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When Days Are Months

1) The document discusses how the Moon's gravitational force causes the Earth's tides and how this results in the Moon moving farther from Earth over time. 2) It explains that as the Earth loses rotational kinetic energy to the tides, its days get slightly longer over centuries. For the Earth and Moon to conserve total angular momentum, the Moon's orbit must increase in size. 3) The document poses the contest problem - how long will an Earth day be when the day and month lengths are equal? It provides simplifying assumptions to solve this problem.

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Petros Nikolopoulos
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39 views

When Days Are Months

1) The document discusses how the Moon's gravitational force causes the Earth's tides and how this results in the Moon moving farther from Earth over time. 2) It explains that as the Earth loses rotational kinetic energy to the tides, its days get slightly longer over centuries. For the Earth and Moon to conserve total angular momentum, the Moon's orbit must increase in size. 3) The document poses the contest problem - how long will an Earth day be when the day and month lengths are equal? It provides simplifying assumptions to solve this problem.

Uploaded by

Petros Nikolopoulos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CONTEST

When days ore monlhs


"Then the tides gradually pushed her
far away: the tides that the Moon herself causes in the
Earth's waters

by Arthur Eisenkraft and Larry D. Kirkpatrick

I T SEEMS PARADOXICAL THAT the Earth's tides. As the water moves aheady occurs in our solar system.
I the Moon's attractive force causes to fom the two bulges that we experi- Pluto and its moon Charonhave this
I ,, ,o move lartner lrom tne Eartn, ence as two high tides each day, there's relationship. They move as if they
I br, ,hr,, exactly what happens. a lot of friction of the water with the were two balls on the end of a massless
The distance between the center of ocean floor and with itself. There are baton-each always has the same face
the Earth and the center of the Moon also tides in the "solid" earth. These toward the other. Pluto's rotational
increases by about 3 to 4 cm per year. result in a conversion of some of the period is ec1ua1 to the revolutionary
No doubt you're aware that the Earth's rotational kinetic energy into period of Charon-6.4 Earth days.
Moon's gravitational {orce produces heat at the rate of about 2 billion This leads us to our contest prob-
horsepower (1.5 trillion loules) each lem: For the Earth-Moon system/
second. how long will an Earth day be when
This may seem like a lot oi energy, it's the same as a month? Let's make
but it's only a trny, trny fraction of. the a few simpli{ying assumptions. We'l1
total kinetic energy of the Earth. Sma11 neglect the revolution of the Earth and
as it is, though, this change is measur- Moon around the Sun, the motion of
able. In order to lose kinetic energy the Earth around the Earth-Moon cen-
the Earth must slow down, but not ter of mass, and the rotation of the
very much! The length of the day Moon on its axis. We'I1 assume that
increases by 1.6 milliseconds each the Moon's orbit is a circle in the plane
century. of the Earth's ecluator and that the
But how does this cause the Moon Earth and Moon are uni{orm spheres.
to move father away? This occurs Please send your solutions to Quan-
because the total angular momentum tum,7742 Connecticut Avenue NW,
of the Earth-Moon system must re- Washington, DC 20009. The best
main the same. The loss rn the Earth's solutions will be published in the next
angular momentum must ec1ual the issue of Quantum and their creators
gain in the Moon's angular momen- will receive free subscriptions to Quan-
tum. This requires an increase in the tum for one year. o
size of the Moon's orbit and a corre-
spon&ng increase in the length of the Arthr.u Eisenl<rak is the chab of the science
month-that is, the length of time it department and a physics teacher at Fox
Lane High School in Bedford, New York.
takes the Moon to go around the Earth
Larry D. Kir\patrick is a professor of physics
once. So both the lengh of the day and at Montana State Univercity in Bozeman.
the length of the month increase. At Drs. Eisenkr aft and Kirkp atick serv e as
some time in the fistant future, a day academic djrectors for the US Physics
on Earth will be a month long ! Team that cofipetes in the International
rFrom "The Distance of the Moon" in Physics Olympiad.
Cosmicomics by the Italian writer Italo Although this slrrchronism of day
Calvino 11923-1985). and month may seem very strange, it

34 oUAtrtIUtrt/tlaAY rsso

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