The Tides
Bad tidings - the tides are slowing down the earth! For more detail about the tides: http://www.jal.cc.il.us/~mikolajsawicki/Tides_new2.pdf Tweet it - http://bit.ly/A58ZwJ Facebook...
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The earth completes a full rotation once per day, and hence the moon passes overhead prettymuch once daily. So then why are there two high and low tides every day?Simple: the moon's gravitational attraction is stronger the closer you are to it. So theclose side of the earth gets pulled away from the middle, which in turn gets pulled awayfrom the far side. As the earth rotates, these so-called "tidal forces" cause water on thesurface to slosh around as "high tides" twice per day - when the moon is directly over yourhead and directly below your feet.So why is gravity weaker at a greater distance? Well, imagine you're spraying a stream ofwater at a sheep [flamingo]. If the sheep's more distant, less of the water hits it th...
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The earth completes a full rotation once per day, and hence the moon passes overhead prettymuch once daily. So then why are there two high and low tides every day?Simple: the moon's gravitational attraction is stronger the closer you are to it. So theclose side of the earth gets pulled away from the middle, which in turn gets pulled awayfrom the far side. As the earth rotates, these so-called "tidal forces" cause water on thesurface to slosh around as "high tides" twice per day - when the moon is directly over yourhead and directly below your feet.So why is gravity weaker at a greater distance? Well, imagine you're spraying a stream ofwater at a sheep [flamingo]. If the sheep's more distant, less of the water hits it th...
