SOME NATURAL PHENOMENA.

How it Works by Archibald Williams is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. SOME NATURAL PHENOMENA.

SOME NATURAL PHENOMENA.

WHY SUN-HEAT VARIES IN INTENSITY.

The more squarely parallel heat-rays strike a surface the greater will be the number that can affect that surface. This is evident from Figs. 228, 229, where a b is an equal distance in both cases. The nearer the sun is to the horizon, the more obliquely do its rays strike the earth. Hence[Pg 452] midday is necessarily warmer than the evening, and the tropics, where the sun stands overhead, are hotter than the temperate zones, where, even in summer at midday, the rays fall more or less on the slant.

The atmospheric envelope which encompasses the earth tends to increase the effect of obliquity, since a slanting ray has to travel further through it and is robbed of more heat than a vertical ray.

THE TIDES.

All bodies have an attraction for one another. The earth attracts the moon, and the moon attracts the earth. Now, though the effect of this attraction is not visible as regards the solid part of the globe, it is strongly manifested by the water which covers a large portion of the earth's surface. The moon attracts the water most powerfully at two points, that nearest to it and that furthest away from it;[Pg 453] as shown on an exaggerated scale in Fig. 230. Since the earth and the water revolve as one mass daily on their axis, every point on the circumference would be daily nearest to and furthest from the moon at regular intervals, and wherever there is ocean there would be two tides in that period, were the moon stationary as regards the earth. (It should be clearly understood that the tides are not great currents, but mere thickenings of the watery envelope. The inrush of the tide is due to the temporary rise of level.)

WHY HIGH TIDE VARIES DAILY.

The moon travels round the earth once in twenty-eight days. In Fig. 231 the point a is nearest the moon at, say, twelve noon. At the end of twenty-four[Pg 454] hours it will have arrived at the same position by the compass, but yet not be nearest to the moon, which has in that period moved on 1⁄28th of a revolution round the earth.[43] Consequently high tide will not occur till a has reached position b and overtaken the moon, as it were, which takes about an hour on the average. This explains why high tide occurs at intervals of more than twelve hours.

NEAP TIDES AND SPRING TIDES.

The sun, as well as the moon, attracts the ocean,[Pg 455] but with less power, owing to its being so much further away. At certain periods of the month, sun, earth, and moon are all in line. Sun and moon then pull together, and we get the highest, or spring tides (Fig. 232). When sun and moon pull at right angles to one another—namely, at the first and third quarters—the excrescence caused by the moon is flattened (Fig. 233), and we get the lowest, or neap tides.

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