The shift in the positions of the falling balls is what is meant by tidal effects and to an observer, it looks as if there is a force stretching the fore-and-aft balls apart and squeezing the side-by-side balls together. If you had an arrangement by which you could drop all four of these balls at the same instant, you would then observe the side-by-side balls moving towards each other and the fore-and-aft balls moving away from each other, as they got progressively closer to the object. This means that as they approach the object, the distance between them will increase. Both balls will fall toward the object, but the one that started closer to it will experience a stronger pull and the one behind it a lesser pull. Imagine further that you now drop another pair of golf balls from your hands, but this time you turn sideways so the two balls will follow the same field line, but one starts closer to the object and the other starts farther from it. Each ball will follow its own field line as it falls, and since those lines converge on the center of mass of the massive object, the golf balls will move toward each other as they get closer to the object. Now imagine that you are distant from that object, and you spread your arms out and drop a golf ball from each hand towards the massive object. If you trace out the gravitational field lines emanating from a compact, massive object, you will find that the field lines diverge as you move away from the object and converge as you get closer to it. Either set of tools can be used to get an accurate picture of tidal dynamics.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |