A moiré pattern is a radiating curved pattern created when two repetitive patterns overlap and interfere with one another. Such a pattern is seen, for example, when someone on TV wears a herringbone jacket. Moiré is the French word for 'silk,' the method of making the fabric that shows the familiar shifting patterns, now known as silk moiré, having been introduced from China to France in 1754.

 

 

Moiré patterns arre used in industry to determine, for example, the degree of flatness of a surface, They are also used as mathematical models of physical phenomena, and occasionally in the solution of mathematical problems. Their disturbing optical properties are of interest in psychology.