For my coastal California readers, I am posting a short piece about the trip my kids and I took with some friends to the beach yesterday. All this week, we’re having negative tides at very convenient times:
Tue 3:56PM -1.4
Wed 4:44PM -1.7
Thr 5:33PM -1.7
Fri 6:25PM -1.4
A negative tide is when the low tide goes down to its lowest point in its cycle, thus exposing sea life that lives full-time underwater. It seems to me that negative tides generally seem to happen at highly inconvenient times, which is why this week is so fabulous. Not only homeschoolers, but even school families can make it out to the beach to meet the neighbors they seldom see. [See some resources for learning about tides with your kids below the photos.]
Here are some (not so great cellphone) photos I took at Natural Bridges State Beach. It’s truly amazing what you can see. If you go, make sure to slow down because many of these creatures blend in with their surroundings quite well.
Resources (thanks to Susan Greathouse for these):
Simple video describing tides:
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/science/weather-and-climate/tides.htm
Virtual lab on tides:
http://glencoe.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0078786797/student_view0/unit3/chapter11/virtual_lab.html
Tides and gravity interactive lab:
http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/tides/tides_main.html
More advanced tutorial on tides:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_tides/welcome.html
