aeolotropic

See also: æolotropic

English

aeolotropic (not comparable)

(physics) Pertaining to aeolotropy; of a body or substance, having physical properties (e.g., electric conductivity, refractive index) that depend on the direction in which they are measured.
- 1867, W. Thomson & P. G. Tait, Treatise on Natural Philosophy vol. 1, pages 518:
  An individual body […] may be isotropic in one quality or class of qualities, but æolotropic in others.
- 1911, Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edn. vol. 18, pages 627:
  On extending his [Mitscherlich's] inquiry to other aelotropic crystals he observed a similar variation, and was thus led, in 1825, to the discovery that aelotropic crystals, when heated, expand unequally in the direction of dissimilar axes.

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