As a child my family vacationed in Maine. The tides there are legendary. It was explained to me that the ocean is so wide at that point that .... something something something.
OK, so why are tide extreme in one place and not another?
As a child my family vacationed in Maine. The tides there are legendary. It was explained to me that the ocean is so wide at that point that .... something something something.
OK, so why are tide extreme in one place and not another?
Just assume that everything I say is sarcastic.
It has to do with the shape of the bay, among other things. The Bay of Fundy, for example, gets its extreme tides from tidal resonance. But the shape of the estuary, the shape of the ocean floor, the currents, the wind, and a number of other factors affect the tides in any given place.
"The Turtle Moves!"
Here is a thought experiment to illustrate one factor of extreme high tides.
Consider a V-shaped bay, with the wide part of the V facing the ocean, and the narrow part of the V being your tiny, terrified town. The moon's gravity pulls a large volume of water from the sea into the mouth of the V. As the day progresses, and the moon shifts over your town, the large volume of water in the mouth of the V will be pulled toward your town. As it does so, the big volume of water is being crammed into a smaller and smaller volume of bay. By high tide a large volume of water has been hoinked into the apex of the V, and you have a very high tide.
It seems to me that the slope of the beach may have a lot to do with it. It takes a whole lot more water to raise the level a foot when the beach is nearly horizontal, as compared to a vertical cliff.
Just as you say. Imagine the V shaped bay to be a cone shaped (half-cone shaped) bay and the effect is even stronger.
Thank you. This is still unclear to me. Anyone else? Type slowly.
Just assume that everything I say is sarcastic.
Go with the funnel - or cone.
fill it up with rice, let the rice drop out the narrow end. The rice (water) moves slowly at the top, because the moon's tidal pull (gravity) is working over a wide area. As the rice comes out the end it's moving with more force (climbing higher up the beach) because the same amount of force is acting on a smaller area.
Have I got it?
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. - Doctor Who
Or take a v shaped hallway. Put the bar at the narrow end of the V - this is the attractive force, standing in for gravity. At the open end of the V people are milling around, chatting, nice party, lots of room. As they get further down the narrow part of the V, the same number of people is crowded into a smaller and smaller space, until they are bunched up on top of each other at the bar - high tide!
What if I took a pastry-decorating cone thing and filled it with rice? I squeeze a little at the wide end and the force is multiplied at the narrow end?
Just assume that everything I say is sarcastic.
Yep! Its like that. Water is essentially incompressible, so you have a certain volume of water being packed into a container of increasingly smaller surface area but limitless height; so the water goes where it can -- namely up, i.e. a high tide.
Roll, Tide!
I've been waiting for this!