chtwrone, thanks for your chart, I'll try and learn how to read it.
For all you "teachers", believing tides are caused by the moon's gravity, you are easily fooled.
"Seeing" the Earth and Moon to Scale
The moon is about 1.3 light-seconds away (240,000 miles). Here is a scale picture of the Earth-moon system, with the earth (actual diameter: 8,000 miles) represented by a circle just a little bigger than 1/8 inch:
Do you see the Earth and how big it is compared to the moon? You believe the moon's gravity is that much stronger than the Earth's gravity that it can actually pull the oceans away from the Earth, and you call yourselves "teachers". I wouldn't let you all teach my dog tricks.
It doesen't have to be "pulled away from earth's gravity" if you cared to do some research before you participate in a debate, this might be a place to start:
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/Academics/Astr221/Gravity/tides.html
It was never the gravitational pull, but differensial forces which is a natural phenomenon caused by attracting forces. The neat thing is that they dont even have to be that strong because there is so much water, and more mass=stronger pull. At least if we can believe newton. This is why big lakes only experience a few millimeters.
And also the moon is about 30% the size of earth, it just seems small it is a few light seconds away. If it was 1/8 inch we would never even see it and it would certainly not be a moon.
Kogelblitz, did you do your research and can you prove that, "It was never the gravitational pull, but differensial forces?" Because this article doesn't agree with you, I thought I'd share it with you. By the way, the FAKE force talked about is your differensial force.
TIDES
It is true, the farther you are from a massive object, the less the gravitational force. So, the side of the Earth that isn’t facing the moon has a lower gravitational force from the moon than the side facing the moon. It’s easy to claim that this causes the tides. It’s simple and easily digestible. However, the Earth has TWO tides. How do you explain the tide on the far side of the Earth?
In the above diagram (which is not even close to the correct scale), you can see both of the water bulges from the tides. There are some other important things in this picture. First, the red dot shows the center of mass of the Earth-moon system. If these two objects (Earth and moon) were the only things in the universe, they would both orbit around this center of mass. Second, the moon AND the Earth are both moving in circular orbits. It just so happens that the Earth’s orbital radius is smaller than the radius of the Earth. The fact that the Earth is orbiting is important in an explanation of the tides. When an object moves in a circle, it is accelerating. And how do we handle being on an accelerating surface? The best way is to use a fake force? A fake force is a force that we like to add to a situation to account for an accelerating reference frame. Here is a quick example. Suppose you are in an elevator that is accelerating up.
There are only two real forces on you in this case. There is the gravitational force pulling down and the floor pushing up. The gravitational force doesn’t change since your mass doesn’t change. The floor has to push up with a larger force than gravity in order for you to accelerate up. However, in the frame of the elevator, it seems like you are at rest. So, in your mind (and in calculations) you can add this fake force pushing down. With the fake force, the net force is zero and you stay at rest (in the elevator). The same thing happens on the far side of the Earth. Since the Earth is moving in a circle (due to the orbit of the moon), this part of the Earth is accelerating towards the moon. The fake force for this acceleration would be in the opposite direction as the acceleration, so it would push AWAY from the moon. This is why there is a second tide. Yes, it’s actually more complicated than that. The point is that it can’t JUST be the
differential gravitational force that causes the two tides. Consider the following experiment. Suppose that I take the Earth and the moon and tie a rope to each one like this:
Yes, you would need some serious ropes. But the point is that if the two objects are stationary then all the water on the Earth would be pulled towards the moon. It would just have water on one side. So, it’s not JUST stronger gravity on one side.