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
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| Unpolarized View of vanillin crystals |
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| Vanillin crystals through crossed polarizers |
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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.
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| Vanillin crystals on right are remelted crystals re-forming against boundaries from unmelted circular seed from initial melt. |
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| Ripple-like formations. I speculate some mechanism akin to non-linearities in 2-d laminar flows at work here. |
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| Remelt crystal fields (Above) recrystalize in a more uniform manner than crystal fields seeded by random seed cooling out of the melt(Below). |
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| Gaze upon this wind-swept field of pastel blue and pink wheat rendered à la Picaso |
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| A Rorschach inkblot test! What do you see? I choose to percieve a blue rose. |
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| The Vanillin Neptune is pink and its dark side is blue-green. It spins calmly in space while electrical storms flash in its atmosphere. |
Microscpe : Olympus CHB x10(0.25) objective with x10 eyepiece
Camera : LG Optimus Black (1.75 stops underexposure with "Vivid" color option)
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