ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Ashkin–Teller model

Okay, so imagine you have a playground with marbles of two different colors, red and blue. Ashkin-Teller model is like playing a game with these marbles, where each red marble tries to move to a spot that has more blue marbles around it, and each blue marble tries to move to a spot that has more red marbles around it.

So let's say you have three red marbles and three blue marbles on the playground, and they are all spread out. Each red marble looks around and counts how many blue marbles are next to it. If one red marble has more blue marbles around it than the others, it tries to move closer to those blue marbles. The same goes for blue marbles.

By moving like this, the marbles are trying to find the best spot for themselves where they have the most friends of the opposite color and the least friends of their own color. This creates a really cool pattern on the playground where the marbles seem to be grouped up in different areas based on their color.

Now, this is just a pretend game on a playground, but in real life, scientists use the Ashkin-Teller model to understand how particles (like atoms or electrons) interact with each other. It helps them predict what kind of pattern or structure those particles will form when they're together. And it's not just for particles with two colors (like red and blue marbles), scientists can use this model to study particles with more than two types of interactions too!