Boltzmann believed that this atomic theory was a powerful way to interpret the concept of heat based on the idea that a gas was made up of tiny molecules bashing around like a huge game of micro-billiards. Heat was just the combined kinetic energy of these tiny moving balls. Using this model, combined with ideas of probability and statistics, he was successfully able to explain the large-scale behaviour of a gas. But most physicists were still committed to a continuous view of matter and were very dismissive of Boltzmann’s ideas.
