Posted: Jan 02, 2015 5:59 pm
by DavidMcC
Thommo wrote:
DavidMcC wrote:
Thommo wrote:Image

My point, exactly, but you have forgotten the implications for contact force (your weight). Thus, your account is inadequate.


This is a diagram of tidal force, relevant to both rotating and non rotating bodies. It in fact shows the exact opposite of what you asserted.

It is not an account of centrifugal force, which is offtopic and for which the cursory account I gave is perfectly adequate.

DavidMcC wrote:Actually, I was about to correct myself. the diagram is over-simplstic, because it fails to recognise that the main cause of the bulge is the earth's spin. The moon only tips the plane of that spin. It does not create a separate bulge of its own.


:picard:

It's a force diagram for tidal forces, not a force diagram for centrifugal force.

And that's why it doesn't tell the whole story. In the whole story, centrifugal force cannot be ignored - the earth's oceans are like a large, wet gyroscope.
One day, you'll understand that, but evidently not yet.