Merlijn van Deen: ‘Even scientific lectures are in French!’

Physics student Merlijn van Deen, winner of a Janneke Fruin-Helb subsidy, is carrying out research for six months in Paris. ‘The challenge of the language and a first-class research institute’ were what attracted him to Paris.

Why are you in Paris?

Merlijn van Deen: 'Yes, it is an elastic band! But frozen to -196 degrees celsius.' Part of the RINO show by Leiden students.'

‘I am on six months work experience at the ESPCI (École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris) in Paris. You can compare the ESPCI more or less with the TU Delft in the Netherlands: it is a university engineering programme, but with research labs. It has one of the best research groups in materials science.’

What kind of research are you doing?

The ESpCI in Paris. Source: Wikipedia user 'Bouba', CC-BY-SA)

‘My research is on the formation of droplets of suspensions, in other words, liquids containing solid particles. A liquid with a lot of particles becomes syrup-like, but this doesn’t seem to apply to the behaviour of droplets. We know that droplets of suspensions fall relatively quickly. Take a shovel of mud, for example; if you let the mud slide off the shovel, it will slide off in lumps, although water itself flows much more evenly. What we are trying to do is to understand this behaviour at a fundamental level by observing how the solid particles move within the liquid.’

What differences or similarities have you noticed between Paris and Leiden?

‘Everyone always makes jokes about French bureaucracy, but it does work – although you might have to wait for it. Admittedly, you are for ever filling in forms and providing documents to a huge number of different people and departments, but the big advantage is that you yourself are in control. In the Netherlands, everything happens automatically, but that means that if something goes wrong in the administration, there’s little or nothing you can do about it.’

And what about the language?

‘Language is treated very differently: in Leiden it would be unthinkable for academic lectures to be given in Dutch, whereas in France it’s standard practice for all lectures to be in French. And they can take it pretty far. I was at a conference recently for researchers at French universities, and one of the presenters, a Frenchman, wanted to give his talk in English. That was not allowed!’

What will you bring with you when you come back to Leiden?

‘My French has improved, although I generally speak English in the lab and in my student house, which happens to be mainly Portuguese. I’ve also learned about Portuguese food from my housemates: they eat late, but the food tastes great.’

(16 January 2012)

Links

Rino - physics experiments organised by Leiden students for schoolchildren (in Dutch)