What causes high tide and low tide?

The moon's gravitational pull is strong enough to affect the oceans on Earth, resulting in low and high tides. Discover exactly how high and low tides work in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

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(00:27):
I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, what causes high tides
and low tides? And why are there two tides every day?
Think about the Moon. It's close enough and big enough
that it affects the oceans on Earth. You can imagine
that wherever the Moon is in its rotation, the water
is deeper at that point on Earth. The Moon's gravitational

(00:50):
force pulls on water in the oceans, so that there's
a bulge of water underneath the Moon. But there are
actually bulges in the ocean on both sides of the planet.
The bulge on the side of the Earth opposite the
Moon is caused by the Moon pulling the Earth away
from the water on that side. If you're on the
coast and the moon is directly overhead, you should experience

(01:12):
high tide. If the moon is directly overhead. On the
opposite side of the planet, you also experience a high tide.
Between these high tides are the low tides. During the day,
the Earth rotates a hundred eighty degrees in twelve hours.
The moon, meanwhile, rotates six degrees around the Earth in
twelve hours. The twin bulges and the moon's rotation mean

(01:36):
that any given coastal city experiences a high tide every
twelve hours and twenty five minutes or so. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
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