1.

BASICS OF TIDES

1.1. Introduction

Since mankind lives along the shores, tides did fascinate in many ways. The
biodiversity gave and still gives food and entire industries are built upon.

Tides have been so important that they have entered our everyday language:
time and tide wait for no one, the ebb and flow of events, a high-water mark, and
turn the tide of battle.

1. Tides produce strong currents in many parts of the ocean. Tidal currents
can have speeds of up to 5m/s in coastal waters, impeding navigation and
mixing coastal waters.
2. Tidal currents generate internal waves over seamounts, continental slopes,
and mid-ocean ridges. The waves dissipate tidal energy. Breaking internal
waves and tidal currents are the major forces driving oceanic mixing.
3. Tidal currents can suspend bottom sediments, even in the deep ocean.
4. Earth's crust is elastic. It bends under the influence of the tidal potential. It
also bends under the weight of oceanic tides. As a result, the seafloor, and
the continents move up and down by about 10cm in response to the tides.
The deformation of the solid Earth influence almost all precise geodetic
measurements.
5. Oceanic tides lag behind the tide-generating potential. This produces
forces that transfer angular momentum between Earth and the tide
producing body, especially the moon. As a result of tidal forces, Earth's
rotation about it's axis slows, increasing the length of day; the rotation of
the moon about Earth slows, causing the moon to move slowly away from
Earth; and moon's rotation about it's axis slows, causing the moon to keep
the same side facing Earth as the moon rotates about Earth.
6. Tides influence the orbits of satellites. Accurate knowledge of tides is
needed for computing the orbit of altimetric satellites and for correcting
altimeter measurements of oceanic topography.

Mariners have known for at least four thousand years that tides are related to the
phase of the moon. The exact relationship, however, is hidden behind many
complicating factors, and some of the greatest scientific minds of the last four
centuries worked to understand, calculate, and predict tides. Galileo, Descartes,
Kepler, Newton, Euler, Bernoulli, Kant, Laplace, Airy, Lord Kelvin, Jeffreys,
Munk and many others contributed. Some of the first computers were developed

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to compute and predict tides. Ferrel built a tide-predicting machine in 1880 that
was used by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to predict nineteen tidal
constituents. In 1901, Harris extended the capacity to 37 constituents.

Despite all this work important questions remained: What is the amplitude and
phase of the tides at any place on the ocean or along the coast? What is the
speed and direction of tidal currents? What is the shape of the tides on the
ocean? Where is tidal energy dissipated? Finding answers to these simple
questions is difficult, and the first, accurate, global maps of deep-sea tides were
only published in 1994 (LeProvost et al., 1994). The problem is hard because
the tides are a self-gravitating, near-resonant, sloshing of water in a rotating,
elastic, ocean basin with ridges, mountains, and submarine basins.

Predicting tides along coasts and at ports is much simpler. Data from a tide
gauge plus the theory of tidal forcing gives an accurate description of tides near
the tide gauge.

For significant tides to be generated, there must be a large enough tide raising
force. The major oceans of the world are large enough for this to be the case, but
the Mediterranean has only small tides, and the Baltic has no tides.

The other key factor is the natural period of oscillation of the body of the water.
This determines whether the tide responds to the diurnal or semi-diurnal tide
raising forces, or a mixture of the two.

The Atlantic tends to have semi-diurnal tides, and variations in the tides occur
with the phases of the moon, as springs and neaps.

The Pacific tends to have diurnal tides. The largest tides occur with the greatest
declination of the sun and moon, and the largest tides occur at the times of
maximum declination at the summer and winter solstices. Areas in the south
west pacific off New Guinea, off Vietnam and in the Gulf of Tonking, and in the
Java Sea, are diurnal.

Mixed tides, where both the diurnal and semi-diurnal tides are significant, are
characterised by a large diurnal inequality. Such tides are common on the west
coast of the United States, the east coast of West Malaysia, Borneo, Australia
and south west Asia. Especially the Indian Ocean has an irregular tide pattern.

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 1.2. Physics in tides

Several laws of physics are applicable in tidal analysis. A short overview.

1.2.1. Forces

a. Introduction

All forces (interactions) between objects can be placed into two broad
categories:

• contact forces, and

• forces resulting from action-at-a-distance

Contact forces are types of forces in which the two interacting objects are
physically in contact with each other. Examples of contact forces include
frictional forces, tensional forces, normal forces, air resistance forces, and
applied forces.

Action-at-a-distance forces are types of forces in which the two interacting

objects are not in physical contact with each other, but are able to exert a push or
pull despite the physical separation. Examples of action-at-a-distance forces
include gravitational forces (e.g., the sun and planets exert a gravitational pull
on each other despite their large spatial separation; even when your feet leave
the earth and you are no longer in contact with the earth, there is a gravitational
pull between you and the Earth), electric forces (e.g., the protons in the nucleus
of an atom and the electrons outside the nucleus experience an electrical pull
towards each other despite their small spatial separation), and magnetic forces
(e.g., two magnets can exert a magnetic pull on each other even when separated
by a distance of a few centimeters).

Summary:

Contact Forces Action-at-a-Distance Forces

Frictional Force Gravitational Force
Tensional Force Electrical Force
Normal Force Magnetic Force
Air Resistance Force
Applied Force
Spring Force

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Force is a quantity which is measured using a standard metric unit known as the
Newton. One Newton is the amount of force required to give a 1-kg mass an
acceleration of 1 m/s2. A Newton is abbreviated by an "N." If you say "10.0 N,"
you mean 10.0 Newtons of force. Thus, the following unit equivalency can be
stated:

Force is a vector quantity. A vector quantity is a quantity which has both

magnitude and direction. To fully describe the force acting upon an object, you
must describe both its magnitude (size) and its direction. Thus, 10 Newtons is
not a full description of the force acting upon an object. In contrast, 10 Newtons,
downwards is a complete description of the force acting upon an object; both the
magnitude (10 Newtons) and the direction (downwards) are given.

b. Gravity

Each object in the universe attracts each other body.

If object A has mass Ma and object B has mass Mb, then the force F on object A
is directed toward object B and has magnitude:

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So, considering the force between e.g. the Sun and the Earth

• The force exerted on the Earth by the Sun is equal and opposite to the
force exerted on the Sun by the Earth.
• If the mass of the Earth was doubled, the force on the Earth would double.
• If the mass of the Sun was doubled, the force on the Earth would double.
• If the Earth was twice as far away from the Sun, the force on the Earth
would be a factor four smaller.

c. Coriolis effect

The rotation of the earth has introduced an effect on all objects on the earth’s
surface, including water: the coriolis effect.

Imagine two planes headed for Miami (purple). One is headed south from
Toronto (green), the other north from Quito (red).

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The earth's rotation means Miami is moving faster than Toronto but slower than
Quito. If the planes don't correct somehow, the plane from Toronto will end up
west of Miami and the plane from Quito will end up east.

d. Revolution (centrifugal)

The net external force F acting on a material object is related to the mass m of
the object and its acceleration a by

F = ma
or
a = F/m

This force is directed outwards away from the origin creating this force.

e. combined action-at-a-distance forces, equilibrium between masses

There are two forces at play with an object in orbit . One force would have the
object continue its journey away from the center; this is the centrifugal force.
The other force pulls the object inward through gravity ; this is the gravitational
force. To have the two forces in balance is what allows the object to stay in its
orbit.

In such: F gravity = F centrifugal (balance).

This balance translated to e.g. the moon – earth situation, gives us:
there is a centrifugal force in its circular orbit that pushes it out of its orbit,
which causes that the speed v of moon allows that centrifugal force equilibrates
the gravity force, so that it does not deviate and neither gets closer to the Earth.
It explains why the moon does not fall on the Earth but it does not justify the
reason of its motion that in physics the responsible for such motion is the
centripetal force.
The responsible for keeping the orbital speed of bodies is the tangential force
that does not increase the speed of a body but causes that it changes in every
instant the trajectory of its orbit because it is perpendicular to the ray of the
curvilinear motion. There is no tangential force in Newton’s gravity because
such gravity is in direction of axle Earth-Moon.
There is an accelaration in logical gravity, where the gravity force that pulls the
moon toward Earth is not in such axle but it makes a small angle with it.

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f. frictional force

A frictional force is a force that resists the relative motion of objects that are
in contact with each other.

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The gravitational force mg is compensated by reaction force FR as Newton’s
third law requires. We apply a force F to it, which is measured by the gauge G.
We slowly increase the force and the box does not move. This means that
frictional force Ff is increasing as well and is all the time equal to F. At some
value of the pulling force the box starts moving. For a moment it will accelerate
and we can decrease the pulling force F to the value resulting in motion with
constant velocity. Motion with constant velocity means that the net force acting
on box is ZERO. This means that while the box is moving the force of smaller
value is required to compensate the frictional force..

The conclusion is, there are two types of frictional forces:

• static frictional force Fs
• kinetic frictional force Fk

The frictional force in the case of solids moving against each other are defined
by Equations:
• Fs = µs . mg
• Fk = µk . mg
where µS and µK are coefficients of static and kinetic friction.
Their values depend on certain properties of the moving bodies and on the
quality of surfaces which touch each other.

In the water – bottom situation we see:

water velocities within a stream are not uniform. Frictional forces decrease the
water velocities near the stream bottom. In stream curves, high water velocities
are found on the outside of the curve and low water velocities are found on the
inside of the curve.

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 1.2.2. Waves

a. standing wave

To get a standing wave at least two superpose waves has to travel in opposite
directions. Consider a traveling wave in a taut string that hits a boundary, and is
reflected off it. We would then have two waves in the string, namely the original
wave and the reflected wave; the reflected wave, however, would be traveling in
the opposite direction from the initial wave with the same frequence and
amplitude, and would result in a standing wave.

A standing wave, also known as a stationary wave, is a wave that remains in a

constant position. This phenomenon can occur because the medium is moving in
the opposite direction to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a
result of interference between two waves travelling in opposite directions.

If two equal sinusoidal waves travel in opposite directions along a stretched

string, their interference with each other produce a standing wave.
y1 = ym sin(k x - ω t) and y2 = ym sin(k x + ω t)
y’ = y1 + y2 = ymsin(kx - ω t) + ym sin (kx + ω t)

sin a + sin b = 2 sin (a+b)/2 cos (a-b)/2

a + b = kx - ω t + kx + ω t = 2 kx
(a + b)/2 = kx

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a – b = kx - ω t – kx - ω t = - 2 ω t
(a – b)2 = - ω t

y’ = y1 + y2 =[ 2 ym sin(k x)] cos(ω t)

Amplitude of the resulting wave

a) position of the nodes or minimum amplitude:

kx = nπ, for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, …

but k = 2π/λ

⇒ x = λ/2, λ, 3λ/2, … = nλ/2 for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, …

b) position of the anti-nodes or maximum amplitude:

k x = π/2, 3π/2, 5π/2, …= nπ/2 for n = 0, 1, 2, 3, …

but k = 2π/λ

⇒ x = λ/4, 3λ/4, 5λ/4, …= nλ/4 for n = 1, 3, 5…

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 b. resonance

We have considered a wave which has only one end fixed at a boundary. What
happens to a wave in a medium that is tied at two ends.
Only waves that have wavelengths that are integer multiples of L/2 will be
standing waves giving reason to resonance. All other wavelengths are eliminated
by destructive interference. Furthermore, since wavelength is related to
frequency :
f = v / λ = n . v / 2L (to replace ω t in formulae standing wave)

The frequencies given above are called resonant or harmonic frequencies.

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