If you’re like me you’ll go inappropriately bananas over the reference site answers.com. I only just noticed because Google are now using it for their ‘definition’ links on search terms.
For any given term you get info from absolutely every angle (dictionary, thesaurus, legal, Wikipedia, misspellings, translations, etc.).
More importantly it’s free, clean and technically well thought out (the URL form is uber-clean – Firefox quick search only has to be http://answers.com/%s).
22-Feb-05 at 4:42 pm | Permalink
It is good. Although I use it mainly for reading about things I already know about. Do a search for my hero, ‘Terry Bogard’. I just bought his baseball cap off of ebay, which I will never wear. What a chump I am.
22-Feb-05 at 10:01 pm | Permalink
infoporn – Wired magazine. L0ve it.
23-Feb-05 at 9:54 am | Permalink
Tides. on avarage, 2 a day, caused by the gravitational interaction of the earth, moon, and to a lesser extent, the sun. Tidal bulges (high tides) occur when the moon is directly overhead, forming an ellipse of water around the earth. But I don’t understand why the same happens at the other side. The sun has less of an effect on the earth because it’s much farther away, so why do we experience 2 equal tides a day? I just. Don’t. Understand. Answers.com isn’t working.
23-Feb-05 at 10:11 am | Permalink
aaah, wikipedia to the rescue. Apparently the Sun’s interaction with the tides is only 40% as strong as the moons, due to distance. This however, can still mean a huge fluctuation in sea level due to the topographical layout of any given coast or inlet.
But, but.. what happens when the sun and moon are in allignment? Ok. A spring tide, but what happens on the other side of the earth? None at all?
23-Feb-05 at 10:17 am | Permalink
The explanation is nestled in the Wikipedia bit.
The first tide is easy – the moon pulls on the nearest side of the earth as you mention.
The second “indirect” tide is due to the Earth’s movement. The Earth is not fixed in place, but revolves around the Moon in a kind of waltzing motion.
As the bodies revolve around one another, the water on the ‘outer’ side of the Earth wants to spin off into space because of centrifugal force. This is the second tide.
23-Feb-05 at 10:31 am | Permalink
It’s actually not too easy to find good info on this, however here’s a handy diagram showing the centrifugal effect.
It looks like the Sun has only a minor effect compared to the direct and indirect tides.
23-Feb-05 at 11:48 am | Permalink
I’ve actually edited Wikipedia to make this clear as the latest revision was pretty rubbish.
24-Feb-05 at 10:22 am | Permalink
aah, well done : )