Watching paint dry sounds like the most boring job in the world. But it’s actually a lot more fascinating than you’d think. For the past four years, Dr. Thomas Curwen has been working for the international paint company Dulux, watching paint dry. And the kind of stuff he looks at on a daily basis is really quite mind-blowing.
34-year-old Curwen is a research scientist from Twyford, Berkshire. His full time job involves carefully observing the changing colors and particles of paint as it dries – both on walls as well as under a microscope. It’s a pretty important job, because it ensures that the paints are durable and do not fall off at the slightest touch.
“At Dulux, we’re passionate about delivering high quality paint to our consumers,” he said. And that means we spend a lot of time using microscopes to watch paint dry, so that we can develop a better understanding of how to form the most durable films.” What Curwen essentially does is combine a fundamental understanding of paint film formation along with polymer technology to deliver paint films with excellent durability, as if they’re protected by an invisible barrier.
