Dear Rick,

I feel I must leap to the defence of my namesake:

To dismiss Newton's equilibrium theory of tides as “utterly wrong” is unfair in the same way it would be to dismiss the law of supply and demand because it doesn't accurately describe the global economic system or to rubbish ohms law because it fails to deal with semiconductors and superconductors.

It does describe the very basic astronomical forces that produce tidal effects i.e. the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun.

The 'bulge on the other side' is easy to explain when you consider this is the mass of water that is subject to the least gravitational attraction so while the water closest is attracted the most and moves toward the sun/moon, the water furthest away is attracted least and moves away. Put another way there is a simple issue of the conservation of momentum and the centre of gravity of the earth stays put.

Wave motion is not the same as movement of water (play with a slinky to prove this). Just because a wave travels does not mean that a mass of water is moving. (Actually the individual molecules of water are moving round in little circles).

That said your article was an excellent description of some of the more involved processes at work.

For anyone who is really excited by this stuff I have attached a few pages from 'Waves, tides and shallow water processes” which is one of the course books from my Open Uni S330 course in Oceanography.

Dave Newton.