Text/Per Frame Science
As we all know, the Earth is a huge water balloon, 71% of its surface area is covered by oceans, and the total amount of seawater exceeds 1.3 billion cubic meters.
Friends who live by the sea know that the sea will experience the rise and fall of the tide throughout the day, so do you know what causes this phenomenon? Where does the water eventually flow after low tide?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" how > did the oceans on Earth form? </h1>
Before we understand the ebb and flow of the sea, we must first understand, how exactly does the water on Earth come from? How is the sea formed?
In fact, there are many opinions on this point, but what is recognized by the public in the scientific community is the "nebula theory", which was just born 4.6 billion years ago, so a large number of gas and dust clouds floated in the solar system.
The most important in clouds are hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms, which combine over millions of years to form water, and when water molecules accumulate more and more, they form dense clouds of icy dust.
Then it began to fall downward because of gravity, just in time to collide with the newborn Earth, so the water came to the Earth, and scientists suspected that most of the water on the Earth came from comets with ice. Whatever the saying goes, water goes through a very long process to reach Earth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" >what is a tidal phenomenon? </h1>
Anyone who has been to the sea will find that the sea has a cyclical fluctuation phenomenon, and after a certain time every day, the sea will push and rise rapidly, flooding the reef by the sea.
After a while, the rising sea water begins to recede on its own, leaving a beach behind, and so on, and so on, and this cyclical phenomenon of the sea is called the "tidal phenomenon".
Normally, "tide" refers to the rise of the sea during the day, while "tide" refers to the rise of the sea at night, yes, the tidal phenomenon has 2 orgasms every day and night.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="30" > what exactly causes the tide to rise and fall in the sea? </h1>
In the "On Balance", it is written that "the rise and fall of the waves, with the rise and fall of the moon", which means that the emergence of tidal phenomena is closely related to the moon, of course, at that time it was only people's speculation. It was only later that Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation that it was finally proved that the ebb and flow of the sea was indeed caused by the moon.
Seawater is attracted by the gravitational pull of the moon, but the distance between each point on the earth from the moon is different, so the gravitational force is also different, when the seawater is facing the moon, the gravitational force is the greatest, and the seawater "expands" outwards because of the gravitational force.
On the other side of the place with its back to the moon, although the gravitational force of the moon is small, the centrifugal force of the earth itself becomes larger, so it will also "expand", in general, the main reason for the rise and fall of the sea is the combined force of the moon's gravity and the earth's centrifugal force.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="33" > so where does the water go after the tide goes? </h1>
After knowing the principle of the rise and fall of the sea, some people must be curious: where does the water flow after the sea recedes? In fact, no matter how many times the sea experiences ebb and flow, the total amount of seawater on the Earth's surface has not changed. The receding sea water did not disappear, but flowed to a place with strong gravity to form a rising tide, and so on.
The tide is not only a natural phenomenon, it is also a usable energy source, we often have a "big tide" in the place to build a power station, you can perfectly use the water level difference formed by the rise and fall of the tide, the potential energy into mechanical energy, and then the mechanical energy into electrical energy.
Final personal opinion:
Although the tide rises and falls can bring people usable energy, but in fact, for the creatures in the ocean, this is a disaster, it is understood that every year because of the impact of the tidal phenomenon, whales, sharks and other large marine life frequently stranded on the beach, and finally died here.
It can only be said that no matter what kind of natural phenomenon, there will be drawbacks at the same time, what is important is how we humans should use it skillfully and exert it to the extreme, what do you think about this?