ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Particle method

Particle method is like playing with sand. You know how you can make shapes and structures with sand by just taking a bunch of it and putting it together? Well, particle method is like that, but with tiny little things called particles.

These particles are really small and we use a computer to keep track of all of them. We can use particle method to study things like water waves, air flow, or even how car crashes happen.

Imagine you have a really big bowl of sand, and you want to see how a wave is formed in the sand. If you shake the bowl, you'll see that the sand starts to move around and makes a shape like a wave. That's kind of like what particle method does, except instead of sand, we use millions of tiny particles that move around on their own.

Just like real things in the world, these particles have different properties like mass, density, or shape. We put all of these things into a computer and it helps to calculate how they move and interact with each other.

So, particle method is like playing with sand, but with a computer helping us keep track of everything. We can use it to learn about all sorts of things, and it's a lot of fun to watch the particles move and change.