Where does seawater go when it’s low tide?
In: Physics
To be even more accurate, my understanding is that the water doesn’t actually go anywhere. It’s the earth that moves under the bodies of water that are being held up slightly by the gravity of both the moon and the sun.
The other parts of the sea. Like water sloshing in a bathtub but over a much greater area so it takes longer. When it’s low tide here it’s high tide other places.
Simplest description is the water goes to other parts of the ocean that are farther away. At those locations where the water is going, the ocean is getting deeper ( more water is being pulled there) while at the shore, water is getting shallower (less water is there).
The water gets moved to those locations by the moon’s gravitational pull as it orbits around the Earth, and is also affected by which direction the Sun is.
Think of the sea as a ferofluid that’s wrapped round a big magnet (earth) and is also being very slightly pulled by another magnet really far away (the moon).
It will always slightly bulge towards the far away magnet. When the moon is close the sea is high, when it isn’t the moon far away.
The tide is like a sloshing back and forth because of this moving pull, like when you sit in the bath and cause ripples.
But instead you’re a planet and moon ans the bath is the sea, so the sloshing is the tide
Gravity just moves it around due to the position of the Sun and the Moon it doesn’t disappear. https://youtu.be/fHO9J2LlXYw
The ocean flows to where there is high tide. The tide is governed by the moon. The high tide is in line with the moon and water flows from the sides of the earth to the regions of high tide. The continents effect this pattern but by far and large this is true.
It goes to where it’s high tide.
At any given moment there’s two high tides and two low tides around the world. The moon pulls the oceans outward on the side facing the moon and the side facing away from the moon on the opposite side. The reason you’re having a low tide is *because* there’s a high tide 90 degrees longitude to your east and another one 90 degrees longitude to your west. Those two high tides are stealing your water. But don’t worry, 6 hours later you’ll be at the high tide spot 90 degrees to your east and you’ll be the one stealing water from them.
And it’s not just the water. It’s everything. If you had a super sensitive scale, you’d look like you weigh slightly more at low tide than at high tide. It’s just that ocean water, because there’s so much of it, makes the effect of that slight change more obvious.
It’s not where the water goes, it’s where you go. The gravity of the sun – as we understand it – pulls the water harder in one direction, creates more depth there. But that’s a really slow process, 30 days per revolution. Meanwhile, we are spinning inside that shape every 24 hours and the single point where you are standing sees a rising and falling tide.
Almost every answer here is somewhat misleading, with regard to your actual question about where the water goes. The water doesn’t travel to the spots with the opposite tide, to do that it would have to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles per hour. The actual coastal water goes offshore a few miles. I’ve watched small boats and debris go out with the tide and come back in with it for decades. Anyone who lives by the sea is accustomed to that process.
The earth has love handles made of water, they rotate around the planet with the moon, when it’s high tide in a place a love handle is present, at low tide there isn’t one
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