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.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 13 2019 Buchanan Tartan https://en.wikipedi...arium_Scoticum).pngBuchanan 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] 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?
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.
Perhaps flegation is involved.-- pertinax, Nov 14 2019 Won’t you end up with a quantum-entangled tartan? Spooky tartan-at-a-distance?-- Frankx, Nov 14 2019 The distance can never be far enough ...-- 8th of 7, Nov 14 2019 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.-- pocmloc, Nov 14 2019 //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.
//Spooky tartan-at-a-distance?// Ye cannae change the laws o'physics.
//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.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 14 2019 Regarding the link, it seems to show the Buchanan Tablecloth. The Black Buchanan Tartan is far more impressive, as is the Buchanan War Tartan.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 14 2019 //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”.-- Frankx, Nov 14 2019 These days, we tend to go for drone strikes against the grouse - I can recommend it.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 14 2019 Diffraction is the process of waves interfering (constructively and destructively).
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.
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)-- xaviergisz, Nov 14 2019 //don’t interfere//
...it works for protons and electrons...-- Frankx, Nov 15 2019 ...and machine gun bullets, as long as you don't look.-- pocmloc, Nov 15 2019 Machine gun tartan
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.-- pocmloc, Nov 15 2019 //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.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 15 2019 //shown with phthalocyanine molecules//
Interesting: could you supply a link?-- pertinax, Nov 16 2019 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.
So, next time someone talks about 'the elephant in the room', we should say 'Hush; you're spoiling the diffraction pattern!'-- pertinax, Nov 16 2019 //could you supply a link?// <link>-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 16 2019 Quantum elephants ... intriguing.-- 8th of 7, Nov 16 2019 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.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 16 2019 <Wonders about prospect of Ph.D. grant funding to research the concept of special long-wavelength elephants/>-- 8th of 7, Nov 16 2019 The main problem with elephants is that they only come in grey, which makes it difficult to create a decent tartan.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Nov 16 2019 // <link> //
Thank you.-- pertinax, Nov 17 2019 Oh, and // the Phalanx CIWS (provided by [8th] no doubt) // ...
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.-- 8th of 7, Nov 17 2019 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.
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.-- pertinax, Nov 17 2019 Ooh, now I have a hypothesis for the behavior and physics of Perfectly Normal Beasts.-- RayfordSteele, Nov 17 2019 This reminds me of something in Vernor Vinge's "Across Realtime."-- LoriZ, Nov 30 2019 random, halfbakery