A new and comprehensive experimentally supported view of crystallization, crystal melting and the glass transition

Using unmodulated StepScan DSC technique it was determined that crystal melting is initiated by a resonant increase in heat capacity, leading to lattice breakdown. A thermodynamic limit of the lowest possible crystallization temperature was also found. A fundamental problem of the kinetic model of the glass state has been identified - neglecting quite common but crucial van der Waals interactions. The consequences of these interactions will immediately eliminate debatable issues of the kinetic model and show that the glass transition is a thermodynamically equilibrium process dependent only on the chemical composition. At temperatures below the glass transition, only the solid phase exist, either as a thermodynamically stable crystal or a thermodynamically metastable glass. A key consequence of the thermodynamics of the glass transition is the elimination of the thermodynamically unrealistic entropy crisis knows as the Kauzmann paradox, which is only a consequence of the kinetic model.