The photos below illustrate the process of crystallization.
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| Heat some solvent to boiling. Place the solid to be recrystallized in an Erlenmeyer flask. | Pour a small amount of the hot solvent into the flask containing the solid. | Swirl the flask to dissolve the solid. | |||||
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| Place the flask on the steam bath to keep the solution warm. | If the solid is still not dissolved, add a tiny amount more solvent and swirl again. | When the solid is all in solution, set it on the bench top. Do not disturb it! | |||||
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| After a while, crystals should appear in the flask. | You can now place the flask in an ice bath to finish the crystallization process. | ||||||
You are now ready to filter the solution to isolate the crystals. Please see the section on vacuum filtration. After your crystals are filtered from the solution, put them on a watchglass as shown below.
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| Here is the filter paper with crystals on it. | Carefully scrape the crystals onto the watchglass. | ||||
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| Let the crystal finish drying on the watchglass. | |||||
It's hard to see the beauty of the crystals in the above pictures. Below is a close up:
And below are some crystals of a Diels-Alder adduct:
