Why does high tides only appear on the full moon phase?

Question

The full moon is always present in the night sky the phases(cresent, half moon..) are seen bcoz of the lumination of the Sun so... Why is there no high tide on all nights coz the full moon is alwayzz present in the night? Plzz help!!! i really wanna noe !!!

Answer 1

  Good question! Actually there are two high tides (and two low) EACH DAY. heres a couple web sites that explain things nicely: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/solar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide

You are correct about the phazes vs. the illumination. This is the problem I have always had with the people that insist a full moon brings out all the crazies...in reality like you say, its always "full"....just not fully illuminated.

Answer 2

High tides occur every day - in fact they occur approximately every 6 hrs!

It is not true that they only occur at full moon.

There will be a high tide on earth in the direction pointing towards the moon and directly away and low tides in the perpendicular directions.

So for full moon, high tide should occur close to midnight and close to midday.

At half moon (quarter phase) high tide occurs at about 6am and 6pm and so on.

Spring tides are when the sun and moon are lined up - so full moon and new moon. In these phases, the combined pull of the sun and moon make the diffeence betwen high and low tide bigger. At quarter phases we get neap tides because sun and moon are working against each other and the difference between high and low tide is less.

Look up tides on BadAstronomy.com for more details...

Answer 3

The highest of the high tides happen at full moon and at new moon. You get the biggest gravitational gradient when the Sun, the Moon and the Earth are lined up.

Answer 4

Because full moons occur when the moon is its closet to the earth and provides the most gravitational pull.