P.S. Sorry to abandon you, Jim, if that's what I'm doing!
That is alright Ari I'm used to being abandoned on this list. Let's see
there is "heat", relativistic mass, amu's, and the ocean tides two or three
times. I thought there were now going to be two of us who understood the
tides, now I am not so sure. (:-)
Ari, et al., I need some help! I need an analogy for the oceans -- a damped
harmonic oscillator -- driven by a periodic force out of resonance.
Consider say The Girl in a Swing" (Richard Adams): if the girl is pushed at
max displacement (the way it is usually done) at the resonant frequency the
result is well known.
But suppose she is given an aiding push on the way up instead of down or at
the nadir. Would it matter? Indeed suppose she is pushed off resonant
frequency. Does that mean she can't swing at all? Her frequency won't be
at the resonant frequency, but she will swing.
Somebody give a better example. please.
Now, Ari, you still want to view the tides as a Moon frequency bulge-like
thing rattling the oceans and causing tides -- bouncing off the continents
and islands, etc., but I don't see that that view is as clear as picturing a
multi-frequency driving force acting on various weakly coupled complicated
damped harmonic oscillators.
I don't think you can point to an example of any fixed relationship between
Moon position and tide anywhere -- except at anti nodes -- ie amphidromic
points.
The largest tidal ranges are found in the bays, gulfs, and estuaries of the
oceans where *resonance* occurs!!! And the tides at these places have no
synchronization with the Moon/Sun positions -- the Svern (England) Estuary
and the Bay of Funday (Canada) are cases in point.
I think I need to plot the Moon/Sun net force along with the tide at various
points to prove this point. It will take a while to get all the constants
from NOAA - Maybe this program I just downloaded (FastTide) will make the
point -- give me a few days.
Jim.Green@Snow.edu
It has never been detemined if the
early bird enjoys the worm as much
as the late bird enjoys the extra sleep