Crystallizing menthol – Video

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9N0enIT9c

Crystallizing menthol
An experiment that looks and smells good: Pure menthol is solid on room temperature. It melts easily upon being heated, at only 40-50 C. When cooled again, it crystallizes. I bought some at the pharmacy. I put a crystal between two glass plates and melted it with an incandescent light bulb, the same I used for lighting the stage. I let it rest to cool down. After some minutes very thin crystals began to grow and with the light correctly adjusted at the side of the glass I could make them shine. Individual crystals grow radially (in a circle) but when they meet each other they stop growing in the occupied direction and start growing alongside instead. Note that the cleaner the glass plates were the less crystals appear (thus the greater space the crystals can take) because cleaner plate means less crystal nuclei. The speed of the cooling also matters - slower cooling results in more orderly crystals.From:ViplexifyViews:0 1ratingsTime:00:43More inScience Technology

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Crystallizing menthol - Video