ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Laplace–Beltrami operator

Okay kiddo, so imagine you have a bouncy ball on a flat surface like a table. If you want to know how the ball will move, you just need to look at two things - its position and how fast it's moving.

But what if you have a wiggly, bumpy surface, like a crumpled piece of paper or a mountain? It's not as easy to figure out how something will move on that surface.

That's where the Laplace-Beltrami operator comes in. It's like a special tool that helps us understand how things move on bumpy surfaces.

Basically, the Laplace-Beltrami operator looks at the shape of the surface and tells us how things move based on that shape. It takes into account things like how curved or twisted the surface is, and how different areas of the surface are connected to each other.

So if you want to know how a bouncy ball will move on a crumpled piece of paper, you can use the Laplace-Beltrami operator to help you figure it out.

But don't worry if you don't fully understand it yet - it's a pretty complicated tool that even grown-ups have trouble with sometimes!