Re: Bulges

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>]

On Sun, 2 Mar 1997, Leigh Palmer wrote:

> I think it is a shame that this point of view is not taught in our schools.
> The zealous censorship of physics textbooks that has removed the entirely
> accessible concept of centrifugal force from our problem solving tool bag
> has done a great disservice to our students.

I agree that your potential approach is a superior way to do this. I'm
curious, though, what you get as an answer when you consider the case
where the two bodies are *not* rotating. I predict you will get the result
that there are two opposing tidal bulges even in that case, simply from
the gravitational force gradient. Therefore textbooks shouldn't imply that
rotation is the *sole* cause of the bulges. However, it would be
interesting to compare the size of the non-rotational bulges, with the
size of them when the system is rotating, to see which cause is the
predominant one for the bulges.

	-- Donald

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Dr. Donald E. Simanek                            Office: 717-893-2079
Prof. of Physics                    Internet: dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745          CIS: 73147,2166 
Home page: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek            FAX: 717-893-2047
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