I was looking at the clouds and thinking about the earth while wondering this?
In: Physics
The gravity of the earth pulls on the water all equally, which makes it’s so the gravity of the Earth causes the elevation of every part of the surface to be equal. So without outside forces, no part of any large body of water will be higher than any other part.
That said, there are outside forces at work. Obviously wind creates waves, which causes parts of the surface to be higher than other parts. And the tidal pull of other bodies in our solar system, especially the Moon, pulls on the surface of the water and raises it a bit wherever those bodies happened to be at the time, which is why we have tides.
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