Where does seawater go when it’s low tide?
In: Physics
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.
Gravity just moves it around due to the position of the Sun and the Moon it doesn’t disappear. https://youtu.be/fHO9J2LlXYw
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.
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.
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
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.
Imagine tugging/pinching up on a sheet that’s on a bed. Your hand is the moon, the height of the sheet is the water level. It’s high tide where your hand is.
Now let go and pinch up somewhere else on the sheet. That area is high tide, the other area is now low tide.
The high point travels in relation to where the moon is vs the earth’s seas.
If you have access to a second hand, press up from underneath the sheet with your palm. That’s the effect from the sun. Occasionally, the two can combine or be opposite, and since water is limited, that can result in higher or lower tides.
Note: someone else could likely improve upon this a lot. Hopefully it’s a nice start.
Think of it like tug of war. You’ve got one end of a rope, I’ve got the other end. If I pull the rope hard, you have less, I have more. If you pull hard, you have more, I have less.
The sea is no difference. High Tide here basically means low tide on the other side of the sea. Low Tide here means High Tide on the other side. In larger seas/oceans this may take some time because of the big distance, but the sea is just sloshing back and forth between coastlines.
Think of it this way,
When you move from one place to another, you are no longer in the place you were before.
This is what water does, it moves from one place to another
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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