Answer 1:
Well, the oceans' waves are due to winds
blowing across the surface of the ocean. These
winds get the water near the very top moving in
the direction of the wind and that is what creates
waves near the shoreline. When the distance
between the wave crests becomes longer than the
DEPTH of the water, the waves BREAK; the moon has
nothing to do with that.
However, the MOON does generate the
TIDES. The tides originate because relative to
the center of the earth, the gravitational force
of the moon is greater on the side towards the
moon. BUT at the same time the gravitational pull
on the solid earth on the opposite side is LESS
than at Earth center; so, this effect gives us a
high tide twice a day and a low tide twice a day. |
Answer 2:
Yes it does. The gravitational force
between the moon and the earth is mutual. And
different places on earth will feel different
gravitational force from the moon, due to their
different distances from the moon. This
seemingly tiny difference causes the tides on
earth that we see every day. If the size (and
weight) of the moon increases, the tide is
expected to be bigger.
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Answer 3:
While the size has something to do with it,
what really affects the power of ocean's waves
is the mass. If the Earth were to be floating
through space with nothing around it, the water
would totally be pulled towards the center due to
the force of Earth's gravity, where we wouldn't
see any waves. However, the moon has a large
amount of mass that causes its own force on the
earth. Since its much smaller, the moon doesn't
deflect the Earth from it's orbit, but only pulls
on the water on the surface of the Earth. This is
due to the force of gravity from the moon to the
earth, which is related directly to the mass of
the Earth, the mass of the moon, and inversely to
the squared distance between the objects (or
simply M*m/r(2)).
We see a factor of the radius between the
objects, meaning the closer the two objects are,
the greater force the Earth will feel, and, in
turn, the greater the tides will be.
Now, using this same reasoning, we can deduce
that the sun would also cause a gravitational
force on the ocean's waves. This is true, due to
how massive the sun is compared to the Earth, but
because how far away from us the star is, the
effects on the tides are much smaller than that of
the moon's. This is seen from the dependence on
inverse distance (1/r(2)) in the
gravitational force.
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