly entrancing accompaniment.