ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Runge–Kutta methods

Runge-Kutta methods are a way of figuring out how things change over time. Imagine you are trying to figure out how much a plant will grow in a certain amount of time. You can use a Runge-Kutta method to help you with that.

First, you take the current state of the plant, like how tall it is and how many leaves it has. Then you guess how much it will change over a small amount of time. This guess is based on some math formulas.

Next, you take the guess you made and use it to figure out how much the plant will change over that small amount of time. You can then adjust your guess to make it more accurate.

You keep doing this over and over again, getting more and more accurate each time. Eventually you will have figured out exactly how much the plant will change over the entire amount of time you were interested in.

Other things can also be modeled with Runge-Kutta methods, like the motion of objects or the behavior of chemicals in a reaction. It's a very useful tool for scientists and engineers who want to understand how things change over time.