How the tides REALLY work

This is a wonderful piece of work. It makes a relatively complex thing easier to understand, without dumbing it down. Excellent eductation going on here.

I'm 67 and no one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain tides to me...until now!!! THANKYOU!

The music is very distracting and loud on headphones. Only saying this because otherwise this is a fantastic explanation! The animations make it so intuitive, appreciate all the work and I hope you make more. Thank you!

Music is a bit loud and distracting, but great and informative video!

Science teacher and long term sailor here saying Thank you. What a great explanation. It cleared up a few points I couldn't quite get. Excellent education.

While a good explanation of the "tidal forces" between objects, they are not strong enough to cause ocean tides. You have to account for centrifugal forces on Moon and Earth orbiting their center of mass. See Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics, section 7-4.

Just for future reference: the Bay of Fundy, with its funky resonance, has a counterexample. The Gulf of Thailand experiences one teeny tide per day. Very weird if you're planning your diving or navigation.

5:16 decompose the vectors from the upper and lower planet. You get arrows pointing perpendicular to the poles of the planet. This pushes water out to the sides. Why wasnt this included here? Also, the COG from the moon/earth system is on the moons side of the earth, making the ‘’polar force push’’ greater on one side.

This is the first time I've actually understood the tidal mechanism.  The bit about the water being "left behind" was key. Well explained!

Gosh I could live without the unnecessary background music.

That's the first time I've seen the "four little planets" explanation, or the ellipse-forming simulation. Very cool, very clear, and much more satisfying than the "traditional" explanations. Well done!

I thought the opposite side bulge was created because the moon and earth system rotate around a point that is located between the earth and moon, creating the 2 bulges. Isn't this true also to some extent?

The very best explanation that I have seen. I understand the science and I watch certain vids to discover who does not, or cannot explain the science. You clearly know, and you can explain.

This is incorrect. Water dropping in a vacuum will assume a spherical shape not an elongated 'double bulge'. Why? because the two tides are not explained by linear acceleration they are only explained by circular acceleration i.e. centrifugal forces. Swing the Earth in a circle around the Moon and the water bulges away from the Moon, the Moon's gravity makes the water bulge towards the Moon. S0, the Earth rotates around the Moon and the Moon rotates around the Earth. both around a point called the Bari centre. This is the cause of the two tides.

This has been the best video about tides i've seen so far. However, it still sticks to the idea of two (or more) bulges circling our planet in pretty much one day.

That was SO WELL done!!! A wealth of information in a beautifully illustrative short video. So many questions that I've had about tides became clear in a matter of moments.

I grew up in Anchorage Alaska and they have the 4th biggest tidal change in the world and are number 1 for cities in the United States. Anchorage sits on a peninsula in Cook Inlet with Turnagain Arm to the south and Knik Arm to the north. The tidal change between high and low tide averages just around 30 feet and going up to over 33 feet for Anchorage and Turnagain Arm. Surfers and paddle boarders regularly ride the bore tides that occur when the tide is coming back in. They can ride the bore tide for miles if they’re lucky. But when the tide is low Turnagain Arm becomes a mudflat with just the river channels flowing through it. The mud is sticky and nasty and snags unsuspecting people in when they unknowingly walk on the mud. The extreme tides makes Turnagain Arm unusable for boats really because of its shallow depths.

I would give this a Two-Thumbs-Up. As said in other comments, it takes a complex subject and explains it so more of us laymen can understand it. 👍😉👍

Great job for giving a 80% complete explanation for the marines tides, but as I'm picky, I'm missing the "jewel on top of the crow" which would make this video really outstanding: the explanation about amphidromic points and the influence of the Coriolis force on all this moving water! You did the same trick as those videos that present the two bulges and says "too complicated to explain".

Fun fact: while mass is measured in kg in scientific units, weight is a force and is measured in newtons, named after that guy who watch an apple fall. There are just under ten newtons in the force exerted on a one kg mass (the exact number is equal too the acceleration of gravity). That means that an apple typically weighs around one newton. Nice!