https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=pwChk4S99i4
What Physics Teachers Get Wrong About Tides! | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
--------------

as we've seen before on space time

gravity affects the motion of all

objects identically so if gravity from

the moon and the Sun is really

responsible for tides in the ocean and

water is water then why don't we see

tides in lakes guess what

whatever you believe about why ocean

tides exist is probably wrong even at

the most basic level in fact every

YouTube video I've ever seen about tides

including ones made by smart people

explains the tides incorrectly typically

they showed this diagram along with an

explanation that goes something like

this

the moon's gravity is stronger at Point

a and weaker at point B than it is at

Earth's center the net effect of this

differential in the moon's gravity

across the earth is to stretch the

oceans out like taffy ergo why the

oceans bulge out at opposite points

along the earth/moon line now that

explanation sounds plausible and a lot

of well-known scientists give it that as

we'll see it's not correct don't get me

wrong the facts are correct there really

is a gravity differential from the moon

at points a and B and at least in this

simplified model there would be two

tidal bulges at opposite ends of the

earth/moon line plus if earth could

rotate underneath those bulges with no

friction between the ocean and Earth's

crust then at a given location on the

globe you would experience two high

tides per day as you pass through each

bulge and two low tides per day as you

pass through the spots at 90 degrees to

the vault all of that is true what's

wrong is the explanation for the bulges

they aren't actually being lifted or

stretched by that gravitational

differential something much more subtle

is happening that even many professional

astronomers and physicists misunderstand

including me for many years so don't

feel bad

tides are tricky but today we're gonna

set the record straight

and in the process understand how it

could be that the ocean has tides but

Lakes bathtubs and cups of coffee don't

so right up front I want to make some

assumptions to simplify the analysis and

to remove unimportant factors from the

picture that way we can better isolate

qualitatively what's really causing the

tides here we go assumption one we're

gonna use Newtonian gravity it's not

that I'm Stein can't explain tides he

can but curved space-time will only add

complexity without actually making

things clearer assumption two let's

ignore the Sun

for simplicity we'll focus only on the

influence of the moon the sun's effects

are going to work analogously anyway

assumption three we're going to pretend

the earth is uniformly covered with one

humongous ocean and no continent and

finally assumption four we're going to

pretend that we can switch Earth's

gravity on and off whenever we want to

you got it okay let's take a closer look

at the moon's gravity differential and

how it manifests itself from the

perspective of a frame of reference

attached to Earth's center forget about

the oceans for a minute and just imagine

two small blocks a and B at opposite

ends of the Earth's surface along the

earth/moon line turn off Earth's gravity

what happens to the blocks well relative

to a frame out in the ambient space

block a accelerates toward the moon more

than Earth's center and Earth's center

accelerates toward the moon more than

Block B so from the perspective of

Earth's frame both blocks will separate

from the surface as if acted on by some

invisible outward force that weird

invisible outward force is called the

tidal force and in Newtonian physics

it's fake it's an artifact of Earth's

frame of reference remember Earth's

itself is accelerating toward the moon

so according to Newton or it's frame is

non inertial now if you need a refresher

on non inertial frames you can check out

our earlier video on the topic but the

bottom line is that in Earth's frame the

tidal force looks like anti-gravity at

least along the earth/moon line here's

the thing just like the fake forces that

you perceive in an accelerating train

car tidal forces should make all objects

accelerate off the surface identically

regardless of their mass an object's

resulting acceleration relative to

Earth's surface is called the tidal

acceleration of that object and it

should be identical for a pebble and a

pony but if that's true

the tidal force along the earth/moon

line can't be raising or stretching the

two bulges that lie along that line

because if that were the case then water

in lakes should also be lifted and for

that matter so should sand and rocks and

you remember the object's mass doesn't

matter we don't see things levitate

during high tide more important the math

of assuming the bulges are being lifted

doesn't work out the tidal acceleration

on objects due to the moon's

differential gravity along the

earth/moon line works out to only one

ten-millionth of an earth g and you

can't lift something by pulling up on it

with a force that's ten million times

smaller than its earth weight Plus even

if you turned Earth's gravity off you

would never notice an outward

acceleration of one micron per second

per second nevertheless those bulges in

the ocean are real so if the ocean isn't

being stretched then how do they get

there the key is to look at the tidal

acceleration of objects that are not on

the earth/moon line for instance a block

at this location is going to be pulled

this way by the moon but of course the

whole earth is pulled that way by the

moon chasing after the block so relative

to the Earth's surface the blocks tidal

acceleration is almost radially inward

in other words down in fact and we map

out the tidal acceleration vectors that

you'd see at different points on Earth's

surface they look like this

as you can see tidal forces only act

like anti-gravity if you're right on the

earth/moon line at most places those

vectors are largely tangent to Earth's

surface which would push water sideways

now we've drawn these vectors kind of

big to help you visualize them but in

reality they're microscopic remember the

radially inward acceleration caused by

Earth's own gravity on objects is ten

million times bigger

however the surface area of the ocean is

also enormous so those tiny tangential

sideways pushes on all the chunks of

water added up over half the surface of

the planet can produce a pretty decent

increase in water pressure so I think

you can start to see what's happening

here the ocean isn't being lifted or

stretched instead thanks to the

cumulative sideways traction everywhere

else it's being squeezed toward the

earth/moon line and piling up there

basically the moon is turning the entire

ocean into a planet-sized hydraulic pump

and the ocean is bulging along the

earth/moon line in the same way that a

blister or a pimple will bulge up in the

center if you start to squeeze it from

the side so why don't lakes have tides

well largely for the same reason that

it's very hard to pop small pimples less

traction and bad hydraulics see unlike

the oceans a single Lake is not a

contiguous planet sized body of water

lakes just don't have enough area for

the tiny pushes on it to build up enough

pressure to change the water level now

technically really big Lakes like Lake

Michigan in North America

can generate enough pressure to produce

mini tides maybe with a couple of

centimeters difference between low and

high tide but since winds and boats and

aquatic sloshing will all create ripples

that are way bigger than that those mini

tides just aren't noticeable the same is

true for any enclosed body of liquid

swimming pool bathtub a human body which

is basically a big sack of water and a

cup of coffee

technically all experienced tides

they're just microscopic also remember

that earth itself isn't perfectly rigid

so when water in a swimming pool Rises a

tiny amount Earth's surface is also

rising by a tiny amount making the

change in water level relative to the

surface of the planet even less

noticeable now everything that I've just

said is oversimplified but I think it

gets the main point across namely tides

have a lot more in common with pimples

than they do with taffy okay

we've got a few loose ends to tie up

first the Sun its effects on tides are

analogous to those of the moon but

they're only about a third is big the

Sun is more massive yes but it's also

much further away now when earth the

moon and the Sun all line up in space

the effects are additive and you get

extra large spring tides when instead

they make a 90-degree angle in space

there's partial cancellation and you get

extra small neap tides second in the

simple model of a Waterworld earth the

math says that the water level should

vary by about 3/4 of a meter between

high and low tide but some places see

smaller tides in this while other places

like the Bay of Fundy in Canada have

tidal swings of over 10 meters each day

so why the variations from place to

place

well location relative to the plane of

the moon's orbit is certainly part of it

but mostly it's that nooks and crannies

in the continents affect the details of

how pressure gets distributed through

the ocean in non-uniform ways for

example some lakes and rivers that have

direct ocean inlets do have tides but

instead of rising gradually high tide

can come in through the inlet like a

moving wall of water called a tidal bore

which is pretty cool

also some variation in water level is

just sloshing that's not directly

related to tides at all the bottom line

is that the finer details of tides in

the real world are just kind of

complicated so are other things that I

haven't mentioned like how the rate of

Earth's rotation and the ocean tides

affect each other for discussions of all

of that I humbly direct you to other

videos and articles that are linked down

in the description finally pour

nine-one-one one of our viewers once

asked how Miller's planet in the movie

interstellar could have had such huge

waves without the astronauts themselves

being stretched or levitated I think

that other stuff was supposed to be at

play there but nevertheless when it

comes to liquid on a planet the

squeezing aspect of tidal forces will

almost always be more important than the

stretching even in the craziest regions

of space-time last week we finished our

series on general relativity and curved

space-time you guys had a lot of great

questions that I'll address in a second

but first a comment about one of our

earlier episodes a while back we did an

episode clarifying misconceptions about

so-called habitable exoplanets now prior

to the airing of that episode at the

2015 NASA space apps challenge a

colleague of mine professor Emily rice

from the College of Staten Island has

done a very similar talk about exoplanet

atmospheres she and I had been talking

about exoplanets back and forth for a

while including in the context of this

show and there was a lot of overlap

between our two talks that I wasn't

aware of at the time that we aired our

episode if I had been I would have cited

her talk explicitly and I'd like to

rectify the situation now so down in the

description you'll see a link to her

talk about alien atmospheres it's very

good at the NASA space apps challenge

along with a link to other information

from her website now to your comments a

lot of you ended up asking very similar

questions rather than address your

comments individually I'm going to

address the most frequently asked

questions in bulk a lot of you asked

about gravitons in the following context

you may have heard that in quantum field

theory forces are described as being

mediated by some kind of particle like

electromagnetism by the photon strong

nuclear forces by the glue on and so

forth so if gravity is not a force and

it's considered space-time curvature

then why do people talk about graviton

that's an excellent question and it's

hard to answer but here's the rough

bottom line thinking about things in

terms of gravitons and thinking about

space-time curvature are not necessarily

mutually exclusive it's just that

instead of quantizing a sort of standard

field you're that you think of as a

force field you're quantizing something

different when you talk about the

quantum version of general relativity

and it turns out that you can do itself

consistently if you can quantize any

classical theory as long as you are

restricting yourself to looking at

macroscopic regimes large scale things

and you get pretty good agree with

general relativity there it's when you

start looking at very small scales and

what the quantum version of gravity

tells

very small scales or very high energies

that a lot of infinities start popping

up in the theory that you can't get rid

of which is why we don't have a fully

self consistent quantized version of

gravity yet but from the philosophical

perspective of quantum field theory you

should be able to quantize anything and

figuring out how to do that is just

still an unsolved problem in physics

related to this question people asked

the converse of it is it possible then

to geometries or treat other forces like

electromagnetism in geometric terms well

that's actually been worked out in some

context you can look up something called

Kaluza klein theory which is a way of

trying to get a geometric version of

electromagnetism plus general relativity

but in general these are two sort of

parallel paradigms one is trying to

geometries a lot of stuff which was a

big thing in the sort of early 20th

century and the other is to try to take

field classical field theory versions of

something and then add to them the

machinery of quantum mechanics to sort

of get a quantized version of the world

and these two things proceeded on sort

of parallel tracks it's hard to answer

these things well in 30 seconds without

just throwing out a lot of buzzwords and

giving you what's not really an

explanation but I don't think there's

really any alternative that wouldn't

mislead you you're asking very heavy

stuff a lot of you wanted clarification

on how curvature of time is what's

responsible for say circular orbits

around the earth being geodesics first

remember that I was speaking very very

loosely there's really only space-time

curvature you can't really break it up

into separate space and time curvatures

that doesn't mean anything but here's

what I did mean suppose that you take a

frame attached to Earth's center with

clocks that frames not going to be

inertial and then you work out what the

equations of general relativity say the

geodesics should be around the earth and

you down project them into that frame so

you down project everything into 3d

spatial and temporal terms with respect

to that not inertial frame it turns out

that the pieces of the geodesic equation

the things that tell you what the

geodesics should be that resemble that

basically gives you Newton's laws of

motion as if there were a gravitational

force are just the pieces of the

geodesic equation that involve time

components when projected into that

frame that's really all I meant there's

actually some good lecture notes by Sean

Carroll that I've linked in the

description that give you a slightly

more mathematical treatment of this go

up to equation 4.22 in the link that you

see below a lot of you were expressing

confusion about how two points on

Earth's surface can both be really

accelerating

Earth's surface itself is not expanding

be careful we're using the word

acceleration here in two different and

mutually exclusive senses in the

Newtonian sense acceleration would mean

put a frame of reference at Earth's

center use a clock as if it runs

pretending that it runs the same rate

everywhere and ask relative to that

clock are the coordinate positions of

two points on Earth's surface

changing and the answer is of course

they're not so in that sense those two

points are not accelerated but Einstein

says hold on in the four-dimensional

curved space-time sense you need to give

something some kind of inherent absolute

for T geometric meaning and acceleration

in that context means is your tangent

vector being parallel transported along

your world line for points on Earth's

surface that's not true they're not

geodesics so the way that we have to

reconcile things is is there a problem

with saying that falling frames like

attached to an Apple falling at both

those places are the ones that we should

really use as the standard even in the

three-dimensional sense of non

acceleration Einstein says you don't

really have a choice you have to do that

because it's only the falling frames

that are purely non accelerating in the

four-dimensional sense the only reason

why that seems to conflict with the idea

of using a single frame at Earth's

center and saying that those two points

not accelerating is that that frame at

Earth's center that you're using the

gauge that is not inertial and so that

shouldn't be the standard for saying

that things are non accelerating in

other words Einstein says the standard

of non acceleration can only be defined

locally in small space-time patches if

you try to talk about it in any other

context you're assuming something

geometric about the world namely that it

is a 3d Euclidean world that works the

way you think you learn it works in 10th

grade that simply isn't true finally I

do want to reference one individual

comment I won't tell my name was asking

what courses he would need to take to

learn about general relativity he got

some answers from wing soda and then he

replied okay great and I guess I got

lots of time because I'm only going into

eighth grade that's right you got lots

of time I won't tell my name and you're

asking all the right questions keep

learning and listening to as much as you

can even if it doesn't make sense at

first this stuff takes years to grasp

and you're getting a head start

glad you're watching the show

you