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Re: Bulges

On Fri, 7 Mar 1997, David Bowman wrote:

John Mallinckrodt wrote:

... the tides go
through obvious cycles of varying heights about every 29 days, a very
clear signature of beating with the sun's drive frequency.

... the dominant solar/lunar beat modulation
frequency should be twice the rate above with a period of 14 1/2 days because
both full and new lunar phases induce a Spring tide and the 1st and 3rd
quarter phases induce a Neap tide. ...

Oops! Of course, you're right and that is what is generally seen. I
should have been actually *looking* at a tide table when I wrote that.

As happened last year in my discussion with Jack U. about the speed of light
c, I have nearly exhausted myself (and my free time) here trying to explain
my points. So I plan to bow out of the bulge discussion at this point and
rest and devote my time to more productive things. For some reason every
time Jim brings up the problem of tidal bulges the list goes into overdirve
in its flurry of tide thread responses. I had tried to stay out of it this
time, but it didn't work, (Jim still sucked me in and John kept me there).
I think I need to show more will power in the future. :-)

Agreed. I had really planned to stay out of it myself and did a pretty
good job until late in the game. At any rate I do understand your
additional phase requirement for a bulge signal and agree (at least I
*hope* I'm "agreeing") that the interesting question that needs to be
addressed is something more like "is the mean height of the ocean in the
expected instantaneous vicinity of the tidal bulges larger than the mean
height elsewhere."

Over and out,

John
----------------------------------------------------------------
A. John Mallinckrodt email: mallinckrodt@csupomona.edu
Professor of Physics voice: 909-869-4054
Cal Poly Pomona fax: 909-869-5090
Pomona, CA 91768 office: Building 8, Room 223
web: http://www.sci.csupomona.edu/~mallinckrodt/