Pretransitional and premelting effects in menthol

To canonic features of melting/freezing discontinuous phase transitions, one can encounter the lack of pre transitional effects in the liquids state and weak premelting effects with non-defined temperature evolutions in the crystalline state. This report shows the evidence for long-range and critical-like pretransitional effects in liquid menthol for electrooptic Kerr effect (EKE) and nonlinear dielectric effect (NDE). These methods are inherently associated with a strong electric field.The premelting effect, with well-defined temperature evolution, was evidenced in the crystalline state. Model explanations of these phenomena are proposed. For the premelting effect, the 'reversed' Mossotti-Catastrophe behavior is suggested.