Where does seawater go when it’s low tide?

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Where does seawater go when it’s low tide?

In: Physics

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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