Posts tagged with "I Was So Mad":

Tidings of Tides

What exactly causes the tides? That question was something humanity wondered on and off for quite some time, though people did notice that it had something to do with the moon. In fact, Johannes Kepler was the first to suggest that an attractive pull from the moon caused Earth's tides (by observation and analysis of recorded data). However, it wasn't until about eighty years later that Newton pinned down what exactly was going on (with an actual physical theory of tides). Having described the mathematics of gravity and how it relates both to our attraction to the Earth and the movement of the planets, he tackled how the pull of the moon should create differing levels of water on the Earth. What he described was the Tidal Force, which is a force that results from gravitational attraction from a secondary body (the moon) on another body (the Earth) being unequal on all sides...

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