How is it that the moon can affect the 352 quintillion gallons of water in the ocean, but not affect us?

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The moon depending on where it is at your time of day can affect whether or not there’s high or low tides. Basically moving all of the water in the ocean, at least that’s how I think. But how come it doesn’t make us feel lighter or heavier throughout the day? Or just seem to affect anything else

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You’re not large enough to feel the effects of the moon. You’re a small, mostly liquid, packet of water-like substance.

Since this is an ELI5: When standing directly under the moon (perpendicular to the earth), you will weigh some amount less. Let’s say 0.0001% less. Now, for someone who weighs about 60kg, that’s about 60 milligrams. So you weigh 59.99994kg instead of 60kg. You won’t notice this. Your body isn’t large enough to notice any bend.

Now place a a 10kg bucket of water on the ground. When the moon is overhead, *it also* will weigh 0.0001% less. It’ll weigh 9.9999kg. You won’t see a bulge in the water, because it’s too small for you to notice such a small difference.

The pacific ocean has about 6*10^20 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000) kilograms of water as an estimate. It also will weigh 0.0001% less. When the moon is overhead, it will weigh about 5,999,400,000,000,000,000,000kg. Notice, the ocean will now weigh 600,000,000,000,000,000Kg LESS. That’s how much lighter the pacific ocean will be. This difference in weight will be *noticeable* over large distances.

Also, for a distance of thousands of miles, the ocean will rise just a few feet. That’s not that much higher when you take the whole ocean into account.

If you had a small bucket of water, and measured down to picometers the water level when the moon was overhead vs not overhead, you will probably measure some tiny difference!

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