ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Incongruent transition

Okay kiddo, imagine you are playing with some blocks. You have a blue square block and a yellow circle block. When you put the blue block on top of the yellow block, they fit together perfectly and look nice. This is like a congruent transition - everything is in the right place.

Now let's say you try to put the blue square block on top of a red triangle block. Uh-oh, they don't fit so well! The edges don't line up and it looks strange. This is like an incongruent transition - something doesn't match up and it doesn't look right.

In science, people study how things change between states. When a change happens smoothly and everything matches up, it's called a congruent transition. But when things change in a way that doesn't fit together well, it's called an incongruent transition. It's like when you get dressed for school and your shirt and pants don't match - it doesn't look good together. Scientists study these kinds of transitions so they can understand more about how things change in the world around us.