I know some synthetic chemists, and getting some new compound that they've made, to grow into a crystal, is a huge thing. With a good crystal, you can get a mol

I know some synthetic chemists, and getting some new compound that they've made, to grow into a crystal, is a huge thing. With a good crystal, you can get a molecular structure from X-Ray crystallography. Also, crystallizing something and washing away the solvent, was a way to purify a compound. The chemists talked about all sorts of rituals and superstitions, to coax a compound to crystallize. Usually it was just in good fun, something to talk about when a particular compound was being stubborn. With drug compounds, a different crystal structure of the same compound is a different drug. And complicated compounds can have multiple stable structures. Getting particular crystal structures to grow reliably in large quantities is a big deal for the drug business. So it's definitely more than a hobby, but yet everybody enjoys seeing these nice big crystals.