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Re: Rossby waves



Jim
See if we agree on this. The intro text tidal buldge no more tells the story
of tides than a high speed photo of a string being plucked tells the story
of music. This simple perturbation is extensively modified by the medium and
and as you suggest resonnaces play a major role in this modification. OK?

Did you see the article in Sc. American late last summer where they we trying
to calculate the effect of a power generating dam in the upper bay of Fundy
on the tides in the rest of the bay? Neat article!

Now the question is what do we do as educators? What do we teach? The tidal
buldge model is useful and does give a kind of a global average of the tides.
It explains pretty well such things as changes in the moons orbit. It is
simple and easy to understand. However, it isn't very useful for planning
kayak trips in coastal areas, and naive reliance on such a simple model could
easily result in death by drowning. When this comes up in intro physics,
astronomy, geology, etc. should we issue a disclaimer and explain that this
simple model is highly modified and complex at the local level and explain
qualitatively some of the factors that create these modifications? I've never
done this, but it does seem like a good idea.

Isn't this a problem with most of what we teach in physics? We present simple
models of ideal situations as if they came from God on gold tablets and spend
very little time of the limitations of these models or the modifications of
these models which may be necessary when trying to apply them in the real
world. In some cases this means we just clutter up kids heads with useless
information, but it also leads to real misconceptions about science. People
get the idea that good science should tie everything up in neat packages and
until that is done science can be ignored. I this misconception about science
is one reason why we have such a hard time incorporating science into public
policy decisions.