T-Licht 22.3

T-Licht Association magazine of T.S.V. ‘Jan Pieter Minckelers’

APRIL 2018 VOLUME 22 EDITION 03

Japie around the world:

Porto & Manchester Elevator etiquette The unwritten rules, written down

Internship at our southern neighbours The tale of an MSMC student using Aspen

The ONCS It is not the sound a pig makes

Dear reader, Here it is, the third and second-last edition of this year’s T-Licht. In this edition, you can read about the study trip to Porto, the foreign beer weekend in Manchester, the ONCS and much more! My name is Mariska and at the beginning of this academic year I started with the MSMC master track. I did my bachelor at the university of Wageningen. That may sound a bit odd, because that university is mostly known for agriculture. Actually they also have a chemistry study, which is a bit hidden under the name ‘Molecular Life Science’. During an exchange period to the technical university of Denmark, I really enjoyed meeting new people and other student associations. This is why I decided to do my master at yet another university. In Wageningen, I was a member of the Freshmen and the study program committee. I wanted to become active in Japie as well and do something creative, so therefore joined the editorial board. My name is Vandhana and I am in my second year of the CPT track. Being someone who always happens to observe peculiar things around and then has an opinion on it- you can imagine that I always have a lot to say! In consideration for the people around me, I often turn to writing to share things. I joined the editorial board as I find it relaxing and a good break from everything engineering. I also used to write for my university newsletter back home. However, it’s a pity that I will be spending only a few months here as I am close to completion of my masters. Mariska Brüls Vandhana Varughese

09 Studytrip to Porto Japie on tour: From port to eucalyptus trees and from surfing to methyl diphenyl isocyanate. What was going on in Porto?

28 Bless you! Real life chemistry: During the spring, lots of people walk around teary-eyed. Not because they’re sad, but because of their hayfever. What is the chemical cause of this?

T-Licht April 2018 04

By the chairman: The power of many

05 Education: Do you know what the department and university are facing?

Interview with: Prof. Dr. Ir. Jan van Hest

Culture shock: Dutch practicality

Y van de Huismeester: English, please

Skills: How to give a presentation the Wallonian way

Carte blanche: Eurest soup

Letting off some steam: How to elevator 101

Japie on tour: Porto

Real life chemistry: The chemistry of hayfever

Van de donateur: Uyt den niet zo Ouden Doosch

Carte blanche: March for science

Japie on tour: Manchester

Letting off some steam: Stereotypes

Science news: Fighting water pollution

Mixology 101: Mix and match

15 Puzzle: Binary mystery 16

PhD article: Understanding Fisher-Tropsch catalysts with computer simulations

18 Gastartikel: Kerstpuzzelkoorts

37 Spraakwater: Porto: Levenslang trauma aan dubbelfris 38 ONCS: The circus that is called ONCS

Throphy case: Bear with us

Internship report: Should MSMC- and CPTstudents switch lab coats and safety helmets?

Beer of the quartile: How a bird got mixed with a goat

“The new source of energy?.”

Colophon Volume 22, edition 3, Circulation: 550 Editor in chief: Marc Willemsen Editorial board: Mariska Brüls, Rick Curvers, Alex van de Greef, Janne van Gisbergen, Jolanda van Helden, Limi Kalapurackal, Vandhana Varughese, Marle Vleugels, Koen Vlot, Woutje ter Weel, Thomas Werkhorst. Printer: Gildeprint Drukkerijen info@gildeprint.nl

The T-Licht is the association magazine of T.S.V. ‘Jan Pieter Minckelers’, study association of the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Contact: T.S.V. ‘Jan Pieter Minckelers’ Attn. Het T-Licht Helix STW 0.25 Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven Tel: 040-2473756 tlicht.st@tue.nl | www.tsvjapie.nl

The editorial board always reserves the right to edit or decline the provided copy. Index of advertisements: Pg 43: Teijin Aramid Back cover: Zeeland Refinery

The power of many By the chairman

Everybody has an opinion and everyone wants to have their opinion heard in every discussion. The problem of many is that not all small opinions will be discussed, as this is simply not possible. In my opinion, everybody should voice their own opinion and live up to their responsibility in a democracy. The university tries to listen as much as possible to its students and staff to make sure they are following the best possible path. Within the university we have a university council, which contains several student parties chosen by the students of the university to represent them. This council has to approve documents like the exam regulations and if they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t approve this document, the executive board of the university is not allowed to enforce their policy. Throughout the university there is a trend where students participate less and less in the discussions about strategy or important decisions which will impact their daily life.

During the planar discussions about strategy 2030 which the workgroup offered to get more input from the members of the university, the only present students were some board members of the study associations. When the preliminary results of the questionnaire about the new schedule were presented the people present were again only a few board members of study associations.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everybody should voice their own opinionâ&#x20AC;? Both these subjects will impact the student life, one sooner and one in the long run, and I will not believe that the board members of the study associations are the only ones with an opinion on these subjects. The decisions about the two subjects mentioned above are really important for the university and the course it will follow. The largest community of the

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university is the student community and therefore their opinion is the most important opinion to be listened to. As a study association we try to represent the opinions of our students but this is only possible if the opinions of the members are discussed. I therefore would like to urge the students of our department and association to participate more in these university wide discussions.

WRITTEN BY:

Tom van den Berg As the chairman, Tom is worried about the participation of students in university wide discussions.

Do you know what the department and university are facing? Education

After a very stormy day, the calmness came back as it has never happened. With the restored calmness, it’s already time for me to write another article. Half a year has passed by already when writing and when you are reading this, the last quarter is almost about to happen. With time passing by, also a lot of things are going on within the university that I will tell you something about. The first major thing that is going on at this moment, is the change of the schedule. You all might know that the university has to deal with an increasing growth of students. Therefore, the university does not have enough facilities anymore and students notice that by not having space anymore in Metaforum to study for example. Also, there is not planned a seat for every student to follow a lecture. Facing this problem, the university is now trying to solve it. After examining the current schedule, the first thought was that the university should switch to a 12-hours schedule. Luckily for all of us, this is not going to happen. The plans are currently that the schedule of nowadays is going to be changed a bit. The university will take into account that students have activities in the evening and therefore lectures in the evening will finish around 19.00h instead of 20.00h. What the other consequences of that change are, is not clear yet, because not all the stakeholders agree with each other.

part of Belgium. If a program is not accredited, the certificate for finishing a program is not very worthy. Therefore, you can imagine that all different parts of the department are working hard to again get the needed accreditation. Another important note is, that you have to keep in mind that the feedback you gave and will give the coming year(s) will help the department to keep this important accreditation.

Next to the change in the schedule, another important thing is going to happen. This will not be university wide, but on a departmental level. This year, the bachelor’s and master’s programs will be accredited by the NVAO. The NVAO is the Dutch Flemish Accreditation Organization, which accredit the programs in the Netherlands and the Flemish

I hope that you have better insights by now in what the university and department are going through at this time. If you have any input for the schedule problem or anything else, please don’t mind approaching me!

WRITTEN BY:

Jasmijn Janssen Jasmijn is writing this article to give some insights into important things that the department and university are facing.

Eurest soup

the new source of energy? Carte Blanche

What is the best way to cure your hangover? The ‘answers’ are often found in clickbait articles on Facebook and other social media, but one of the things which shouldn’t be missing is Eurest’s soup. As you may have noticed yourself, the clear soups are often quite salty. This is perfect in order to get your osmotic value back on track, but for the other days people often prefer the bounded soup, which tastes less salty. In this article we will measure how much salt these soups contain and which other alternatives there are for these salty solutions. Throughout the campus, there are nine Eurest canteens. Depending on the location they offer one or two types of soup, often this is a clear soup and a bounded soup. For the test four soups were bought at Helix, Auditorium, Metaforum and Flux since most of us lunch there. With the help of conductivity measurements an approximation of the salt concentration can be made.

consists only of NaCl and KCl. The electrical conductivity of these two salts is relatively close to each other. Furthermore, we neglect the anti-caking agents (such as E535/ E536) since these are present in low quantities. Also proteins and acids are not taken into account. The soups have been bought on the 25th of January and might vary, depending on the recipe and cook.

Disclaimer

Results

It should be noted that the concentration of the salt is measured solely based on the conductivity of the fluid. The soups were filtered (pore size 4-7 μm) since the solid particles decrease the conductivity. The bounded soups were diluted in order to filter them and a compensation was made for this dilution. It was assumed that the salt which is added to the soup (by the soup pre-mix and by the cook)

The conductivity is measured and compared with literature and a calibration NaCl solution. The results are displayed in Table 1. It might not be a surprise that a clear soup has the highest salt concentration (vegetable soup) but it is quite a surprise that the chicken soup is less salty than expected. Both bounded soups have a higher salt concentration than the chicken soup, which is quite a surprise since they seem to taste

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less salty. Possibly this is due to a lot of other different flavours which disguise the salt and some potassiumrich vegetables. Before you read further, how much do you think is the maximum recommended salt intake for a person each day?

“...with one cup of clear soup, you can already have 50% of your daily salt intake.” The answer to that question is six grams a person a day according to ‘Voedingscentrum’ (Dutch semigovernmental institution which gives information about nutrition). The soup cups have a total volume of

340 mL if you fill them completely, but in practice people fill them around 280 mL (so you can get more than 20% more soup if you are pushing it to the limits!). This means that with one cup of clear soup, you can already ingest 50% of your daily salt intake. In order to compare the Eurest soups with soup which you buy in the supermarket, the salt concentration of Unox soups is also given in Table 1. To put it further into perspective: seawater from the north sea contains 35 g/L of salts of which 24 grams is NaCl.

Energy source So these salty soups are ideal for people with hangovers and low blood pressures, but what else can we do with it? As some of you might know, power can be generated by reverse electrodialysis (RED) in which a high concentration salt stream and freshwater stream are separated by ion selective membranes. Due to the salt concentration difference, a small potential is created which can be transformed into power. This technology is often indicated as ‘Blue energy’. This is one of the research topics of the membrane group in the department.

blue energy calculator of Fujifilm with their RED membrane technology. This results in roughly 260 kJ (0.072 kWh) in electric energy. This is just enough to power your laptop for one hour when you are browsing or to turn on one light bulb for four hours. Besides the low power production, using the soup for blue energy would give a lot of fouling problems. It might be a better idea to use the heat of the soup for heating applications. The following assumptions will therefore be made: the soup is served at 80 °C, a room temperature of 20 °C and a ΔT of 15 °C in the heat exchanger (like the hot water heater in your room). Then the Eurest soup has 67.8 MJ heating capacity. With 80 W/m3 as

a rule of thumb, we can heat up a space of 10 m2 (2.3m in height) for ten hours a day. In short: with all the Eurest soup which is produced each day on the campus, you can heat up a small corridor room with one light, which can be turned on for 5 hours a day, except for the weekend.

WRITTEN BY:

Thomas Werkhorst During lunch some people joked about using the soup for blue energy. After the calculations Thomas has to conclude that although the soups are salty, it is unlikely that it will be used for blue energy.

So what is the power potential of all the different kinds of soup made by Eurest? If we assume that all nine locations produce on average four pans (10 L each) of vegetable soup, an estimate can be made based on the

4 07

How to elevator 101 Letting off some steam

In the last edition of T-Licht you could read about the etiquettes that apply to a formal gala. This event only takes place a few times during your time as a student. A more frequent occurring event during your time as a student, especially in the Helix building, is using the elevator. However, some people seem to lack the proper elevator etiquettes. Especially if you work on the 4th floor, like me, it is of uttermost importance to understand and to apply this etiquette. The first part of the etiquette raises the following question, when do I actually take the elevator? In my opinion, if you have healthy legs and have nothing precious to carry (like coffee, soup, or super heavy things), the 4th floor is the only floor to which you take the elevator. The 3rd floor is somewhat questionable, but if you’d like to have a solid workout at the start of your day you should definitely take the stairs to the 3rd floor. So, do not and I repeat do not take the elevator to the 2nd floor if you’re going to the new Praxis (yes freshmen, I’m talking to you) and definitely not to the 1st floor, you have legs and they work fine. Another situation that needs some etiquetting is the following: a student/employee is the first one in the elevator and presses the button for the 4th floor. The next person, perfectly healthy and carrying nothing precious (remember: coffee, soup or super heavy things), comes in and presses the button for the 3rd, or even worse, 2nd floor. And then, the third person comes in, sees that there are already two buttons used and decides that it does not matter too

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much if the elevator stops at another floor (2nd or 3rd, depending on the second person’s choice). This leaves the first person to go super slowly to the 4th floor, even slower than when he/she had taken the stairs. Solution: proper etiquette. If you’re going to the 3rd floor but someone has already pushed the button for the 4th floor, just walk down from the 4th floor (yes BMT people, I’m talking about you). Otherwise, the person going to the 4th floor will just walk from 3rd to 4th since this is faster, and the elevator will go up for nothing and/or nobody. Same goes for pushing 2nd floor when someone has pushed the button for the 3rd floor.

And of course, besides helping your colleagues on the 4th floor to start their day without any irritation, it is also better for the environment if the elevator does not run unnecessary. Use your legs people!

WRITTEN BY:

Marle Vleugels As a student in the group of Bert Meijer on the 4th floor, Marle noticed that much needed elevator etiquette is not present in the Helix building.

Study trip to

Porto Japie on tour

In order to avoid the cold and rainy Eindhoven, the Study Trip Committee 2018 organized a study trip to the city of Porto, located in Portugal. A group of 25 students, accompanied by dr.ir. Kay Buist, visited this gorgeous city to learn more about its university, companies and culture. From the 30th of January to the 4th of February they enjoyed the sun, the food and the famous Port wine.

The study trip started early in the morning on Tuesday. We left at 6.30 AM by bus to Zaventem Airport, where we skipped several traffic jams by using the bus lane. We managed to arrive in time for departure, but unfortunately had to wait because our flight was delayed. After the twoand-a-half-hour flight, we arrived in Porto and were welcomed by the sunny weather. We travelled to our hostel by metro and had some time to freshen up. After everyone was ready, we did some sightseeing together and went downhill with a cable car to the famous Port-cellar district. Here we had a glass of Port and had a collective dinner, which contained several Portuguese tapas dishes. On Wednesday we left Porto by bus to the nearby Estarreja, one of the most important chemistry-related industry areas of Portugal. In the morning we travelled to Dow Estarreja. This facility of the famous multinational is focused on the production of PMDI (methyl diphenyl isocyanate), an essential raw material for the production of polyurethane. We received a really nice in-depth presentation about the plant and Dow Portugal. They taught us a lot about the underlying chemistry and the cooperation with other chemical

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companies in the Estarreja area. After the presentation we were able to take a walk over the plant and visit the control room. Afterwards the company offered us a lunch where we could talk with several young engineers. In the afternoon we visited CUF, also located in Estarreja. This company is the biggest chemical company in Portugal. It produces several industrial chemicals, like aniline, and several nanostructured materials. We started this visit by receiving a presentation and learned more about the pursuits and goals of CUF. It had a nice connection to the previous visit, because the aniline produced by CUF is used by Dow to produce PMDI. Afterwards we had a walk over the plant, which was pretty chaotic. After the visit it was time for our bus trip back to the hostel, where we arrived a bit later than planned because our bus broke down.

On Thursday we went to visit the university. In the morning we visited FCUP, the faculty of sciences. The department of chemistry and biochemistry was located there. With a presentation, they taught us a lot about their program and educational goals. We had a small coffee break (the Portuguese are addicted to their expresso) and could talk with some professors. Afterwards we visited several labs and research groups. The standards of safety were relatively low compared to ours. Almost no one was wearing safety glasses, people were eating in the labs and all the chemicals were stalled in an open wooden cabinet. In the afternoon we travelled by bus to FEUP, the faculty of engineering. This engineering faculty is the most prestigious engineering faculty of Portugal. In this faculty the department of chemical engineering was located. We had a lunch with several professors, which consisted of a luxury buffet of Portuguese foods. Afterwards there was a presentation where we learned a lot about the department. It was especially interesting to hear about the selection procedure, which is entirely based on grades received in high school, the students with the highest grades can choose first. Kay Buist also gave a short presentation about the TU/e and we informed them about Japie. Afterwards we visited several research groups and learned more about their research topics.

In the evening it was possible to enjoy a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dinnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; with some Portuguese students. When we arrived pitchers full with some kind of white sangria were put on the tables. And during the dinner the students started singing songs out of nowhere, of course we replied this by singing the Japie song. After the dinner all the tables and chairs got put to the side and the restaurant was transformed into a club. Afterwards some participants followed the Portuguese students to enjoy the nightlife together. On Friday we visited the Navigator Company, which is one of the biggest paper producers in the world. In the morning we visited their research facility RAIZ. They are researching the different chemical processes behind the paper production and the processing of the rest products. Unfortunately, we got picked up by the same bus and bus driver (who did not speak English) as on Wednesday and the bus started smoking in the middle of the highway. He parked the bus on the side of the road and we had to wait for an hour for its replacement. Even though we were delayed we were still able to receive a nice presentation at RAIZ, visit their labs and have a walk through their eucalyptus garden, which was very beautiful to see. After a lunch offered by the company we went by bus to Figueira da Foz to visit the paper mill.

This enormous plant showed us what was done with the research done in RAIZ. We received a presentation and visited the two gigantic paper presses. Furthermore, we visited their packaging facility. One of the remarkable things we learned was that the itching after you receive a paper cut, is caused by salts in the paper that are used to neutralize the static electricity caused by the presses. Porto is one of the few places where you can surf on natural waves. Of course, we wanted to experience this ourselves and we had a surf clinic on Saturday morning. The waves were very refreshing and some participants even managed to surf properly! After the clinic we had some free time where everyone could explore Porto. Later in the afternoon we had a collective Port cellar tour. Here we got to know more about the production of this wine, and of course we had a taste ourselves! We ended the Saturday with a collective dinner near Ponte Luis 1, a famous bridge made by the assistant of Gustave Eiffel. And afterwards some participants enjoyed the nightlife of Porto for one last time. On Sunday we woke up early in the morning at 5.30 AM and travelled to Porto Airport. After buying some final souvenirs we flew back to Eindhoven Airport. After an exhausting, unforgettable and amazing week in

Porto everyone could go back home and catch up on sleep.

WRITTEN BY:

Rick Arts As member of the MEC 2018 Rick wanted to share some of the stories of the study trip to Porto.

Uyt den niet zo Ouden Doosch Van de donateur

Op 26 oktober ontving ik het volgende bericht in mijn e-mail: “Ook voor editie 22.2 van het T-Licht zijn wij wederom op zoek naar een enthousiaste donateur om een stukje te schrijven. Lijkt het je leuk om een stukje te schrijven voor het T-Licht?”. Eenieder die mij nog kent, kan zich voorstellen waarom ik dit heb afgewezen en nu pas een stukje schrijf. Wie het niet begrijpt, volgt hieronder gewoon de uitleg… Ik heb de hoofdredacteur bevestigd dat ik zijn mening deel, dat de voorraadbeheerder eigenlijk de tweede functie zou moeten zijn in een F.O.R.T.-commissie, maar dat ik graag voor één editie later een stukje zou willen schrijven. Gelukkig was dit voor de redactie geen probleem en kon een ander oud-lid bereid gevonden worden om over zijn loopbaan te vertellen. Op 15 januari volgde dan het tweede verzoek of ik voor deze editie mijn gedachten op papier wilde zetten, met daarbij gevoegd enkele voorbeelden van vorige stukken ‘van de Donateur’ (twee stukjes over loopbanen, een filosofisch stuk en een geschiedenisstukje).

Het laat maar weer zien dat dit stukje overal over kan gaan, en waarschijnlijk wat vaker over werk dan over andere zaken. Donateur wordt je immers pas als je (net) weg bent bij Japie en gevraagd voor een T-Licht stukje nog weer wat later. Verder wordt je vanuit de redactie ook vrijgelaten om te schrijven wat je wil, zolang het maar binnen het gestelde aantal tekens blijft. Dit, samen met het feit dat het een lustrumjaar is, is voor mij reden om op de afgelopen 5 jaar terug te blikken. Nog geen vijf jaar geleden was het 5de lustrum van de F.O.R.T., genoeg reden voor mooie feestjes, of Super

“Het maakt mij niet zozeer uit wat je doet, maar doe iets!” Donderdagen. Nu vijf jaar later is het goed te zien dat er gevierd wordt dat de F.O.R.T. al dertig jaar een begrip is. Een begrip dat ik zelf al tien jaar ken en waarvoor ik mij acht jaar geleden een heel jaar heb ingezet. Het is dan ook nog steeds mooi om te zien dat er elk jaar weer mensen zo gek gevonden worden om die traditie door te zetten. Met drie commissies (de F.O.R.T.commissie, Hét Tappersgilde en de 5de F.O.R.T.-lustrumcommissie) had ik er denk ik niet meer uit kunnen halen. Het wordt tijd om daar weer verhalen over op te halen, die helaas niet aan dit stukje schrijven toevertrouwd kunnen worden. Het is hoog tijd voor een reünie… Gelukkig is het heel goed mogelijk om na je studie op allerlei vlakken betrokken te blijven bij enerzijds Japie en de F.O.R.T. Je kan op de hoogte

blijven van de activiteiten en af en toe eens een bezoekje brengen. Ook via de alumnivereniging is het zeer makkelijk om de faculteit te blijven zien. Hierdoor blijf je in contact met enerzijds de mensen op de faculteit en anderzijds de nieuwe lichtingen. Als je eenmaal weg bent uit Eindhoven (of als je er zelfs nog studeert…) is het toch wel gauw dat je mensen niet meer kent van de jaarlagen onder je. Het is ook veel leuker om met je eigen jaarlaag contact te houden. Hiermee bedoel ik niet sec het ‘cohort’ waarin je begonnen bent, maar de mensen waarmee je (al dan niet door je eigen vertraging) gestudeerd hebt. Waarmee je hebt zitten ploeteren om dat laatste stukje van de Navier-Stokes vergelijkingen correct dimensieloos te maken, zodat je met een aantal transformaties toch de dimensieloze temperatuur Θ kon berekenen. Het zijn namelijk deze vriendschappen die blijven bestaan, ook als je elkaar langere tijd niet ziet. Dit komt (hopelijk) niet door het feit dat je samen deze berekeningen hebt gemaakt, maar doordat er zoveel meer gebeurd is daar omheen. Dit is dan ook een heel belangrijk stukje van het studeren: het sociale gebeuren eromheen. Het maakt mij niet zozeer uit wat je doet, maar doe iets! Daarbij komt dan nog,

voor diegene die voor een bestuur kiezen (waar dan ook): laat je zien buiten de vereniging. Natuurlijk komt de vereniging op de eerste plek en heb je daar je verantwoording af te leggen, er is echter nog heel veel buiten Eindhoven/studie/sport/etc. te ontdekken. En dat is het waard, ook al slaap je er misschien een aantal uurtjes minder door (per dag…). Nog altijd probeert een viertal S&ST-besturen uit 2010-2011 om jaarlijks af te spreken. (Oké, het feit dat er inmiddels wat betere banden geslagen zijn, helpt natuurlijk ook wel mee…). Hetzelfde geldt voor de vriendengroep, waarmee we jaarlijks een (lang) weekend weggaan. Voor dit jaar weer in de handen van drie, die wederom niet vertellen waar we heen gaan – we hoeven alleen even geld over te maken. Afgezien van de jaarlijkse uitjes zijn er genoeg verjaardagen, etentjes en uitjes tussendoor, dat je juist moeite zou moeten doen om elkaar níet te zien. Tot slot, voor wie tot hier erbij gebleven is om te weten wat ik nou voor keuzes heb gemaakt (of wie globaal leest totdat hij zoiets vindt): keuzes zijn natuurlijk legio voor een processtechnoloog. Er zijn zoveel verschillende kanten waar je heen kan, dat het lastig is om hier richting in te kiezen als je zelf niet goed weet waar je heen wilt en wat je uiteindelijk wil doen.

Gelukkig is er ook nog genoeg tijd om hierin te veranderen tijdens je loopbaan. Al met al ben ik heel saai bij mijn stage bedrijf blijven hangen, waar ik nu bijna drie jaar werk. Gelukkig heb ik in die drie jaar wel al genoeg mee kunnen maken: twee samenvoegingen, drie functies, en verschillende tripjes (Houston, Caïro en het illustere Maagdenburg in 2017). Dus kies vooral wat je leuk lijkt, en waar je je goed bij voelt – maar wees ook niet bang om verder te kijken. De wereld is klein, zeker in deze tijd!

GESCHREVEN DOOR:

Frank van Wijk Frank van Wijk blikt als oud Japie lid en fervent F.O.R.T. fanaat terug op zijn tijd binnen en rondom de borrelruimte en de universiteit waar hij jarenlang met plezier heeft rondgelopen.

Portefeuille ‘07-’08 ‘09-’10 ‘10-’11 ‘12-’13 ‘11-’14

Begin studie Scheikundige Technologie Voorraadbeheerder 22ste commissie F.O.R.T. ‘Pie Debye” Secretaris 53ste bestuur der T.S.V. ‘Jan Pieter Minckelers’ Legatus Vicesimi Secundi 5de F.O.R.T.-lustrumcommissie Lid van Hét Tappersgilde

Stereotypes, how wonderful! Letting off some steam

Have you always wondered how you should behave or what your role is in this society? Well, don’t look any further, because stereotypes have all the answers you are looking for! All you have to do is fill in your gender, skin colour and whether or not you’re good looking in the eyes of the media and it will tell you exactly what your stereotypical role is in society. Isn’t that just wonderful? I recently started watching the series “The 100”. In short, the story is about a group of one hundred teenagers who are sent to earth to see if humans can survive there after a nuclear disaster. I thought it sounded like an interesting concept, which it was, but I was not even halfway through the second episode when I just wanted to throw my laptop out of the window from frustration (which, luckily, I did not). Not because the characters were acting like complete idiots, but because of all the stereotypes that they managed to fit in (quite impressive actually). You have your Asian kid that is the smart engineer, that one handsome black guy who is never truly the main character and then a bunch of white people who are all way

“Can we please get rid of all these ancient stereotypes”

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too good looking (because only handsome people survive of course). Naturally, all the guys are muscular testosterone-filled alpha males who fight all the time. Well, except the Asian guy whose role it is to invent stuff and who will clearly never get one of the girls. Obviously, this is how everything works in the real world so take note guys, because if you are not some model that beats people up when there is a disagreement, I am afraid that you will not get any girls. Oh, and you have to be white of course! Now for the girls, they clearly have to be protected and fought over. They are also good to use for sex so the guys can have something else to do than fight and kill each other. Otherwise

you can be a doctor or try to prevent the men from killing each other by being some kind of wise woman. So girls, remember, you are not able to protect yourself so always have a guy (or two guys if you’re the main character) there to protect you so they’re able to rip pieces of their shirts of when you’re bleeding. Of course it is just a show, but can we please get rid of all these ancient stereotypes, they are really getting old.

WRITTEN BY:

Woutje ter Weel Woutje is currently on episode eleven of this series but still stands by her point firmly.

Binary mystery Puzzle

Each edition we try to test your logic and puzzle solving skills using a brain teaser or other forms of mental gymnastic excersises. This time we decided to go a little easy on you and kept it as simple as 1, 0 and... well nothing else really. In order to solve this puzzle, each box should be either a zero or a one. It is not allowed to put more than two similar numbers to or below each other. Furthermore, all columns and rows are unique and each one should contain an equal number of zeros and ones. There is only a single solution to the puzzle.

Last edition the winner, Melvin van der Schaft received a Nintendo 2DS with Super Mario 3D Land. This time, the winner will receive a Tefal Fry Delight XL Airfryer, courtesy of ExxonMobil. In order to win this prize, you need to mail a scan of the finished puzzle to tlicht.st@tue.nl before the 14th of May. Disclaimer: only regular Japie members are eligible for the prize.

Understanding

Fischer-Tropsch catalysts with computer simulations PhD article

To preserve our beautiful planet for future generations, we need a sustainable society. True sustainability requires two main ingredients: a renewable source of energy and selective chemical conversion processes. One promising conversion process is Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis. After a carbon source has been broken down into syngas - a mixture of CO and H2 – it can be converted into clean fuels and chemicals with FT synthesis. The Fischer-Tropsch process was developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in the 1920s. Two early adopters of the FT process were Germany during the Second World War followed by South Africa during the apartheid regime. Both countries had to cope with a shortage of liquid fuels due to war efforts or economic sanctions. FT synthesis turned out to be a promising conversion process from abundant coal and gas reserves to the more desired liquid fuels. Currently several big commercial FT plants are still being operated. An additional advantage of the fuels produced in these plants is that they contain almost no sulfur or other harmful contaminations. Unfortunately, many mechanistic details are still unknown

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or under debate. As a result, various promising conversion pathways are still economically unfeasible. To solve these issues, quantum-chemical computer simulations can give insight into mechanistic aspects not available experimentally. During my Bachelor’s studies I was already interested in computer simulations and programming. Unfortunately the regular courses never extended past some basic MATLAB. Luckily I could start my Master’s studies with a programming project in the Inorganic Materials Chemistry (IMC) group of Professor Emiel Hensen. Under the supervision of (now Assistant Professor) Ivo Filot, I learned how to develop fast and robust C++ code. I was happy

to follow up on this in the form of a Graduation Project, and when I was offered a PhD position at IMC I immediately accepted. Together with Ivo, I am now a core developer of our in-house C++ and python code. In addition to this, I specialize in quantum-chemical simulations with Density Functional Theory (DFT). One aspect of DFT is that it provides the electronic structure for a group of atoms representing a molecule, an active site on a catalyst, or a bulk crystal. Examples of such ensembles can be seen in Figure 1 where panel A depicts the transition state for CO dissociation in a special B5 site and panel B shows the transition state for hydrogen-assisted CO dissociation on planar threefold sites.

Figure 1: Microkinetic modelling predictions for the CO consumption rates during Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on cobalt with and without migration pathways.

Figure 2: DFT computed transition states for A) direct CO dissociation on a step-edge Co(1121) model. B) H-assisted CO dissociation on a terrace Co(0001) model.

Figure 3: Simulated Anderson-SchulzFlory distributions during FischerTropsch synthesis on cobalt with and without migration pathways.

By comparing the energies of the transition states with the energies of initial and final states we are able to compute activation energies for the many elementary reaction steps in FT. This is challenging but rewarding, as it allows us to create a microkinetic model.

in complicated mechanisms, a feat that is difficult to achieve experimentally. IMC has its own inhouse microkinetic software called â&#x20AC;&#x153;MKMCXXâ&#x20AC;? to which I have made numerous contributions since its initial commit by Ivo Filot in 2012.

that Fischer-Tropsch synthesis only happens at those sites. Figure 2 shows that there is indeed next to no CO consumption on the terrace surface. However, when we combined both surfaces we drew a very interesting conclusion. Carbon building blocks generated on the cobalt steps sites can end up on the terraces through adsorbate migration and readsorption. Because the density of carbon building blocks on the terraces is not high enough, these fragments will be converted into methane. As shown in Figure 3 this also results in shorter hydrocarbon chains to be formed. This observation explains the extra methane found in experiments and is at the basis of designing better catalysts. Figure 4 shows that there is an optimum temperature if one desires a high C5 + selectivity at a high production rate. To shift this optimum we need to be able to make nanoparticles with an abundance of step sites, and we need to passivate the terrace sites. By doing this we can further enhance the potential of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis as the goto option for producing clean fuels and chemicals.

A microkinetic model consists of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) describing the production or consumption of all reaction intermediates. The set of ODEs is solved numerically, yielding transient and steady state information like intermediate concentrations, total reaction rate, and reaction selectivity. Analogous to experimental methods, the microkinetic model can compute reaction orders and apparent activation energies. Furthermore, tools like Degree of Rate Control (DRC) help to resolve the dominant reaction pathways

Figure 4: C5 + production and selectivity during Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on cobalt with and without migration pathways.

With MKMCXX I have looked at the difference in activity of cobalt nanoparticle terrace surfaces and stepped surfaces. After doing all the DFT calculations I made the microkinetic network with several main ingredients. First the reactants CO and H2 have to adsorb to the catalytic surface. Afterwards, the CO has to dissociate into separate carbon and oxygen adsorbates. Then the oxygen can be hydrogenated to water or combine with CO to form CO2. The carbon can in turn be hydrogenated to methane or couple to other carbon fragments to form longer hydrocarbons. The latter is preferred if we want to produce clean diesel. Forming methane is obviously unwanted. In our endeavor to understand the unwanted methane formation we realized that the ratio between carbon hydrogenation and carbon-carbon coupling is very important. Coupling only happens at sufficiently high generation of carbon building blocks, so the CO dissociation reaction has to be fast. From our DFT calculations we found that fast CO dissociation is only possible over the B5 sites on the stepped surface, suggesting

WRITTEN BY:

Bart Zijlstra Bart wanted to tell the readers more about the usefulness of using programming as a chemical engineer.

Kerstpuzzel koorts Gastartikel

Papieren kriskras verspreid over de koffietafel, aantekeningen van boven naar onder en door elkaar heen… De fanatiekelingen clusteren samen en storten zich verwoed op de onopgeloste opgaven. Andere aanwezigen kijken met een lichtelijk geamuseerde, dan wel bezorgde blik toe. Pauzes zijn inverse werktijd geworden, waarin de kerstpuzzel centraal staat. De opgaven werden vrijgegeven op dinsdag 12 december. Ik had tot dat moment nog nooit aan een AIVD kerstpuzzel gewerkt. Tijdens een PhD verdediging en de daaropvolgende borrel was er maar één onderwerp. Of ja, eigenlijk 42. 42 schijnbaar onoplosbare vragen. Precies, schijnbaar. Dat was voor mij de hele charme van de puzzel. Weten dat er een oplossing is, zo dicht bij, maar toch zo ver weg. Te verleidelijk om niet te proberen… Diezelfde dag nog wordt er een appgroep aangemaakt. De daaropvolgende dagen wordt tijdens en na werktijd verwoed aan de puzzel gewerkt. Zo heb ik eens na het avondeten een dikke drie uur aan de Japanse puzzel gewerkt. Wanneer je dan een logisch antwoord vindt… ja, dat geeft een intellectuele adrenalinekick. Persoonlijke grootste overwinning: samen met een medestudent na uren rekenen, controleren, puzzelen en weer rekenen de volledige oplossing van opgave 12 vinden. Zoals gisteren bij DWDD al gezegd werd: je hebt geen hogere wiskunde nodig om

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de puzzel op te lossen. Belangrijker zijn doorzettingsvermogen, een creatief brein en het vermogen om logische patronen te herkennen in schijnbaar willekeurige informatie. De programmeurs op de afdeling probeerden meermaals opgaven te brute forcen, wat variërende mate van succes opgeleverde. Iedereen heeft een andere manier van denken en dat is precies wat je nodig hebt om ingewikkelde vraagstukken op te lossen. Tijdens de kerstvakantie was de appgroep stil. Familie, vrienden en (in mijn geval) de Top 2000 eisten alle aandacht op. We hebben afgelopen maandag wel de gevonden antwoorden ingestuurd. Nu duimen dat we niet op plaats 600 beland zijn…

GESCHREVEN DOOR:

Jessica Vermeer Jessica werkt momenteel aan haar master thesis bij de IMC groep.

Bear with us Trophy case

Japie has been around for some time. It is therefore not a surprise that Japie has also gathered a lot of different artifacts and prizes during its reign as best study association of them all. In this lustrum year it is a good moment to start taking a look at what is stashed inside of this big blue box at the top of the Japie room. Let’s continue our dive into the blue box.

What, when, where: Souvenir from the studytrip to Athens on January 2015

What,when, where: The official Japie graduation bear

By: The 57th board of Japie

For: All graduates of this faculty that have actively participated at Japie

Best part of this trip: Free unlimited red house wine

Best part of the bear: It’s cute little face and of course the fact that you’re graduated when you get one

Worst part of this souvenir: The poisoning of the fish in the tank after trying out the souvenir as a tank decoration

Worst part of the bear: Leaving all your Japie friends and your work at Japie

Should MSMC- and CPTstudents switch lab coats and safety helmets? Internship report

An MSMC student doing AspenPlus simulations as internship? An MSMC student wearing safety clothing instead of a lab coat and working on a production site? If you think this sounds impossible or like a really bad choice, then continue reading to find out why I did this during my internship at Eastman and why this does make a lot of sense. In case you don’t know me yet, my name is Camiel Steffanie and I’m a master student Chemical Engineering. During the first year of my master, I followed the MSMC track because I’m always curious to how everything around me works on a molecular scale. Since I’m also interested in how these processes are applied on an industrial scale, I decided to follow some courses from the CPT track as well. Before starting my master in September 2016, I applied for the VNCI Topsector Chemistry Scholarship. Each year, about 13 chemical companies provide

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master scholarships and internships for students within the field of chemistry and chemical engineering in the Netherlands. Eastman was one of these companies and they were looking for a highly motivated, social and selfsupportive student for an industrial setting. I thought, well, that’s me! So I applied and was accepted by Eastman after a successful interview. I think I have to thank this to my experience as chairman of the 58th board of Japie, my work within the Groep-één student fraction in the University Council and several other efforts on personal development within my studies.

Eastman is a specialty chemicals company, headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, with several locations in the Netherlands and Belgium. They facilitated an interesting internship at the Eastman site in Antwerp, Belgium. On this site, products like the rubber antidegradant Santoflex® and the safety glass interlayer resin Butvar® are produced. This site is run by Monsanto in a guest operation construction. These cooperations are common in the chemical industry since they can be advantageous for both parties (think about shared services and utilities) and often have a historic background (because of acquisition of companies). So starting from September 2017, I did my four month internship in the Eastman technology group, alongside with a Monsanto technical service team. While the Eastman engineers had projects focused on larger innovative improvements, the Monsanto engineers were mainly occupied by day to day problem solving to operate the plant. However, they all worked together as if it was one company.

The first project I did, consisted of updating and improving the complete AspenPlus model for the production of the intermediate product for the Santoflex® antidegradant. This was an all-encompassing project, since I needed to get to know the real process completely to eventually be able to interpret and use process data for my model. I joined several morning shifts to get to know the operators and learn from them. I also had to speak with all of my engineer colleagues, since everyone was responsible for specific parts of the plant. Using this revised model, I was able to study several impact case studies and quantify relations regarding possible cost savings in terms of material and utility usage costs.

“It is really valuable to break with (useless) habits and experience different settings” The second project was a LEAN project on spent catalyst from this same production unit. The goal was to enable Eastman to better estimate the expected recovery of metals from catalyst waste. To achieve this, I had to set up a new information logging system and improve the drum handling procedures of the catalyst waste drums on site. Mapping the

complete process from ordering fresh catalyst up to transporting the spent catalyst for recovery was challenging, because it involved many actions of different parties. By applying LEAN principles, time and money could be saved by removing so-called ‘waste’. For example, removing unnecessary steps, reducing waiting times, automatically maintaining right inventory sizes, etc. In this project, I really had to get in the field and get to know the problems that were experienced. I really enjoyed my internship at Eastman and my results were highly appreciated. However, my internship was not limited to getting to know Eastman in Antwerp. I visited the Middelburg production site, to taste the culture at a complete Eastman site. I visited the new Technology Innovation Center in Gent, since product innovation sounds very interesting to me. I also visited the European headquarters in Capelle aan den Ijssel, where I got introduced to the HR, regulatory and Lean Six Sigma departments. There, I also got the opportunity to speak with VicePresident Erwin Dijkman, with whom I had a very inspiring discussion. I think the industrial internship in our master program is of high value on graduating. Although I already visited many companies and lunch lectures, I now exactly know what relevant questions to ask when looking for a future job. I can also encourage everyone to look a bit further than your specific discipline. For me as an MSMC student, this CPT-like internship was no big difficulty because of our broad engineering focused curricula.

It is very important to get insights in other sections as well, since you will be collaborating interdisciplinary in your future work.

“I can recommend everyone to leave your trusted home in Eindhoven and the TU/e.” One last note: I can recommend everyone to leave your trusted home in Eindhoven and the TU/e, since it is really valuable to break with (useless) habits and experience different settings. I think I got to know myself much better and I really increased my effectiveness at work, which now is of great value in my current graduation project at the TU/e. The last chapter in obtaining my MSc degree, doing an international research project in Brisbane in Australia from November 2018, will be an even bigger experience to which I’m looking really forward!

WRITTEN BY:

Camiel Steffanie Camiel tells about his internship and explains why you should not be afriad to submerge yourself into different settings.

Interview with

Prof. Dr. Ir. Jan van Hest Interview with

Jan van Hest is professor at the University of Technology in Eindhoven at the faculty Chemical Engineering & Chemistry as well as the faculty Biomedical Engineering since 2016. He teaches ‘Biochemistry’ for first year Bachelor students of both faculties and is also partially responsible for ‘Topics in moleculen en materialen’. During their master’s, students might come across him at the course ‘Physical chemistry of soft matter’. Can you tell us something about yourself? I was born in Tilburg, but grew up in Moergestel. I started studying Chemical Engineering at the TU/e. I liked the chemistry part better than the engineering part, especially polymer chemistry. I graduated in 1991, under supervision of prof. Ton German and in 1992 I started my PhD under Bert Meijer, focusing on block copolymers consisting of polystyrene and dendrimers. After four years I promoted and went to the USA for a postdoc, where I first got acquainted with protein engineering to make polymers in a more controlled manner. In 1997 I went back to the Netherlands and started

working for DSM, looking into the interface of life science and materials. After working in industry for two years, I went back into academia as a professor in bio-organic chemistry at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. In 2016 I came back to Eindhoven where my scientific career started as a professor at two departments: Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering.

corporate R&D center, but nowadays there are more and smaller R&D centers, focusing on only one subject or business unit. As a researcher you don’t have a lot of freedom in industry; the focus is on short term and you will see the impact of your work faster. In academia the research is long term and more fundamental. It is also more focused on teaching and supervising students.

What do you think is the main difference between a technical university and a normal university?

I don’t really miss anything from working in industry, but it’s important to keep the application in mind when doing research. Sometimes startups or innovative products arise from our research group after an interesting project. An example of such an innovative product is hemostatic material and tissue tape that was developed together with the company GATT BV. As for my research, nanomedicine is a research area that is readily applicable. Artificial cells are in itself more fundamental, but these insights could eventually be used in applications.

I noticed that scientists at a technical university work more towards a solution, whereas at a normal university, the approach is more analytical. At a normal university, understanding the problem is most important, while at a technical university the application comes first. What’s the main difference between industry and academia and do you miss working in the industry? In industry, the research you’re doing needs to be profitable. Doing research for the sake of doing research is not an option there. In industry most companies used to have one

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What do you enjoy most about working in the lab? Serendipity! Sometimes you find something unexpected, that you were not looking for, but turns out to be

very valuable. One time, a postdoc in Nijmegen changed a procedure to make vesicles, but instead of spheres he found bowl-like structures. These structures have been the basis for a new area of research, because catalysts can be loaded into these bowls. Where do you see yourself in ten years? I hope I will still be here. Since we just moved here with the whole group from Nijmegen, I don’t want to move again in the near future. I want to take the research to the next level and make the application for nanomedicine more specific, to target a certain disease. Furthermore, I hope to be able to shape the direction of research in the molecular sciences, via for example the ICMS institute. Despite more responsibilities, I also hope to still actively be involved in the research. Do you still have time left for your hobbies? I have a daughter of five years old, which takes a lot of time of course. I also like to read English literature and play tennis, I used to play at Fellenoord when I was a student. I also like to travel. Last year we spent

our vacation in China, including a visit to Disneyland for my daughter. Do you have any advice for our readers?

Dilemma’s

Try to get the most out of your time as a student. Don’t only focus on studying, but also don’t forget to have fun and to enjoy other activities as well. During your study you have a lot of time to explore and develop yourself. Once you’re working you don’t have that much time anymore. During my own study time I joined the study tour to Japan and SouthKorea, just as this year’s tour. I was also involved in the introduction activities of Japie. Also, I think it’s good for your development to move away from your parents at some point during your study, as you will learn a lot from new responsibilities and doing your own laundry.

Eindhoven or Nijmegen?

WRITTEN BY:

Door open or closed?

Marle Vleugels

Open

Eindhoven

Polymer chemistry or protein engineering? Polymer chemistry

Research or education? Research

Janne van Gisbergen Marle and Janne interviewed Jan van Hest, who moved back to Einhdoven after teaching at Nijmegen.

“Try to get the most out of your time as a student. ”

Dutch practicality Culture shock

I write this as I fly back from home after my Christmas break, looking back, it’s been an eventfully-good 1.5 years in Holland already. I’ve been raised entirely in the United Arab Emirates, where you can meet people from everywhere around the world, however the Dutch still manage to surprise me every time! When compared to the Eastern culture, it’s almost poles apart. But it’s everything “different” I had wanted to experience studying abroad. There is a thing or two I learnt from the Dutchies so far: Beer makes everything better! I’ve never seen someone happier than with a pint in their hand. I’ve seen students taking their 4 pm beer at the F.O.R.T. very seriously. I’ve probably drank more beer being here, than in my entire (legal drinking age) life before. Almost everything the Dutch do reflects simplicity and practicality, from their mode of transportation to their lunchboxes. Consequently, the country has one of the highest happiness indexes. I’ve now started enjoying the little things in life- a nice lunch next to the canal on a sunny day can really make my day. “I’ll check my agenda”- words I’ve never used as a bachelor student before. Planning is the key for an efficient day. No wonder you would see students balancing good grades, being part of different committees, doing sports and having a social life. And their inherent honesty makes it easy to say no. I was warned about the infamous “Dutch-straight forwardness” before I came here, but it took me a while to develop some thick skin against it.

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One point in time every year they let completely loose: Carnaval, probably to remain sane the rest of the year. It’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen so far. And trying to get the annoyingly addictive Dutch carnival songs out of your head for the next month is a nightmare! In a land of cheese, potatoes and hagelslag, it’s no doubt that the constant cycling is what keeps them fit. This is one thing I’ve still not gotten used to yet, but I’m getting there, slowly. In fact, after accepting my admission letter to the TU/e, I had to re-learn my cycling skills in the summer. By now, I think I’ve experienced most of it: beer, serene landscapes, unpredictable wetness, crazy wind storms, the 3-day summer, cycling through the rain, stolen bicycle, the language -pronunciations (refer: ‘g’) & inversion grammar, crazy carnival season, beer (did I already mention that?), 3-am drunk deep-fried hapjes, boterham, trying to understand where the word “lekker”/ “gezellig” fits, feeling short everywhere, constantly updating my agenda, the directness, all that cheese, beautiful tulips, delayed NS trains and hasty legal paperwork… So, does this make me Dutch enough?

WRITTEN BY:

Vandhana Varughese Vandhana spent some time in the Netherlands and gives an insight in some of the wisdom she acquired during her time here. In her own words: a third culture kid trying to find her own culture.

English, please Y van de Huismeester

‘Two coffee, please’, mompel ik op de eerste donderdag van februari in nagenoeg accentloos Steensels tegen kantinedame Marian. Vervolgens kijkt ze me aan alsof ik mijn bestelling wil afrekenen. Daarop besluit ik mijn order maar te herhalen, nu in het Nederlands. Soepeltjes ronden we de transactie af en gaan we over tot de wanorde van de dag. Poging mislukt, helaas. Op basis van dit experiment zou het makkelijk zijn om te concluderen dat de TU/e helemaal nog niet klaar is om Engels als voertaal te omarmen – zelfs niet in de ruimte die dient om medewerker en studeren te voeren. Maar degene die mij kent, weet dat ik me niet snel uit het veld laat slaan. Er leiden immers meerdere wegen naar Londen.

alsof ze contactschuwe medewerkers van vakgroep SMG zijn.

Bij de lift leunt collega Rudy wat verveeld op zijn postkar. Ik besluit hem te begroeten. ‘Hi Rudy, how was your weekend?’ Spontaan besluit hij niet te wachten op de lift, maar kiest hij voor de trap – zijn postkar achter zich aan slepend.

Gelukkig: daar komt collega Kees. Met hem kan ik lezen en schrijven. Zónder hem kan ik trouwens nóg beter schrijven, want zijn overdadige gepraat heeft geen positief effect op mijn concentratievermogen. Kees heeft een nieuwe auto en nodigt me uit om met hem mee te lopen naar de parkeerplaats, zodat we zijn vehikel kunnen aanschouwen. Het is inderdaad een prachtige wagen. ‘It’s a beauty, Kees’, laat ik het gemeend klinken. Verward wijst hij op de softcase koffer in zijn hand. ‘No, it’s just a suitcase.’ We begrijpen elkaar niet. Case closed.

Ik loop naar het toilet en staar in de spiegel. Zit mijn haar niet goed? Zit er iets tussen mijn tanden? Nee, niets van dat. Daarom snap ik totaal niet waarom mijn collega’s mijn pogingen om contact te leggen uit de weg gaan

Zo gaat het de hele dag. Al mijn pogingen om in het Engels een conversatie aan te zwengelen sterven in schoonheid. De caissière van het MetaForum belt spontaan Meldpunt Drugs als ik tussen de middag een

flesje ‘coke’ bestel. Hetzelfde gebeurt als ik tegen vier uur in de F.O.R.T. reclameer nadat ik een glas pils krijg, terwijl ik toch echt om een dienblad pills heb gevraagd. Verwarring en commotie bepalen het ritme van de dag. Dit nooit meer bedenk ik, als ik mijn tanden zet in een glaasje pills. De volgende ochtend bestel ik twee koffie in de kantine. In het Nederlands. Want blijkbaar is de TU/e nog lang niet klaar voor mijn Steen(sel)kolenengels. Jammer? Zeker. Maar c’est la vie.

GESCHREVEN DOOR:

Michael Scheepers Michael nam de proef op de som en probeerde een dag lang tevergeefs Engels te converseren met zijn collega’s.

How to give a presentation: the Wallonian way! Skills

I think I speak on behalf of most of you when stating that public speaking is not considered as easy or something you can do without feeling even slightly nervous. Interestingly, the fear of public speaking ranks higher than the fear of death according to Forbes Magazine. So, apparently, one would rather die than give a presentation about their research. This is quite a serious issue, since everyone has to give a presentation and/or speak in public at one point in time. Here are some tips and tricks to help you from killing yourself and give that awesome presentation! First off, I am also afraid to speak in public or give a presentation and, like most of you, have to give one whenever a project has to be concluded. That is exactly the reason I attended the beautiful lecture given by Jean-luc Doumont at DIFFER. Dr. Doumont is a gifted speaker to say the least and he has devoted his time to train those who are interested in the art of effective communication. His tips ranged from how to deal with nervousness to how to design your slides. Now, I shall do my best to capture the essence of the story he shared during his talk. Let us begin at the core of a presentation: what is my message I want to get across? Everyone has to ask themselves this question, simply because it is the one thing you want people to remember as they leave the lecture room. In order to get a message across, you need information. This information is interpreted by the

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audience and leads to the message. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Aha! So the audience is important in that case, huh?â&#x20AC;? [Read with a French accent, Jean-luc is somewhere from Wallonia I believe].

would be that people with a certain technical background might not have issues understanding often complex processes compared to people who simply did not have this education.

The audience is very important, since interpretation is something you can influence in certain ways, but not control. Therefore, you have to know how your audience thinks and how they would interpret your information. An obvious example

So, we understand that the audience is important. The next question for us would be: how do we get their attention? An attention getter might just be as important as the main message itself. If the audience is not interested in what you have to say, they will never get your message and the presentation would be quite ineffective. During the talk of Jeanluc, I never imagined I would receive relationship advice. So, for the singles among you pay attention, this is useful! If you want someone to be interested in you, you have to show that you are interested in them. Magic, right? This can be directly applied to giving a presentation as well. If you want the audience to remember your message, you have to ensure that

they will be interested and, therefore, you have to be interested in your audience. Ask yourself, how diverse is my audience? Things like age, gender, cultural or technical backgrounds, are all to be considered.

For instance, if the research is about optimizing the efficiency of solar cells by a novel technique, one could refer to today’s solar cells and compare their performance. Tell the audience why it is important to consider this technique as it could provide the next generation of cutting-edge solar cells.

you need to consider. Since I only have a few more words left to spend on the rest of the article, I will keep it brief. What I picked up as the most important message is: DO NOT USE THE TU/E TEMPLATE OR ANY OTHER TEMPLATE TO BASE YOUR SLIDES ON! Luckily for us, he did not scream while saying this, but it nonetheless stuck with me. Mostly because, like most of you, the first thing I do is look for the TU/e template to begin my PowerPoint presentation. So, what is wrong with this template you may ask. “Well, the question should be, what isn’t?” Such templates are filled with rather pointless information. University logos, official company logos, dates, watermarks, and not to forget designated areas for titles and other text which should be included in the slide. Jean-luc likes to refer to this as the famous signal-to-noise ratio. As in data analysis, signalto-noise dictates the importance of data. If it sufficiently sticks out of the noise, it becomes a signal, which can be interpreted. One should ask the following question: What do I need to put on the slide to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio? Certainly not a date, watermark or any other means of indicating who funded or supported the research. Start from a clean slide and slowly add the things you want to add to make your message clear, use as little amount of text as possible and try to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio this way.

Something that has not yet been addressed is, how do I get my message across and get the attention of the audience using PowerPoint? Generally speaking, there is a lot

To conclude the talk, it is time to address nervousness and stress. This is the reason people do not like to speak in public. How does one deal with this during a presentation? Well,

Once you have taken this into account, the attention getter still needs to be formulated. Something that might be a shocker to most of you as disciplined researchers is that “Oww, but this has never been done before!!” is not a proper attention getter. Providing context is quite essential, otherwise the audience does not understand why you did what you did and consequently, will not be interested. Just by mentioning a few concrete examples or by referring to a person’s situation can help greatly.

“DO NOT USE THE TU/E TEMPLATE OR ANY OTHER TEMPLATE TO BASE YOUR SLIDES ON!”

to begin with, it is recommended to visit the room beforehand and try to get familiar with the surroundings. Try to imagine to audience sitting there listening to your talk. Maybe arrange the seats in such a way that suits you best. Also, for the fast-speakers among you, putting emphasis on important points by talking more slowly is useful. The rest of the presentation can be a bit faster, but not too fast, because that will lead to people falling asleep (Sadly, I speak from experience). To wrap things up, one needs to take time in order to prepare for a presentation. Not only in figuring out the story, but also to make the slides. If you have finished everything, practice the story until you are confident enough. Now then, I hope that the main message of this article came across: whatever you do please do not consider killing yourself, just do the presentation.

WRITTEN BY:

Rick Curvers Rick was so impressed by Dr. Doumont’s lecture about presentation skills that he wanted to share some key points with the readers.

Chemistry of hayfever Real life chemistry

Being an annual problem for over 340.000 Dutchmen, the sneezing and eye-rubbing has already started. Being extremely early, the filbert is distributing its nose-destroying pollen since December due to the warm months before. This means loads of tissues, nose spray and tablets to try and fight the symptoms. Everyone knows the effects of suffering from hay-fever, but what is the actual chemical cause of this disease and can it be fixed?

Symptoms People suffering from hay fever may think that everything that is stated here is quite obvious, but even for us, there were some symptoms we found during writing this article that we hadn’t experienced. Hay fever can express itself in various ways. Most people suffering from this disease will get itchy eyes or a running/ stuffed nose. However, there can be quite some more annoying and severe symptoms of so-called pollinosis.

Figure 1

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Patients diagnosed with this medical condition often also encounter heavy sneezing, coughing and sore throats. This is all caused by the mucous membranes of the sufferer, which cause will be explained later in this article. When you’re thinking that’s all, we’ll have to disappoint you. The really unlucky victims of the pollen will also get real fever-like symptoms and are tired throughout the entire day. Most of the time, this is due to the nose being blocked, and thus breathing being very difficult during the night. This is all induced by the

pollen in the air and the concentration of pollen also majorly determines the severity of the symptoms. After a heavy rain, patients often experience less problems since the rain will lead to the pollen not floating through the air so much.

The allergic reaction To explain what happens during the hay fever season, it is important to understand some biology of the immune system and more specifically what is actually happening during an allergic reaction. So, during hay fever season pollen are flying around in the air. When these pollen (Allergen in Figure 1) are taken up in your body via your nose for example, your immune system reacts as if these pollen are something dangerous. The B cells in your body recognize the pollen by receptors at their membrane via which they can recognize certain antigens. After the recognition of the pollen, the B cells will differentiate into plasma cells, after which the antibodies specific for pollen recognition (IgE) are released.

These IgE molecules will attach to mast cells and ‘prime’ them. At this point, the mast cells containing histamine do nothing yet, they are only primed. It is only after the second exposure to pollen that the immune system ‘remembers’ that the pollen are dangerous. Since the mast cells are already primed with IgE, the immune system is triggered and histamine is released, causing an allergic reaction. So, the difference between people with and without hay fever is just the expression of one simple receptor. If you do not have this pollen receptor, your body does not recognize the pollen as an antigen and the allergic reaction does not occur. But what does histamine actually look like? It is a protein containing an amine group that, when released, increases the permeability and distension of blood vessels. This causes the most common symptoms such as itchy and watery eyes and a runny nose.

How to prevent hay fever The easiest way to avoid hay fever is just simply not to go outside. Since the pollen season can range from February until October if you’re really unlucky, this is not a viable option. The most common medicines are antihistamines. These antihistamines are inverse agonists for the aforementioned receptors,

meaning that they block the receptors from binding with pollen, and thus preventing the release of histamines from the mast cells. However, antihistamines are also known to make you feel a bit drowsy, as Bart always experiences throughout the season. This is because they are able to cross the blood-brain barrier and therefore can affect the processes of neurotransmitters, since antihistamines are non-specific drugs. First generation antihistamines were non-specific and were even able to suppress the central nervous system processes causing sedation. Second generation antihistamines are more specific, but still cause some drowsiness.

“...the difference between people with and without hay fever is just the expression of one simple receptor.” Another treatment for hay fever is the use of cromones. These cromones are substances that strengthen the mast cells. Because of this strength increase, the release of histamine from mast cells is hampered. However, cromones work slower than antihistamines. Corticosteroids (no, not the steroids those pumped up guys in the gym take) are anti-inflammatory drugs and suppress allergic reactions and prevent swelling of the nasal mucosa.

Corticosteroids can be used if you’re the unlucky person to experience hay fever from February until October and are mostly administered via a nasal spray. The problem with this is, and Marle knows this unfortunately from her own experience, that the moment the hay fever season is over and you stop using the nasal spray, you get a cold including a stuffy nose, because you stopped spraying stuff in your nose. And lastly, if you’re really struggling with your hay fever immunotherapy might be the solution, since this does not only work to stop the symptoms, but also targets the cause of hay fever. In this therapy, you will be made insensitive to the pollen that you are sensitive to by actively exposing you to the pollen. This exposure is at low levels, but it is increased slowly over a period of three to five years. This way, the body can get used to the allergen and the response of the immune system will be less severe.

WRITTEN BY:

Bart van den Bersselaar Marle Vleugels As hay fever patients, Bart and Marle were wondering what is actually causing their itchy eyes and stuffy nose.

March

for Science Carte blanche

Almost a year ago, on April the 22nd, over forty thousand people marched to Washington in support of science. They wanted to raise awareness on how science is threatened by Donald Trump since he has become president. Also in 516 other cities around the world people marched for a better position for science in society. What has been the impact of the march so far and has it been worthwhile? The reason to organize the march was the 7 billion dollars cut from science funding by the American government, amongst others. Moreover, after more than a year in office, the president has not yet assigned the position of director of the white house Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to anyone. Instead of listening to science-based facts, the White House is accused of circulating “alternative facts” which it uses for policymaking. All over the world, politicians have the tendency to draw attention to only a single data point to support a broader argument of theirs. Sometimes

this also has consequences for the academic freedom. In Russia, the scientific agenda is tightly controlled by Putin. In Turkey, the government has decided to have less space in the official school curriculum for Darwin’s theory of evolution, because it’s “too complicated” and “too controversial”. And even an Iranian-Swedish professor in disaster medicine has been sentenced to death. He was invited to lecture in his home country Iran, but once there, he was arrested and accused of espionage for Israel, even though no evidence for this was ever shown.

So the participants of the march advocated for academic freedom and science-based policymaking. But was it fruitful? Well, at least the American government hasn’t changed much. In June 2017 Trump announced that America would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. He still doesn’t have a science advisor, and many of the employees of the OSTP resigned last year because they don’t agree with Trump’s policy. Nevertheless, the march has definitely raised awareness on the situation. On April 18th, the march for science will be held again, probably also in the Netherlands.

WRITTEN BY:

Mariska Brüls Mariska wrote about the March of Science because despite all the media attention back then, she hasn’t noticed any big impact of the march for science.

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Weekend in Manchester Japie on tour

Imagine this: sending a group of Japies abroad three days for the sole purpose of drinking beer. That sounds like a great idea, right? Well, five years ago the 5th Lustrumcommittee (and the G.M.M. at the time) agreed this was a great idea. Thus, the first Foreign Beer Weekend took place. Stories of this weekend are still being told today and a lustrum year is a great excuse to organize an edition of the foreign beer weekend ourselves. What did we do in Manchester? Let me tell you.

“England is the birthplace of a lot of famous beer styles such as the (pale) ales, porters and stouts.” During the lustrum year, everything is exaggerated a bit more. There is the FoLuCie that organizes these crazy events, more opportunities to drink in the F.O.R.T., more craft beers on draft and apparently also another Foreign Beer Weekend. After the success and the stories of the previous weekend to Prague, we wanted to know what the fuzz was all about. Extending the annual brewery excursion to a weekend gives it the ‘lustrum upgrade’ it deserves. Why England though? England is the birthplace of a lot of famous beer styles such as the (pale) ales, porters and stouts. The beers of these styles we drink in the Netherlands can’t compare to the original, right? To experience this, we had to go there to find out. So we went. The first beer I got to drink in Manchester was an oatmeal pale ale during dinner. It reminded me

of pilsner but with additional bitter flavors. The pizza I ate reminded me of pancakes with pizza toppings. Both of them weren’t exactly what I was looking for. We came to England to taste the cool styles. Thankfully we got to taste those during the first brewery visit. We actually never stopped with pale ales, porters and stouts after the first visit, since these were the only styles that appeared to exist in Manchester. Our first visit was to “The Runaway Brewery”. This microbrewery was located in a warehouse, along a dark street, next to a viaduct in an industrial part of town. The kind of street where you don’t want to be during the night. The guy from the brewery was awaiting us under the viaduct to greet us. The brewery was really small with a couple of kettles and a half a year old

taproom with a view of the brewing equipment. The brewery is called the way it is, because five years ago the brewers really just ran away from their old jobs to start brewing. We had a small tour/talk along the equipment and a tutored tasting of four beers: three of which were pale ales and one dry milk stout. The different pales had clearly distinct tastes, but were only brewed with water, hops, yeast and malts. One was really bitter and fruity due to the hops, the other was sour because of Champaign yeast and the third one had a lot more alcohol. The tasting was a really good demonstration of what Manchester had to offer, and a lot of fun because of John’s (one of the brewers) monologue about the beers and life as a brewer. John invited all of us over to a pub, owned by a brewer buddy of his, to spend time until 12. Obviously all of us agreed to follow him since he is both a local and a brewer, so he must know his way around the pubs. This pub is owned by Blackjack Brewery and exactly what you expect from a stereotypical pub. It was brown, kind of old and had beer on casks. These cask beers were what intrigued me the most, and I could not wait to order one to taste. These beers are pumped out by the bartender instead of coming out of a pressurized keg. The casks are basically kegs, but with a hole in it to draw air from. This makes casks really vulnerable for outside conditions. All good things must come to an end, in our case the pub had to close. Time for us to figure out what the nightlife in Manchester is all about. This ridiculously named club called “Tiger Tiger” seemed like the place to be. This place was expensive as hell, but nonetheless a great place to party for the night. During the night we noticed that a lot of women seemed

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to wear very short skirts and looked sleazy. At this point the word “Skank” became part of everyone’s vocabulary, and became an often returning subject during the weekend. The next morning, at 10:30, we got to enjoy a tour bus around Manchester. After seeing all the beautiful places Manchester had to offer, we concluded that Manchester is actually quite ugly. What else to expect from an industrial city, I suppose. After the tour we had some free time until the next scheduled thing on the program: a tasting at the Marble Arch Inn. During this free time most of us went to a pub to continue to explore more beers. The Marble Arch Inn is owned by Marble Beers, quite a bigger brewery than Runaway. We did not have a tour this time, just a tutored tasting. At this time, the beers were nothing we hadn’t drunk before, but tasty nonetheless. Our guide Hannah told us a lot about beer, but also about the pub culture in England. The scheduled part of the weekend was concluded by eating typical English pies at the Pie&Ale. Pies (especially this kind) should be more popular in the Netherlands. They were delicious and I now need live with the fact that I won’t be able to

eat them for a very long time. A lot of people were here to watch soccer instead of eat. The phenomena that every pub is a restaurant and most restaurants also a pub is really a thing in Manchester. For our last free evening, we bought up almost the entire cider supply of the local spar (a bit of an exaggeration) and went to some club. I didn’t go there as I had no energy to go outside, but I can imagine that this club was a continuation of the previous club, summarized by expensive drinks and ‘skanks’. We flew back to Eindhoven at around one in the afternoon on Sunday. Everyone looked tired or hungover, but thank god we didn’t have to wake up that early. We tasted a lot of beer and learned a bunch of cool stuff. This weekend was definitely fun, but I can’t say we have the same kind of legendary stories that we have from five years ago. Let’s hope that we’ll have another weekend in five years.

WRITTEN BY:

Gijs Langenhuijsen

Manchester Brews In the last couple of years Manchester has gone crazy for homebrews and new breweries pop up every year. The area of Greater Manchester has as much as 75 breweries listed in the CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide 2018. These include the visited Runaway brewery and Marble brewery but also the Cloudwater brewery which is the first British brewery to be in the top ten best in the world chosen by RateBeer in 2017 and currently stands at second place. To celebrate the best of beer and pub culture, a ten-day city-wide event is organised, the Manchester Beer Week. Last year featured 102 different events at 85 bars, breweries, pubs or retailers and included two beer festivals and a huge brewey open day. This year, the third edition will take place from Friday, June 29th until Sunday, July 8th and will see a similar range of events.

As main organizer of the weekend, Gijs wanted to share a bit about the Foreign Beer Weekend with you.

“The pizza I ate reminded me of pancakes with pizza toppings”

Fighting water pollution. Science news

H2O, also known as water, as we all know is the most essential component of survival of living beings. With over two-thirds of the Earth being covered by this essential part of life it is undoubtedly important to make sure that it’s quality is kept high. This may sound rather obvious but with the intervention of pollutants in water the quality of it is not maintained as high as it should be. So how can the global problem of water pollution be treated “easily”? Water pollution has many sources. The major ones out of these are crude oil and various petroleum products, fertilizers, chlorinated solvents, pesticides and so on. Radioactive wastes, infectious agents (bacteria, virus etc.) that contaminate water through sewage and human waste and chemical contaminants from domestic or industrial waste are other causes of water pollution. With 2 billion people worldwide lacking access to clean and safe drinking water, water pollution is not a problem that can be disregarded. So, what is being done to purify water? To obtain clean drinking water,

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physical processes such as settling and filtration, chemical processes such as disinfection and coagulation and biological processes such as slow sand filtration are used. Two main processes in industrial water treatment are boiler water treatment and cooler water treatment. These are just a few examples of the numerous processes involved in water treatment. However, many of their applications have been limited due to energy requirements, processing efficiency, engineering expertise, economic benefit and so on. Joint research by Monash University, CSIRO and University of Texas at Austin may have a breakthrough solution.

“MOF membranes can mimic the ion selectivity of organic cell membranes.” Dr Huacheng Zhang, Professor Huanting Wang and Associate Professor Zhe Liu and their team in the Faculty of Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in collaboration with Dr Anita Hill of CSIRO and Professor Benny Freeman of the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, are the brains behind the breakthrough that involves metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs are a class of crystalline materials which act like sponges to capture, store and release chemical compounds. For the case of water treatment, this would be ions and salt in seawater. Currently reverse osmosis membranes are used to remove ions, molecules and large

particles during water treatment but these can be improved by a factor of 2 or 3 in terms of energy consumption. This is why the MOFs are such a breakthrough. MOF membranes can mimic the ion selectivity of organic cell membranes and with further developments this can be done in a highly efficient and cost-effective manner. Thus this is highly attractive to the water and mining industries. Monash University’s Professor Huanting Wang said, “We can use our findings to address the challenges of water desalination. Instead of relying on the current costly and energy intensive processes, this research opens up the potential for removing salt ions from water in a far more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable way.” The new finding strongly attracts the mining industry due to the high presence of Lithium in seawater and potential capability of extracting Lithium from seawater using this new technology. Lithium is of usage in mobile electronic devices and using MOFs is a cost-effective manner to obtain more Lithium to meet the high demands when compared to the current ineffective chemical treatments to extract Lithium from rocks and brines. As Professor Wang says, “Global demand for lithium required for electronics and batteries is very high. These membranes offer the potential

for a very effective way to extract lithium ions from seawater, a plentiful and easily accessible resource.” Hence with the use of these membranes, Lithium rich water streams which are seen as wastewater streams could potentially be turned into a resource recovery opportunity.

effective than the currently used method of producing such electrons using expensive and complex high power lasers. These methods also require high safety regulations which once again means more costs. This has now been presented with a better alternative option.

As this happens, chemists from Martin Luther University HalleWittenberg (MLU) have made yet another finding also in the field of water pollution. These chemists have found a new way to disintegrate chemical pollutants in a much more cost-effective way than is currently being used. For this they only need green LED light, a catalyst and vitamin C.

The researchers tested the new method on a highly toxic and stable substance- chloroacetic acid and were able to disintegrate it into its harmless components. They were also able to show that their method produced just as many electrons as the highly complex lasers.

Researchers in photochemistry worldwide are trying to figure out ways in which light can trigger reactions. This is the same concept used by the chemists from MLU. For their finding, they use light to release electrons from their molecular compound in vitamin C. These electrons known as ‘hydrated electrons’ are highly reactive and exist freely in water once they have been released. With their high reactivities they help break down pollutants in water. The main advantage of these electrons is that they disappear completely after the reaction and also do not leave any residues. Another advantage is that this method is easier and more cost-

Hence two very different findings have been presented in the world of Science to combat water pollution which as we know is something of high urgency. For diseases and health issues that are spread or evolved through water pollution every little step counts. With further developments by both research groups and more to come hopefully water pollution will not be as much of a major problem as it is today.

WRITTEN BY:

Limi Kalapurackal Limi wanted to gain awareness and talk about some solutions for the current global problem of water pollution.

Mix and match Mixology 101

You are most likely aware of the fact that there is (specialty) beer available at the F.O.R.T. on every Thursday. You might even have gone to the F.O.R.T. one day planning to go to Stratum later on, which is a great idea! This evening will most likely include a pre-party before actually going to Stratum, so consider mixing things up and going for a cocktail as a pre-Stratum drink.

Mojito

Sex on the beach

A classic cocktail would be a Mojito. This drink consists of: 60 mL of white rum, 30 mL of sparkling water, crushed ice, 2 tablespoons of sugar, fresh mint and diced lime. When preparing this drink you start by putting the diced lime, mint and sugar into your glass and mashing this to release the lime juice. Then you simply add the ice and then the rum and you finish it off with sparkling water. The amount of sparkling water can be varied according to your personal taste. The name for this drink is said to be based on the Spanish word ‘mojado’, which means wet.

Other than being the title of a song by the Venga Boys, this drink is very popular with people who like a fruity drink. It consists of: 30 mL vodka, 30 mL Peach Tree and a mix of fruit juices finished with some ice. A classic juice combination is cranberry, grapefruit and orange.

Long Island Iced Tea This drink does require some more liquors, but is most certainly a classic cocktail. To make this you need: equal parts (15 mL) of gin, white rum, tequila, triple sec and vodka; 60 mL of cola, and 1 table spoon of lemon juice. The cola can be varied according to your taste. The nice thing about this drink is that it tastes just like iced tea but packs a punch.

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Simple alternatives Some simpler less known cocktails are the Black Russian which is equal parts vodka and Kahlúa (add heavy cream for a White Russian), the Cocksucking Cowboy which is 4 parts Liquor 43 on 1 part Baileys and “the screwdriver” which is 1 part vodka on 2 parts orange juice. I’d also like to give a shout-out to the Ketel 1 Martini, which is 3 parts Ketel One vodka and 1 part dry vermouth.

WRITTEN BY:

Koen Vlot Koen wanted to give a good alternative for the standard beer bash that takes place before a night at Stratum.

Porto:

Levenslang trauma aan dubbelfris Spraakwater

Eind februari was het weer tijd voor de jaarlijkse buitenlandse reis. Naast het bezoeken van bedrijven en universiteiten was het natuurlijk ook van belang om het nachtleven van Porto mee te maken. Door het mediterrane ritme dat daar gehanteerd wordt, gaan de betere kroegen en clubs pas om half 2 open, waarna er tot in de vroege ochtend doorgezet wordt. Uiteraard hebben wij ons aangepast aan het lokale ritme, ook al werden we iedere ochtend akelig vroeg uit bed geschopt. De meest (of minst) memorabele avond hebben we te danken aan onze Portugese collega’s. Na het bezoeken van hun universiteit werden we verwacht bij een lokaal restaurantje. Bij binnenkomst werden we begroet door biertafels karig bedekt met servetjes en plastic bekers. Na het lappen van een tientje werden er schandalig grote schenkvaten geserveerd, gevuld met wat in eerste instantie verdacht veel op Dubbel-fris leek. Deze “Dubbel-fris” bleek een zodanig zoete en goedkope sangria te zijn dat zelfs ik - geen fan van wijn zijnde - hem goed te behappen vond. Dat onze Portugese medestudenten

geen laffe borrelaars zijn, werd al gauw duidelijk: na het proosten goot de onschuldig ogende Portugese dame aan onze tafel moeiteloos en ongevraagd haar glas Dubbel-fris achterover. De eindbaas die de toko runde, kwam hierna aanzetten met zijn specialiteit: zelfgestookte drank geserveerd in een meter-lange buis. Ondanks de spiritussmaak en de bijkomstige angst voor een methanolvergiftiging vloeide deze drank rijkelijk, hetgeen zeker hielp bij het waarderen van het eten. Iedereen heeft genoten van een bord met rijst, slappe aardappelen en willekeurige stukken kip met bot.

Na de maaltijd werden de tafels aan de kant geschoven, de muziek aan gezet en de bar geopend. Hier is nog lang geborreld met de Portugese studenten die samen met de verdacht weinige doorzetters onder ons nog mee de stad in gingen. Naderhand bleek dat de eigenaar op geleide van de sfeer zijn Dubbel-fris aanlengde met steeds grotere hoeveelheden zelf gebrouwen drank. Al met al was deze avond en de rest van de week zeer geslaagd en wil ik bij dezen de meerdaagse excursiecommisie 2018 graag hartelijk bedanken voor een onvergetelijke week.

GESCHREVEN DOOR:

Storm van Merwijk Storm is een tweedejaars student die mee is geweest op de meerdaagse excursie naar Porto en wilde het hoofdartikel over Porto aanvullen met een gedetailleerder beeld.

The circus that is called

ONCS ONCS

Once a year all chemistry related studies (and life sciences) get together for one big event. This event takes place on the days surrounding Ascension Day and is this year held on the 9th, 10th and 11th of May. This event is called the ONCS and in case you didn’t know, it stands for ‘Open Nederlandse Chemie Sportdagen’ or Open Dutch Chemistry Sports days. Even though sport is in the title it’s actually quite the party.

The general concept The ONCS starts on the Wednesday before Ascension Day. This day all relevant study associations arrive at the organizing location. This year the ONCS is organized by a committee existing out of U.S.S. Proton members and will thus take place in Utrecht. This isn’t Eindhoven, so Japie will have to travel there, but luckily the board will have arranged train tickets for everybody. Before getting on the

train, however, you might be hungry so there is the possibility to eat some fries and snacks at an (unlimited) mobile fries shop. After a proper meal, all people traveling with the main group get into the train. Here the F.O.R.T.-cie usually provides a keg and some cantus booklets in order to get everybody in a good mood before arriving at the location.

get started with your first match of the ONCS. You will have to take a look at the schedule first and find the location of your specific sport and then you’ll be able to actually get started! After winning as many matches as you possibly can it’s time for dinner. What comes after dinner is the most important part however, the main party of the ONCS!

After some traveling Japie then arrives at the location of the ONCS where the party can actually get started. The exact details have varied over the years since these are up to the organizing committee to decide, but the first evening always includes arranging a place for yourself to sleep at. When this is done you can enjoy the other part of the evening freely which is the first party. Here you can get into the right mood by having a drink and the right mindset by eyeing up your competition.

Each year there is a huge party with a theme. This year the ONCS has the theme ‘Cirque du Valance’, so the theme of the party will most likely be something having to do with the circus. Not all Japie members participate as enthusiastically in dressing up for the theme, but you can get as crazy as you’d like with it. The party is the perfect chance to get crazy and let go after a day of giving it your all. But apart from the party there actually is an important event taking place that evening, the beer relay!

The next morning it’s time for a (hopefully) proper breakfast. When you’ve taken your fill it’s time to

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In each sporting event a large number of points is divided over the different

associations and the points that can be earned with the beer relay are a significant amount! Up to two teams of every association face off in an intense competition. So being ready and at the top of their game during this entire event is key for those participating. When the beer relay is finished the party continues and you can mix and mingle with other associations from all over the country before going to sleep.

“Even though sport is in the title it’s actually quite the party” On Friday morning the results of the first day of sporting are known and all teams will have been divided into a loser and winner pool. The teams in these pools will then battle it out even further working to the final result of the event. The organizing committee will then take some time to calculate the results, this time can be used for packing up all your stuff and some relaxation. After waiting for some time it is then time for the after-movie (which will hopefully work properly) and the results. Of course we all want to see Japie end up on top!

The special activity Aside from the beer relay there is one other event that makes up a large portion of the final result, the special activity. This activity is totally different each year and is only known to the organizing party. All associations will have to sign up a certain amount of players based on vague descriptions. These descriptions will most likely not make any sense till the actual game is explained. Each member of the signed up team will be responsible for a specific task in the game, these tasks have to be completed in succession. The team that finishes this game the fastest will earn a large number of points for their association.

Some history The ONCS has a large history, the first ONCS was organized in Groningen in 1988. Since then Japie has been responsible for organizing the event in the years: 1996, 2002, 2005, 2010 and 2015. The last ONCS in Eindhoven was thus in 2015 and had the theme ‘Survival of the Fittest’. Since then the ONCS has been organized in Amsterdam by ACD with the theme ‘Make love not War’ and in Nijmegen

with ‘The Schrödinger Games’ being the theme. Over the years Japie has had quite a few wins, the first of these being in Eindhoven itself in 2002. After this comes a true winning streak of 6 years over the course of 2004 up till 2009. When the streak was broken it took some time to get back on top but Japie managed to do so again in Eindhoven in 2015.

Japie één The last thing any Japie member needs to know before going to the ONCS are the proper songs. So, after reading this ask a fellow Japie how to do it because you will need it. The most popular noise out of Japie is ‘Japie, Japie, Japie, Japie één. Japie één, Japie éé-eu-één!’ This song just means Japie number one, so sing it loudly so the other competitors know what’s up.

WRITTEN BY:

Koen Vlot With the ONCS coming up, Koen wanted to explain the ONCS for the newer Japies amongst us.

How a bird got mixed with a goat Beer of the quartile

What do you get when one of the fastest growing craft beer breweries in the Netherlands decides to make a collaboration brew with some of Limburg’s most appreciated brewers? Indeed: a great beer, which is a very worthy Beer of the Season. Here is the story of how a bird and a goat got together and brewed a great Black IPA. On the last Friday of the second quartile, I called on the former stock managers of the F.O.R.T. once again for tasting the Beer of the Season. Unfortunately, Troy Oude Bekke was in Porto as part of the Study Trip Committee, and Brandon van Rosendaal also couldn’t be there. So, the quest was on Guido Hagenaars, Keegan Walker and me to find a special beer worthy of carrying the name ‘Beer of the Season’. After strolling around the craft beer shop for quite a while, and already making some tough choices there, we picked five beers that we deemed candidates for a nice spring beer. There were some pretty surprising beers, both in the good and the bad

way, and we ended up with a not too easy choice between two beers. I think an honorable mention should go to the runner-up, Geuren & Kleuren by Dutch brewery De Molen. The use of smoked malts in an earlgrey IPA was something we really had not expected, but turned out to be a very pleasant combination. However, this beer being the runnerup means that there was one that was even better. This was the Gijtlijster, a Black IPA which is a collaboration brew of Bird Brewery together with – as the name probably made you guess already – brewery De Natte Gijt from Weert. A beer with a very interesting story, and a beer style which is probably not that well known to many people, but is very enjoyable and definitely worth a try. Amsterdam based Bird Brewery was only founded in 2016, but it has been a rising star ever since. At the Dutch Beer Challenge 2017, the most important beer election of the

T-Licht Issue 22.3

Netherlands, two of their beers were chosen to be the best of the country for their style, and another one won a bronze medal. It may then of course not be a surprise that people in the craft beer scene got pretty excited when the brewers announced a large collaboration tour for 2018. Every month of this year, brewers Rik and Ralph from Bird Brewery are going to make a collaboration beer with a leading brewery in a different Dutch province. By the end of the year, that means there are twelve beers brewed together with breweries from all twelve provinces. In January, to kick off their tour, the brewers came all the way south to meet up with a very well-known brewery from Limburg: de Natte Gijt, based in Weert. This might ring a bell to some of the guests of the F.O.R.T., because three beers of this brewery already found their way to the beer list in our faculty bar.

One of those beers is called ‘Hop met de Gijt’, and that is an important one to keep in mind with respect to the Gijtlijster. The brewers of Bird Brewery and De Natte Gijt actually took the recipe for this beer, combined it with the recipe of Bird Brewery’s award winning Amber Ale Rumoerige Roodborst, added some roasted malts, and their collaboration Black IPA was born. As the style of the beer already makes clear, the Gijtlijster is a dark beer. However, it also has all of the character traits of a good IPA. A lot of fruity tastes, ranging from citrusy notes to some red fruits, are followed by a very pleasant bitter, in which the roasted malts stay very

much in the background. What is the most exciting about the beer however, is that the original recipes of the combined ales can actually be discovered in the taste. At least, this is true for the Hop met de Gijt part – at the time I am writing the article, the Rumoerige Roodborst has not passed my taste buds yet, but surely will soon. ‘Hop met de Gijt’ is an India Pale Ale with a lot of fruity tastes and hop bitterness to it, and especially the citrus-like part of the Gijtlijster seems to very much originate from that. It makes Gijtlijster a very pleasant beer in the sense that it is very recogniseable and at the same time different from your usual IPA. In my opinion, it also is a good advertisement for the style of Black IPA. This type of brew, also known as Cascadian Dark Ale, is one of the newest available on the market and is not very well known to most people. The concept is quite simple. Shortly, a recipe for an India Pale Ale is just combined with some roasted or even burned malts to get the dark color. This results in a beer that is more hoppy than a porter, but regularly

similar in alcohol. On the other hand, the beers are mostly not as strong as a stout, and lack a bit of the body of that brewing type. To end the story about this remarkable beer, I would like to draw some attention to the label of the bottle. It is made by the artist that usually designs the labels for Bird Brewery beers. Usually, only brewers Rik and Ralph are hidden somewhere in the landscape, but now of course also the brewers of De Natte Gijt are on the bottle. Furthermore, the themes of both breweries are very well represented on the label with different types of goats and birds scattered in winter sceneries. The winter scene does however not mean that it’s a winter beer: this fruity Black IPA will definitely make a good spring beer!

WRITTEN BY:

Dennis Thuy The stock managers of the F.O.R.T. have again decided on a Beer of the Season, and this is the interesting story that goes with it!

Wist

... Gijs L. denkt dat warmwaterschaatsen een Olympische sport is?

je dat... ... Bart van den B.

... Keegan W. niet de letters uit zijn hoofd kent?

niet de spanwijdte van zijn vriendin

... Irian H. zich afvraagt waarom vrouwen niet intersex zijn?

weet?

... Volgens Merijn M., als je maar genoeg drinkt, je brein reduceert tot een soort duif?

... Volgens Camiel S. de oud-bestuurders op tafel dansen als het bestuur van huis is?

... Volgens Brandon van R. wij niet betaald krijgen maar het wel veilig doen?

T-Licht Issue 22.3

... Volgens Marc W. het bestuur te lui is om te bukken?

... Roy W. heel graag een zwangere vrouw zou willen zijn?

... Je niet weet of de zoekgeschiendenis van Sven R. gaat over de studiereis of hentai?

... Inge M. zich afvroeg of bhâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s verboden waren?

... je wist-je-datjes naar tlicht.st@tue.nl kan sturen of in kan leveren op de Japiekamer?

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s share a passion Bij Teijin Aramid hebben we een passie: aramide Dit unieke materiaal is sterker dan staal, bestand tegen hitte, is slijtagebestendig en kent al meer toepassingen dan op deze pagina passen. De mogelijkheden van aramide zijn eindeloos en dat maakt het zo bijzonder. Er is nog een wereld te ontdekken. En dat doen wij samen met onze klanten, want wij geloven dat de beste oplossingen co-creaties zijn. Dat doen we ook met studenten. Om de groei van ons bedrijf voort te kunnen zetten, zijn wij regelmatig op zoek naar stagiaires en nieuwe medewerkers op het gebied van chemie, chemische technologie, werktuigbouwkunde en technische natuurkunde.

Kijk op www.teijinaramid.com voor meer informatie over stageplaatsen en ons bedrijf.

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