The second method also outlined in Fryer and Wittmann relies on mixing the paraffin in the solid state with a large excess of benzoic acid crystals, melting the mixture and crystallizing the paraffin on the benzoic acid crystals to template the growth of extended plate-like wax crystals with the long hydrocarbon chain in the plane of the plates. Briefly the paraffin-benzoic acid mixture was enclosed between two glass slides. A flat aluminum bar with one end on a hotplate, (hotplate heated to 100 °C) provided the temperature gradient, and the glass 'sandwich' was slid slowly (~1 cm per second) up and down the bar causing the mixture to melt and then solidify. The mixture was determined to have melted when the mixture changed from a white solid powder mixture to a colorless liquid mixture between the two glass slides.