There is bright sunshine outside my window right now but the top story on our media over here in England is the once-in-a-lifetime storm across the pond. I have many family, friends and reading living in the eight states which have declared an emergency as Sandy, pursues its ravaging path up the east cost of America, and it is not with dispassionate interest that I am hearing the threats of black-outs, flooding, and predictions of 10-foot storm surges with the high tide and full moon.
All of the people whom I know personally at least have reasonable shelter, if not, possibly a full ten-day supply of food and flashlights.
But a friend reminded me of the homeless on the streets of New York.
That would be hard.
Very hard.
And scary.
I was living in New York during the black-out in 1977. It was scary. But it brought out more of the best in us than the worst.
My hope is that it will happen again.
The Other I 
Got a flashlight. Got a candle. But I don’t understand one thing, teach. Why does a full moon exert more gravitational pull than a half or new moon? Isn’t the mass of the moon the same no matter how much we see of it?
-Perplexed in Brooklyn
LikeLike
Comment by pianomusicman — October 29, 2012 @ 6:17 pm |
Right, the mass of the moon stays the same. And it isn’t really the full moon that causes the higher tides. In some ways it isn’t the moon at all, because it’s always there circling earth, When the sun and the moon are aligned we *see* a full moon. But what actually causes the higher tides is the double gravitational pull on earth’s water exerted by the sun & moon together.
My mother explained this to me using a grapefruit, an orange, and a lemon. You get an A if you can guess which one stood for the sun and which one she used for the moon. The OI
LikeLike
Comment by Terry Sissons — October 29, 2012 @ 9:06 pm |