How are water waves formed? What is the relation b/w tides and the moon?

Answer 1

The principle cause of waves is wind. Once formed, waves can travel a great distance, so the waves that are coming ashore on your beach on a windless day were formed by a storm somewhere else. Of course waves can also be caused by geologic activity and by passing ships. But the usual rhythmic waves that break on the beach were wind generated.

The gravitational attraction between the earth and the moon is what holds the moon in orbit. That same pulling force has an effect on the oceans of the earth. The ocean on the side of the earth facing the moon, because it is fluid, responds to the pull of the moon and moves toward it. In a sense the water "piles up" on that side of the earth. Therefore the water gets deeper on that side, and any land mass on that side experiences "high tide". Of course, if a large amount of water is piled up in one location, that water has to be taken from another location, so the areas protected from the moon's gravitational pull loose water, making the ocean temporarily shallower there, which is experienced by land masses in those areas as "low tide". Because the earth is turning, the areas facing the moon constantly change. Therefore the bulge of high tide moves around the earth, following the moon. It is actually the crest of a single, very broad wave, while the low tide areas are the trough of the same moving "tidal" wave. Interesting that this real "tidal wave" is not usually referred to by that name, while the usual meaning of "tidal wave" is something that has nothing to do with tides at all.

Answer 2

Waves in the ocean come from the interaction of moving water (pushed by wind, tides, and ocean currents) with shorelines. That there are waves in the ocean hundreds of miles from any shoreline shows how well the energy in waves travels through large bodies of water, but even out there the waves are caused by interactions with shorelines (as the ocean floor gets shallower close to shorelines, the energy in the moving water gets pushed upwards towards the surface in periodic waves, which break the surface).
The moon causes tides because of its gravitational pull on the earth. It causes a high tide on the side or the earth closest to the moon AND on the side furthest away from the moon -- on the close side because the water is pulled towards the moon, on the opposite side because that's where the moon's pull is lowest so the water bulges out away from the earth. The tides lag the actual position of the moon because of friction as the water tries to move across the surface of the earth reacting to the moon's gravity, taking some time for the water to react. This same frictional drag slows down the rotational speed of both the earth and the moon, letting the moon drift a little further from the earth on every rotation (it's moving away from earth at about 2cm per year).

Answer 3

Any disturbance in water causes waves, as you can observe in your bath. The wind is a primary cause of waves at sea - sailors recognise wind speeds against the standard scale partly by way of the appearance of the waves. Tides are caused by the interaction of the oceans with the gravity of the moon and the gravity of the sun. At full and new moons, when the gravitational pulls line up, tides are strongest (spring tides), at the half moons the gravitational pulls are opposed and tides are weakest (neap tides).

Answer 4

when fast blowing wind blows across the surface of water it's energy gets transferred to water and slowly this energy keeps on getting added..and then waves are formed..
relation between tides and moon..ahhh.. well..i think the gravitational pull of moon is responsible for tides..and that's why the the tides are maximum during full moon..

Answer 5

all good answers above