“How would the loss of our moon affect how we live our daily lives?”

What is a moon?

A moon is a natural satellite of solid material that orbits around a planet or a dwarf planet. Planets can have more than one moon, earth has 1. At night, we see this bright glowing sphere above us accompanied by billions of stars, that is our moon and it is the fifth largest natural satellite in our solar system. 

What does the moon do?

When people think of the moon, we usually think that it is just this bright thing in the sky at night that provides light for us which is true, but it contributes to much more than this. The moon is our light source at night but it also pays a huge role in some of earths factors such as ocean tides and seasonal changes.

How does the moon affect the tides?

The tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. The moon is much smaller than the sun but it has two times more of an influence on the tides because it is much closer to the earth. The gravitational force of the moon causes the water in oceans and large lakes to bulge or rise, creating high tides. The pull is strongest on the side that faces the moon, but the gravity is able to create high tide on both sides of earth. Because of the earths rotation, this gives us high tides twice a day, followed by low tides about 6 hours later.  Special tides such as spring tides occur when the earth, the sun and the moon are aligned, causing the combined force of the sun and the moon to bring very strong tides among earth. Without the moon, we would have a decreased difference of high tide vs low tide because the gravitational force would be weaker, coming from the sun which is much further away than the moon currently is.

How does the moon affect the seasons?

The moon affects the seasons and their temperature through the gravitational pull on the equatorial plane, the north pole, the south pole and the rate of the earths spin. These elements along with the pull of the sun and the moon, affect the creation of the seasons, the timing, and the distribution. without the moon, the earth’s rotation would be affected and the temperatures at the North and South poles and the equator would vary.  the temperatures would be unstable with unpredictable extremes of hot and cold weather.

How would days/nights be without the moon?

The moon is seen as a bright glowing sphere at night that sits above us, accompanied by the stars. It does not however provide light through itself, but by reflecting the light from the sun onto earth.

Without the moon, nights would be much darker, the next brightest object in the night sky would be Venus but it would not be nearly enough to light up the sky once the sun has set. A full moon is nearly two thousand times brighter than Venus is at its brightest state. Stars are not able to provide nearly enough light for us either. The moons gravitational pull slows down the earths rotation over time. If we didn’t have the moon, the earths rotation would not do this so the rotation would be much faster, making our days much shorter, a day on earth would only last 6-12 hours.

But how would the loss of the moon affect mankind?

Shorter days of 6-12 hours could theoretically mean more days in a week, month, year etc. but would we consider there to be more days? Or would we keep the general 7, 30-31 and 364-365.

Suppose that we had developed mankind on earth to where we are today without ever having a moon, the days would still have been said to meet these numbers despite how long they would last because we would not have known the difference of hours, but how would it affect us if the moon is sudden to disappear maybe… tomorrow?

Shorter days would mean less time to do things! So i am curious on how humans would adapt to this alter if we go from having a 24hour day to a 12hour day, we could say that our time for activities and daily lifestyle is cut in half. For example if we spend ¼ of our day in school now, to keep that ratio, school could potentially be 3 hours rather than 6. Daylight here lasts a shorter amount of time during the winter than in the summer so we find ourselves sometimes eating dinner after the sun has gone down, but if this was cut in half would people go to sleep earlier? would we treat a 12 hour day as a full day or continue to live the whole 24 hours with a regular sleep, eat, activity etc. schedule? 

Tide wise,

Many kinds of sea life survival are dependant on the changing of the tide which would not happen significantly enough for them to do so without the moon. Aside from this, humans harvest fish and other creatures for food based on the tide movements. Fishermen pay close attention to the tides to indicate when they should take the trip and cast their nets because many of these creatures move based of the movements of the tide. The moon affects the tide, which affects the accuracy of food harvest, which affects us and our food chain.

Today, several companies are also working on developing hydroelectric dams that use the movement of spring tides or high tides to turn turbines, which would produce energy. Without the moon’s gravitational pull to move the tides, this would be nearly impossible because the weak force of the sun would not be enough to create high tide. 

If we didn’t have a moon, the extremes of seasonal weather conditions would be much worse, way worse than what we are experiencing with global warming, this would make it very hard to make a living and support oneself through dramatic weather conditions.

This video further explains what I have written on what would happen to earth if the moon were to disappear: https://youtu.be/5BfwlCJQ9lg

So to answer the question, the moon plays important roles in the evolution of earth itself and how we are able to live our lives. Without the moon, there are many effects that would happen to earth, the tides would be smaller, our temperatures would be unstable, our days would be shorter, but in all and all, we and our way of living would be greatly affected by these effects as well.

 

Citations:

URL https://www.insidescience.org/video/what-would-happen-if-there-were-no-moon
Website Title Inside Science
Article Title What Would Happen If There Were No Moon?
Date Published June 29, 2016
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

URL https://astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/33/33.html
Website Title ASP: What If the Moon Didn’t Exist?
Article Title What if the Moon Didn;t Exist?
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

URL https://sciencing.com/moon-affect-earths-seasons-8678293.html
Website Title Sciencing
Article Title How Does the Moon Affect Earth’s Seasons?
Date Published April 24, 2017
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

URL https://www.space.com/55-earths-moon-formation-composition-and-orbit.html
Website TitleSpace.com
Article Title Moon Facts: Fun Information About the Earth’s Moon
Date Published March 02, 2018
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

URL https://sciencing.com/moons-effect-seasons-22257.html
Website Title Sciencing
Article Title The Moon’s Effect on the Seasons
Date Published April 23, 2018
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

URL https://sciencing.com/do-ocean-tides-affect-humans-5535690.html
Website Title Sciencing
Article Title How Do Ocean Tides Affect Humans?
Date Accessed May 31, 2018

Images:

http://eprintcalendar.com/tag/png-full-moon

https://www.farmersalmanac.com/how-do-moons-affect-the-tide-3223

https://pics-about-space.com/sun-moon-earth-orbit?p=1

https://pixabay.com/en/night-sky-moon-stars-midnight-315204/ 

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/astronomy/q0262.shtml

Video:

https://youtu.be/5BfwlCJQ9lg

 

 

Reflection:

  1. What questions did you need to research in order to research your topic?  ‘what is the moon” “what does the moon do for us” “how does the moon affect earth” “does the moon affect our seasons” “how is the moon relevant to the tides” and more. To research this this topic i had to search a lot of questions about the moon itself, then about the affects that it would have on earth, then from there i searched questions on how we as humans use the elements on earth would’ve been affected. for example I researched about how the moon affected the ocean tides, once i was at a good understanding of this, i searched up what life is dependant on the tides and how we are dependant on them. for the tides, i found out that a lot of sea animals use it to move around, then i further researched that and found out that fishermen actually use the tide to determine when to cast their nets, based off of the positioning of the fish. 
  2. What new or familiar digital tools did you try to use as you worked through this project? i used the internet to do my research, for this project i tried my best to make sure that the sources i used were reliable and avoided using Wikipedia. i used the schools library search to find some reliable websites as well.
  3. What was the process you used to investigate the topic? During the process of researching my topic i started with one important question. “what is the moon” then reading from there, i though of new questions and continued to research question after question until i came to a somewhat understanding how it all worked.
  4. How did you verify and cite the information you found? firstly i made sure i did not use Wikipedia at all. i tried to use sites that said “.edu” because i remember being told that those are usually a reliable source. i tried to make sure that the sites weren’t “sketchy” by avoiding ones with irrelevant advertisements, a lack of information about the author and i tried to use sources that had been edited recently or not too long ago. i tried my best to make sure i saved all of the sources i used. i then used an online citation machine to cite my sources.
  5. How did the process of completing this challenge go? What could you have done better? the process was a bit underlying in the beginning because i didn’t know much about the moon itself, but once i began to gain some understanding i found myself intrigued with the topic and unable to stop reading. i took lots of notes on a word document and from there, re-wrote an idea of what i would write on this post. something i could’ve done better would have been to better plan out the time management aspect of it, rather than doing the 3/4 of it in one night. i also think that i could’ve looked further into certain topics i talked about but over all i think my project is done well and looks decent visually.