h a l f b a k e r yMy hatstand runneth over
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So, it seems that tartan walls are back in fashion for the first
time since, oh, roughly never.
Fortunately, there is no need to resort to desperate measures
such as striped rollers in order to achieve the tartan effect.
Instead, simply evacuate the air from the room, mount one of
our two-slit
diffractors on a stand a few metres from the wall
to be painted, and uncap a can of MaxCo Instant Tartan
aerosol paint.
The paint can actually has several independent chambers,
each feeding through its own atomiser before combining to
emerge from the single nozzle. Notably, the atomisers are
cunningly designed in such a way that the red, blue and green
paints emerge as droplets of different sizes. When sprayed at
the wall, through the diffractor, each colour will produce a
characteristic pattern of diffraction lines on the wall,
eventually building up a regular array of red, blue and green
stripes. This may take some time, since the droplets will need
to be fantastically small in order to diffract appreciably. But
be patient. Also, please do not look closely at the droplets
passing through the diffractor, as this will spoil the effect.
Once the vertical stripes have been painted, simply rotate
either the diffractor or the wall through 90° and repeat the
process.
Buchanan Tartan
https://en.wikipedi...arium_Scoticum).png Buchanan family tartan [Frankx, Nov 14 2019]
Buchanan War Tartan
https://www.kinloch...brown/cl-kstbchm-lw [Frankx, Nov 14 2019]
The Feynman Double Slit
https://faraday.phy...lit/DoubleSlit.html [xaviergisz, Nov 14 2019]
Diffracting molecules
https://medium.com/...uality-462c39db8e7b [xaviergisz, Nov 16 2019]
Diffraction of phthalocyanine
https://www.wired.c...ve-duality-physics/ [MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 16 2019]
[link]
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If we understand a droplet to be a thing large enough to have
surface tension, can any such thing also be small enough to get
diffracted? |
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I don't really know any physics, but it sounds as though you're
calling for some paint made out of unusually assertive photons -
assertive in that they somehow impose their colour persistently
on an object they strike. |
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Perhaps flegation is involved. |
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Wont you end up with a quantum-entangled
tartan? Spooky tartan-at-a-distance? |
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The distance can never be far enough ... |
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Could use a radioactive source and a radiosensitive wall. But the pattern may disappear soon after stopping the source, so it may need to be a continuous process. |
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//unusually assertive photons// Well, these will be Scottish
photons, and we'll give them a few bevvies beforehand, so
you can be sure they'll be pretty darned assertive. |
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//Spooky tartan-at-a-distance?// Ye cannae change the
laws o'physics. |
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//Could use a radioactive source and a radiosensitive
wall.// Well, in theory we could use red, green and blue
photons and simply cover the wall in a photographic
emulsion. But somehow that seems too simple. |
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Regarding the link, it seems to show the Buchanan Tablecloth.
The Black Buchanan Tartan is far more impressive, as is the
Buchanan War Tartan. |
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//Buchanan War Tartan//. Ah yes, [link] the
Modern Hunting. Presumably the estate
deploying the Phalanx CIWS (provided by [8th] no
doubt) against grouse and pheasants counts as
war. Definitely modern hunting. |
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These days, we tend to go for drone strikes against the grouse
- I can recommend it. |
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Diffraction is the process of waves interfering (constructively and destructively). |
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Particles (droplets) don't interfere. See the Feynman double slit diagram of firing bullets through a double slit. The occasional collision between droplets is not the same as interference. |
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You might be able to get a diffraction pattern if the paint was a Bose-Einstein condensate (and remained a BEC through the process of spraying and travelling past the slits) |
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...it works for protons and electrons... |
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...and machine gun bullets, as long as you don't look. |
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Stand facing the wall, shoot continuous bursts in horizontal and then vertical sweeps. Varying the speed of each sweep produces a denser or sparser texture to each line. |
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//Particles (droplets) don't interfere.// As [Frankx] points
out, it works for subatomic particles. It's also been shown
with phthalocyanine molecules, which are pretty darned big.
All particles are waves. In theory, you could diffract
elephants, although their wavelength would be fearsomely
short. |
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//shown with phthalocyanine molecules// |
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Interesting: could you supply a link? |
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To diffract elephants, you'd presumably have to very careful
about not observing each elephant in transit, because that would
collapse the wave - right? This would explain those rooms
where people don't talk about them. |
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So, next time someone talks about 'the elephant in the room', we
should say 'Hush; you're spoiling the diffraction pattern!' |
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//could you supply a link?// <link> |
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Quantum elephants ... intriguing. |
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There might be a snag with elephants. They are known for
never forgetting, which means they can be queried afterwards
to determine which slit they went through, which would
retrospectively collapse the diffraction pattern. |
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<Wonders about prospect of Ph.D. grant funding to research the concept of special long-wavelength elephants/> |
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The main problem with elephants is that they only come in
grey, which makes it difficult to create a decent tartan. |
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Oh, and // the Phalanx CIWS (provided by [8th] no doubt) // ... |
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We took it back. He doesn't clean it after firing, he left ut out in the rain with the cover off, and not only did he not pay us for all the ammunition (and it burns through stores at a frightening rate) but he's been selling the spent cases (which can be reloaded) on eBay as pen holders for desks and novelty cookie-cutters. |
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I expect you know it was Hannibal's original intention to
diffract his elephants through the Great Saint Bernard and
the Little Saint Bernard, so that they would be
concentrated suddenly in the neighbourhood of Lake Como
without anyone quite understanding how they'd got there. |
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The boulders rolled down on them through the mist by the
Ceutrones were not motivated by hostility, but by scientific
curiosity about the observation of particle collisions in a
cloud chamber. It is surely no coincidence that the Large
Hadron Collider was later constructed just outside their
territory. |
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Ooh, now I have a hypothesis for the behavior and
physics of Perfectly Normal Beasts. |
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This reminds me of something in Vernor Vinge's "Across Realtime." |
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