The water in the ocean, the air in the room, and a rubber ball have a common characteristic, they appear to completely occupy their respective domains. What this means is that the material occupies every point in the domain. This observation is the basis of the continuum approximation, and it was used in Section 5.2 to define continuum variables such as density and flux. These variables can be defined as long as the individual nature of the constituent particles are not apparent.
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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Holmes, M.H. (2009). Continuum Mechanics: Three Spatial Dimensions. In: Introduction to the Foundations of Applied Mathematics. Texts in Applied Mathematics, vol 56. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-87765-5_8
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