Yup. That's about it. As I said a while back, the Earth is "falling" towards
the Moon as the two rotate around their common center. The near part of the
Earth falls a bit faster, the far part falls a bit slower. The result is the
two bulges.

Nav has been asking what happens if we prevent the Earth from "falling" but
somehow still had the Moon's gravity. Then we would have higher tide on the
near side, and low (but not as low as normal) tide on the far side.



"Scout" wrote in message
...
I was hoping you could solve this riddle.
But I'll toss in my oversimplified guess: the moon's gravity attracts the
water closest to it resulting in high high tide on the moon side of earth,
and also pulls the earth away from the water on the far side, resulting in a
low high tide on the side farthest from the moon.
Scout


"Nav" wrote in message
...
Yes, so...

Cheers


Scout wrote:

If the center of mass was the only factor involved, wouldn't the bulge be
on one side of the earth only?
Scout

"Nav" wrote in message
...

Yes, you can. Where is the center of mass of the earth moon system?

Cheers

Peter S/Y Anicula wrote:


We can certainly look at the gravitational force from the moon and the
gravitational force of the earth seperatly, and then ad the two, to
have a look at the combined forces.

Peter S/Y Anicula


"Nav" skrev i en meddelelse
...


Well Peter, I have to disagree there. The gravitational force acts

only


toward the center of mass of the system. This cannot by itself

produce


two bulges. To clarify this, try imagining the forces of gravity in

2D


on a piece of paper. In all cases, water would be pulled toward the
center of the Earth-Moon pair. This would lead to less water on the

far


side and more water as you move toward the moon... -two bulges would

not


be present.

Cheers