Cold working is when you take a material like metal or plastic and shape it, bend it, or mold it without using heat. It's kind of like playing with play dough, but instead of warming it up to make it easier to shape, you use force to change its shape without making it hot.
When you cold work a material, it becomes stronger and more resistant to breaking or cracking because the process rearranges the molecules inside it to make them line up in a more organized way. It's kind of like building a fort with blocks - the more orderly and stable you make it, the harder it is to knock down.
But sometimes, if you do too much cold working, the material can become too hard and brittle and might crack or break more easily. That's why there's a limit to how much you can cold work something before it becomes too hard and starts to lose its original flexibility.
Overall, cold working is a really useful way to shape and strengthen materials without using heat, but you have to be careful not to overdo it.