• Matter is made up of atoms that are
widely spaced in the gas phase. Yet it is
very convenient to disregard the atomic
nature of a substance and view it as a
continuous, homogeneous matter with
no holes, that is, a continuum.
• The continuum idealization allows us to
treat properties as point functions and to
assume the properties vary continually
in space with no jump discontinuities.
• This idealization is valid as long as the
size of the system we deal with is large
relative to the space between the
molecules.
• This is the case in practically all
problems.
• In this text we will limit our consideration
to substances