The 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 continuous, homogeneous matter with no holes, that is a continuum. the continuum idealisation allows us to treat the properties as point functions and to assume the properties vary continually in space with no jump discontinuities.

The conce[pt of continuum is valid as long as the size of the system we deal with is large relative to the space between the molecules.