ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Limaçon trisectrix

Okay kiddo, have you ever played with a Spirograph toy? It's kind of like that! A limaçon trisectrix is a fancy math shape that you get when you draw a curve around a circle while keeping a little point on a another circle spinning around inside the first one.

Imagine you have a big circle with a little circle inside it. Now draw a line from the little circle to the edge of the big circle. Move the little circle a little bit around the big circle and draw another line from the little circle to the edge of the big circle. Keep doing this over and over again and you'll start to see a cool shape appear!

If you drew it perfectly, you would get a limaçon trisectrix. It looks like a spikey flower or a pretty shell! The reason it's called a "trisectrix" is because the shape has three special parts that divide it up into three equal sections.

It might sound complicated, but it's just a fun way for math folks to make cool patterns and shapes!