Hello, and welcome to
your Tide o Matic. So the
purpose of this activity is to
teach you very briefly about the
tides. So what we have here
first is the sun. And then
because of the sun, these little
yellow bulges right there
represent tides, or the waters
being pulled towards the sun. So
what ends up happening is first,
we're going to add this little
piece of transparency paper. Now
don't make fun of my circles and
a very good cutting circles. But
this little black dot here
represents the moon. Now what we
can see around here is another
oval, that oval as you can see,
it is a little bit stronger here
because it's in line with the
moon, and it's a little
diminished on either side here,
and that's because there's not a
moon there. So what we're going
to see is that because of the
sun and the moon, we have tides,
we have high tides, low tides,
super high tides, and super low
tides. Now, the other missing
element to this diagram will be
the earth, which is hanging out
over here. We'll talk about that
in a moment. So the lab activity
itself is having you walk
through a couple processes. Now,
the first thing first is that
the sun is stationary, we can
actually rotate this to
represent the course of an
entire year. But we're not going
to do that here. We're just
looking very simplistically at
just discovering and learning
but the differences between
highs and low tides. So now
let's first examine the graphics
on the transparency, which is
this little plastic paper here.
What do you notice? Where are
the lunar tides bulging? And
where are they located? As you
can see, they're opposite that
at the location of the moon.
When you revolve the moon around
the Earth, so let's add our
little Earth. What I did here is
I added a red meridian showing
approximately Los Angeles area.
So what it says here is if we
rotate this little plastic piece
here, you know, I'm going to
leave the earth stationary just
for the purpose of this
activity. If I rotate this one
quarter turn, so I move my moon
so the moon's now over here,
it's been a quarter turned, what
has happened? Well, we can see
at first that these really large
high tides themselves are pulled on either
side, the sun is still pulling
some water but not as much. So
we have high tides and low
tides. Well, let's move the moon
one more time a quarter turn.
Now what happens? We have super
high tides on either side here
and super low tides. Move here,
same setup, we have high tide,
low tide. And then we move back
over here where things are in
line. So as you obviously can
tell when the moon and the sun
are opposite here, or next to
pardon, or opposite, that's when
we experience our super high
versus our super low tides
respectively. So the lab
activity itself is having you
just draw conclusions based off
of this diagram. We're not
looking at this throughout the
course of a year we're just
looking at the course of a day
in dealing with the moon itself.
So again, I'm going to rotate
this little plastic piece, so
you can see the course of what
is happening with these tides.
Alright, so now what we've done
is we've just rotated the moon
around the Sun, gone one
revolution all the way around.
Now, by using deductive
reasoning, and looking at how
these little bulges are
operating in relationship with
either you know, you by moving
the plastic piece or what about
by moving the earth itself. When
you think about the revolution
and rotation of Earth in
relationship to sun, I think
between what I've just done as a
drawing, that should be enough
for you to be able to answer the
questions in your lab.
That being said, Good luck and
we'll talk soon.
