With all three cations present, there are four distinct pathways which can be seen in figure . Two of them are symmetric with the two other cations either being on either side of the diffusion process (B), which is very close to the diffusion pathway and in the second case parallel to it (A), which is the furthest the cations can be away from the diffusion. The other two are asymmetric with the cations either directly next to each other (D) or spread out in the phase (C).