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The One Minute Geographer: This Fragile Earth (2) The Moon and Tides
What? Have we finished with Fragile Earth and we’re on the Fragile Moon already?
No, but we’re going to look at one post about our nearest neighbor — so important for our tides and its reflection of night-time light. (There’s an old joke about the teacher asking a kid: “What’s more important — the sun or the moon?” And the kid says “The moon, because the sun gives us light in the daytime, when we don’t need it, and the moon gives us light at night when we do need it.”)
Three possible take-a-ways for you from this post besides the figures: (1) The moon is smaller than we think. (2) It’s closer than we think. And (3) A new way of thinking about tides. As usual, I’m using rounded, approximate figures.
The moon is only about 2,160 miles in diameter. That’s about the width of Australia. Or the flight distance between Atlanta and San Francisco or between New York and Phoenix.
The moon’s circumference is 6,790 miles. That’s only 27% of the earth’s circumference. So that 50-day road trip around the earth’s circumference we previously talked about would only be 14 days on the moon.
In a way, the moon is more ‘rugged’ than the earth. True, its tallest mountain, Mons Huygens, about 18,000 feet, is way less than Everest. But that’s taller…
