ABSTRACT
The structure of a liquid is intermediate between that of a solid (see Topic A5) and a gas (see Topic A3). The molecules in a liquid have sufficient energy to allow relative motion of its constituent molecules, but insufficient to enable the truly random motion of a gas. Liquids have a limited degree of short-range order, but virtually no long-range order, and in contrast to a solid, a liquid cannot be adequately described in terms of atomic
positions. They are better described in terms of a radial distribution function, since there is only the probability of finding a neighbor at a given radial distance, rather than the certainty of a neighbor at a fixed point.
