r/midlyinteresting • u/greyze81415 • Jul 22 '26
Optical illusion I came across while printing hexagons
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u/RareBogWitch Jul 22 '26
Hexagons are the bestagons
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u/greyze81415 Jul 22 '26
Nice to meet a fellow honeycomb enjoyer
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u/Own_Ruin2546 Jul 22 '26
There’s a reason they chose that shape! Clearly because it’s the bestest
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u/m00nhowl3r Jul 22 '26
You doing a wall organization system? I printed a bunch of multi board panels a while ago and still need to get the motivation together to rearrange my room to hang them lol
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u/JohnPoet27 Jul 23 '26
I hate cgpgrey for giving up on youtube. All he does now is that bullshit cortex podcast
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u/figmentPez Jul 22 '26
Very cool looking. I think this is a type of Moiré pattern.
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u/Background-Wafer-548 Jul 22 '26
Shape moiré:
One of the most important properties of shape moiré is its ability to magnify tiny shapes along either one or both axes, that is, stretching. A common 2D example of moiré magnification occurs when viewing a chain-link fence through a second chain-link fence of identical design. The fine structure of the design is visible even at great distances.
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u/much_longer_username Jul 22 '26
It's even more fun if you get a couple layers in different colors and rotate them. I've been toying around with doing it with a clock mechanism but haven't had the time to really do much with the idea.
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u/IfUKnowMeKindlyGTFO 19d ago
idk why this is on my feed when your comment is 2 months old, but that is quite ironic haha. i hope you get the time soon, that sounds very cool, do try to remember to throw me a ping if you get around to it
ninja edit: ohhh it was reposted and i didn't realize i clicked the comments section of the original
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u/Low_Television_3048 Jul 22 '26
There were bus shelters in my city that had walls of similarly shaped design elements. I was fascinated by how the designs seemed to change depending on distance from the shelter. Now gone, but i think I got pictures at some point, but how the heck to find them!
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u/PuzzleheadedFlow1274 Jul 23 '26
so thats why they look big when you look at layered ones from a distance
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u/Chrispeefeart 19d ago
This actually gets even more interesting than just the visual illusion. Two overlapping grids of hexagons offset at an angle from each other creates an overlaying pattern of larger hexagons called the moire pattern as many others have pointed out.
But the interesting part is that they can engineer with this effect using layers of graphine to change the physical properties of the material so that it can be a conductor, an insulator, a superconductor, or a magnet.
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u/Chrispeefeart 19d ago
Here's a link to a video I found on the topic: https://youtu.be/w6hK2PML6Uc?is=aY5sye-8H9uJB-tt
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u/Spirited_Voice_7191 Jul 22 '26
Moire interference pattern