Equations aren't scary.

They're just poorly communicated.

Example:

The two equations above are the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible fluids. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing! We haven't communicated anything useful yet!

The top equation has five terms: expressions separated by plus, minus, and equals signs. The first term is how much the fluid speeds up or slows down exactly where your boat is on a river. The second term is how much the fluid speeds up or slows down under your boat due to faster or slower fluid flowing toward your boat. The third term is how much gravity pulls the fluid down. The fourth term is how much pressure experienced by fluid particles causes the fluid to speed up or slow down. The last term is how "sticky" the fluid is--in other words, how hard each fluid particle tries to keep up with its neighbors.

The second equation just says the fluid is always trying to keep its volume from changing.

So, who cares?

A lot of people!

These equations mean something surprising and important: that if you want to know exactly how a fluid will behave at all points in space, all you need to know is how hard gravity pulls it (we can measure that), what its pressure and density are at all points in space (we can measure that pretty well too), how sticky it is, and how it's always trying to conserve volume. Nothing else matters (basically)!

3D animated movies use these equations to animate special effects like rivers, oceans, splashing water in glasses, and so on.