For a long time people have been blaming things on the moon. People claim to be crazy because of it, lovers claim to be under its spell, and even hospitals blame the full moon for loaded emergency rooms. The moon has even been blamed for causing the tides. It is your job to bring me proof one way or another as to the moon's participation in the tides we experience on earth.

If you are going to collect evidence against the moon, there are several things you must know:

1. What are tides?
2. What is the difference between spring tides and neap tides?
3. What are diurnal tides, semi-diurnal tides, and mixed tides?

After you know the answer to each of the questions above, you will need to collect the following information:
* a record of tide levels for a calendar month from three different locations,

* a calendar of phases of the moon for the same calendar month.

With all of the above information you must answer two questions;
1. Can you find a pattern that will convince the jury that the moon is responsible for the tides?
2. If the moon is guilty, does it have an accomplice which contributes to causing the tides?

Resources

All of your information is to come from the Internet. The following web page locations provide information that you might find useful. Caution! Some of these web sites may have already come to the conclusion that the moon is guilty. You can not adopt that conclusion until you have proof in hand from section two.)

1. The Evergreen Project has an excellent description of Ocean Tides which will answer the questions from section one. Remember, until you find the same information at a different source, you should not accept information as fact. In other words, do not stop with only one source.
2. NOAA's Oceanographic Products and Services Division has a very complete Tide Table for any area of the country as does HarborTides.com.
3. The Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville has a very good lesson on tides with a good diagram of spring tides and neap tides.
4. Kimberly Amaral's Graduate Thesis submitted to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth has a good summary regarding the tides.

Collecting Data

Once you feel that you can give a very complete description of the basic tide questions it is time to start collecting tide data about the following three locations. This information should be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet. Click here for some helpful tips. The current month and next five months are given. You may choose any month, but you must use the same month for each of the three sites.

1. Eastern United States location - Portland, Maine
2. Western United States location - Crescent City California
3. Asian location - Apia, Samoa Islands

You must also collect moon phase information for the same calendar month as the one used while collecting tide data. It is recommended that you use both of the sources listed below. The first gives an excellent visual overview of the month, and the second gives specific times and dates. The third link provides a an archive of moon phase data up through the present.

1. Googolhedron Systems offers a calendar showing moon phases for any month from 1951 to 2015. However, the calendar does not identify new moon, full moon, or any other phase. You must approximate that information from the calendar. Remember, first quarter moon is "light on the right."
2. Lunar Outreach offers a Phase of the moon searchable database. When using this database type the calendar year in the box to the right of the statement "Enter a year between 1 and 2246" and then hit the enter/return key on your keyboard. Do NOT click on the first option at the top of the page, "See all of the Moon's phases for these years." That will give you 2,246 years of data and will take a long time to download. Write down the dates, and times, for each of the four listed phases of the moon in the chosen month.
3. Current moon phase from the U. S. Naval Observatory time service department. You can check the moon phase for any time from 1800 through 2199. The current phase image is updated every four hours.

The Process

Your first step will be to prepare a preliminary report answering the first three questions stated in the task section. Your preliminary report can be in one of three formats:

1. A PowerPoint slide show including images, graphs or tables in your answer to each question. 2. A web page written by your group including images, graphs or tables in your answer to each question.

For the body of your report you must rely on data that you collect and evaluate. You have collected tide data for three locations. Now look at the data to discover what patterns exist. Notice that each day has at least three tide heights listed, and most have four. None have more or less. Your first step will be to copy the tide data for the month you have selected. Next paste this data onto a word processing document. The numbers will look like a jumbled mess. You must find a way to make sure that each line contains only one tide level reading.

Curator: Beth Jewell, beth.jewell@fcps.edu

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