Physics · Glossary

What is Fluid particle; the continuum hypothesis?

Definition 2.1 University Physics — Year 2 · Chapter 2 — Fluid Kinematics

A fluid particle is a volume of fluid small enough to be treated as a point on the scale of the flow, yet large enough to contain a huge number of molecules, so that its density ρ\rho, pressure PP, temperature TT and mean velocity v\vect v are well-defined averages (the mesoscopic scale, typically a micrometre). The continuum hypothesis assumes such a scale exists: the mean free path \ell of the molecules must be much smaller than the scale LL of the flow, /L1\ell/L \ll 1. In air at atmospheric pressure 70nm\ell \approx 70\,\mathrm{nm}; in a liquid \ell is the molecular size. The fluid is then described by fields ρ(M,t)\rho(M, t), P(M,t)P(M, t), v(M,t)\vect v(M, t) defined at every point.

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