The Continuum Approximation

The continuum approximation assumes that fluids are continuous and because of such, properties, such as temperature, density and pressure can be assumed constant at “points in space”. This video explains the continuum approximation and describes how it relates to transport phenomena as a whole.

This timeline is meant to help you better understand what the continuum approximation is:
0:00 Introduction.
0:24 What is a Continua?
0:30 Continuum approximation intuition
1:17 Continuum approximation definition
2:08 Continuum approximation in molecular domain
2:39 Continuum approximation with large control volumes
3:04 When and why is the continuum approximation used?
3:53 Outro

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This video is part of our Transport Phenomena course. Transport phenomena is a key engineering science. Within this Transport Phenomena course we will be discussing transport of momentum, mass and energy between various systems.

[kylewolfe_]

This was great, thank you! Was very confused about this during the first real day of my fluid mechanics class. Makes way more sense now.