http://www.rdmag.com/news/2014/07/consider-“anticrystal” They say anticrystals are solids where its atoms were completely disordered I rmb back in high school periods that fluids were also described as quite disordered and random, so what exactly is the difference between an anticrystal and a fluid?
They are describing an amorphous solid material like typical silicate glass. There is no crystaline structure in the glass, but unlike liquids they are solid. Glass has been called a super cooled liquid which has led to some unfortunate urban ledgends. One of the persistent untrue comments is that glass will flow overtime at room temperature which is not true. Because glass has no crystal structure the material does not have a set melting temperature like ice or iron. Glass is completely solid up to it's glass transition temperatruure. The melting point of glass is sort of arbitrary, it is essentially the temperatrure where the materual flows easily and can be mixed. As a glass is heated above its glass transition temperature the materials viscosity slowly drops as the temperature rises, there is not a point where the solid suddenly goes from a solid to a liquid.
A liquid differs from the solid state in that a liquid allows some its it micro effects, to differ from its bulk macro-effects. In the solid state, these remain connected moving in the same direction. For example, if we have a beaker of water, open to the air, the water experiences a force, due to the air pressure. This pushes down on the water in the bulk macro sense. This situation also creates surface tension between the air and water. The water displays both compression (macro) and tension (micro) at the same time. The force vectors don't cancel, but work independently at two different scales; micro and macro. The beaker of glass, which is solid, feels the pressure/force from the air at both the macro and micro level. These forces move the same way. This has to do with entropy. A solid is bonded together, even if it is not as a perfect crystal. This restricts any further entropy change. The molecules of a liquid retains more mobility at the micro-level, allowing the entropy changes needed to move to the beat of a different drum. Entropy needs energy to increase. If there is a source of energy, this is where entropy will be maximized, thereby mirroring the energy field. In the case of water and air, the energy is supplied via the force/pressure on the surface, for both pressure and surface tension.
