ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Computational mechanics

Computational mechanics goes brrr! It's all about using special tools, like computers, to figure out how things move and why! Imagine you have a toy car, and you want to know how fast it will go if you push it really hard. You can't just guess - you need to do some math to figure it out. That's where computational mechanics comes in!

First, we need to understand what the toy car is made of. Is it heavy or light? Does it have wheels that spin easily, or are they sticky? All of these things affect how fast it will go. Then we need to think about how much force we're going to put into pushing it, and what direction we want it to go in.

Next, we use a computer to do some fancy math called simulations. It's like playing pretend on the computer - we tell it what the toy car is like, and what we're doing to it, and it shows us what will happen. It can show us how fast it will go, how far it will travel, and even how the wheels will spin!

Computational mechanics can also help engineers design buildings and bridges that won't fall down, or airplanes that won't crash. They use the computer to simulate how the materials will withstand stress and strain, and figure out if they need to make any changes to make them stronger.

So basically, computational mechanics is all about using computers to help us figure out how things will move and behave, and how we can make them better and safer. It's kind of like magic, but with math!