Anisotropy

Anisotropy (the opposite of isotropy) is the property of being directionally dependent.

In the field of computer graphics, an anisotropic surface will change in appearance as it is rotated about its geometric normal, as is the case with velvet. Anisotropic scaling occurs when something is scaled by different amounts in different directions. An example is stretching a 64×64-pixel texture to cover a 12×34-pixel rectangle; this is anisotropic filtering.

An anisotropic filter, on the other hand, is a filter with increasingly smaller interstitial spaces in the direction of filtration so that the proximal regions filter out larger particles and distal regions increasingly remove smaller particles, resulting in greater flow-through and more efficient filtration.

Cosmologists use the term to describe the fluctuations in the background radiation left over after the big bang. The term refers to the difference in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation with direction.

An anisotropic liquid is one which has the fluidity of a normal liquid, but, unlike water or chloroform, which contain no structural ordering of the molecules, they have an average structural order relative to each other along their molecular axis. Liquid crystals are examples of anisotropic liquids.

Engineers and Scientists concerned with Thermal Management will often have to consider the nature of thermal conduction through materials. Some materials conduct heat in a way that is isotropic, that is independent of spacial orientation around the heat source. It is more common for heat conduction to be anisotropic, which implies that detailed geometric modeling of typically diverse materials being thermally managed is required. Thermal management is becoming the "Hot topic" in the electronics industry, and the materials used to transfer and reject heat from the heat source are often anisotropic.