Crystal clear

In graduate school organic chemistry, it can feel strange to run a reaction in a 500ml flask, and filling a 2 litre flask seems like a trip to a land of giants. Crystallisation is often nothing more than an interesting oddity – brushed off when you really need to confirm a structure, for example.

But when I began working in an industrial preparatory laboratory, I quickly got used to the idea of a 12 or even 20 litre flask in my hood. Crystallisation then became a routine tool of purification, and a necessary craft that I needed to master.