ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Line–sphere intersection

Imagine you have a big ball (a sphere), and you draw a line going through it. This line can either touch the ball at one point, or not touch it at all.

If the line doesn't touch the ball, we say the line and the ball don't intersect. It's like when you try to touch something, but you can't quite reach it.

But if the line does touch the ball, we say they do intersect. It's like when you place your finger on a balloon - your finger touches the surface of the balloon.

When we talk about line-sphere intersection, we're trying to figure out where the line touches the sphere. This can be really useful if, say, you're trying to program a 3D game where a character moves through a world of spheres.

There are a lot of math equations you can use to figure out where the line and sphere intersect, but they can be really complicated. So, for now, let's just say that when you want to find the intersection of a line and a sphere, you need to do some tricky math.