ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Stokes operators

Okay, so let's say you have a toy boat that you play with in the bathtub. When you move your hand back and forth in the water, you create waves that move the boat up and down. These waves are called "fluid motion".

Now, let's imagine you have a really powerful microscope that lets you see the water molecules that make up the waves. These tiny molecules are moving in all different directions, bumping into each other and bouncing off the sides of the bathtub.

Scientists use something called "Stokes operators" to help them understand how these water molecules move around. It's like a special tool they use to describe the fluid motion of the water.

Imagine you have a bunch of marbles in a jar, and you're shaking the jar back and forth. The marbles are bouncing into each other and bouncing off the sides of the jar. The Stokes operators are like a way to measure how much the marbles are moving and bouncing off each other.

In the same way, scientists use Stokes operators to measure how much the water molecules are moving and bouncing off each other in the bathtub. This helps them understand things like how the waves are created, how they move, and how they affect objects like your toy boat.

So, in summary, Stokes operators are a special tool scientists use to help them understand how water molecules move around in fluid motion, similar to how you might shake a jar of marbles to understand their movement.