ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Biharmonic map

Okay kiddo, a biharmonic map is like playing with Play-Doh. You know how you can take the Play-Doh and squish it into different shapes and sizes? Well, a biharmonic map is kind of like that, but with math.

Imagine you have a bouncy ball and you want to squish it onto a flat piece of paper. But you don't want to lose any of the bouncy ball's shape. So you squish it down and then you squish it down again, making sure you don't lose any of the bouncy ball's shape or bounciness. That's kind of what a biharmonic map does with math.

It takes a shape, like a bouncy ball, and squishes it down onto a flat piece of paper, without losing any important information or details about the original shape. And it does this by squishing it down multiple times, until it's all flat, but still keeping all of the important details about the original shape.

It's like a magic trick with math, where you can take something complicated and turn it into something simple, without losing any important information. And that's why biharmonic maps are useful, because they can help us understand complicated shapes and surfaces without getting too confused.