Oceanography Exam 3 Questions with Complete Solutions (Latest 2025) What is a tide? - Correct Answers ✅The rhythmic rise and fall of sea level.Is a tide a wave? - Correct Answers ✅Yes! Tides are very long and regular shallow-water waves.What causes tides? - Correct Answers ✅Gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and earth.How do we compute gravitational force? - Correct Answers ✅Fg=G(m1*m2)/r^2 According to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, what happens to gravitational force if mass increases? - Correct Answers ✅Gravitational force increases.According to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, what happens to gravitational force if distance increases? - Correct Answers ✅Gravitational force decreases.What does Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation tell us? - Correct Answers ✅Every object that has mass in the universe is attracted to every other object.How does gravity change as two objects move farther apart from one another? - Correct Answers ✅Gravitational force 1 / 4
Oceanography Exam 3 Questions with Complete Solutions (Latest 2025) is inversely proportional to the square of the radius of separation.What is the Nadir? - Correct Answers ✅The point on Earth at any given point in time which is furthest from the moon and experiences the least gravitational force.What is the Zenith? - Correct Answers ✅The point on Earth at any given point in time which is closest from the moon and experiences the greatest gravitational force.What is Centripetal Force? - Correct Answers ✅The center- seeking force which tethers the Earth and Moon to each other.Does the moon orbit the earth? - Correct Answers ✅Not exactly. The moon and earth actually rotate around the barycenter of the system.What is the barycenter of the Earth-moon system? - Correct Answers ✅Common center of mass which acts as the balance point of the system.Where is the barycenter located? Why? - Correct Answers ✅1600 km beneath Earth's surface. This is because Earth's mass is much greater than that of the Moon. 2 / 4
Oceanography Exam 3 Questions with Complete Solutions (Latest 2025) What is a resultant force? What does it do to tides? - Correct Answers ✅The difference between centripetal force and gravitational force. It pushes water into tidal bulges on each side of the Earth.What forces produce tides? How? - Correct Answers ✅Tides occur when there is an imbalance between the required centripetal and provided gravitational forces acting on Earth.The resultant force creates tidal bulges.What are lunar bulges? - Correct Answers ✅On the ideal Earth, there are two tidal bulges--one near the moon and one away from the moon.What are the characteristics of the Ideal Ocean? - Correct Answers ✅Uniform depth, no friction between seawater and sea floor.At the equator of an ideal Earth, what would tides be like? - Correct Answers ✅There would be two high tides that would be 12 hours apart.What is the flood tide? - Correct Answers ✅High tide-- seawater moves on shore. 3 / 4
Oceanography Exam 3 Questions with Complete Solutions (Latest 2025) What is the ebb tide? - Correct Answers ✅Low tide-- seawater moves offshore.What is a lunar day? How long is it? How does this affect tides? - Correct Answers ✅Time for the moon to orbit Earth once. 24 hours, 50 minutes long. Causes high tides to be 12 hours and 25 minutes apart.How does the Sun affect tides? - Correct Answers ✅Creates solar bulges which are much smaller than lunar bulges--one near the sun, one away from the sun.As the distance between the moon or sun and Earth increases, how do tide generating forces change? - Correct Answers ✅As distance increases, forces will decrease by the inverse of the cube of the distance between the moon or sun and the Earth.How does the gravitational force exerted on Earth's tides by the Moon compare to that exerted by the Sun? - Correct Answers ✅Moon exerts more than twice the gravitational pull of the Sun on tides.What causes high and low tides? - Correct Answers ✅Earth's rotation carries various locations into and out of the tidal bulges, which are in fixed positions relative to the moon and sun.
- / 4