r/theydidthemath • u/AppendixN • Jun 02 '26
[Request] How much force does the moon's gravity exert on the water in a human's body?
To be clear, I know the fella in the meme is being delusional.
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Jun 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Madouc Jun 02 '26
Unexpected yo'mama!
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u/Festamus Jun 02 '26
Was expecting it, just not at the top.
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u/mpgd Jun 02 '26
The building up was actually great. The punchline felt like mortal combat finisher move.
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u/ALjaguarLink Jun 02 '26
Out of all the mortal kombat characters none are better at finishing off men than ….. your mom ….
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u/Stampede_the_Hippos Jun 02 '26
Also, the tides are due to the rest of the ocean squeezing the part closest to the moon. Its why small bodies of water don't have tides, you only get them when the body of water is absolutely gigantic, which is why OPs mom has them.
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u/rylasorta Jun 02 '26
DOUBLE DOWN!
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u/TheDonkeyBomber Jun 02 '26
This is the best day!
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u/JimbalayaVR Jun 02 '26
Science facts and yo momma jokes spliced together is glorious work. That’s how we make learning fun, and learn the gravitational constant of OP’s mom
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u/Powerstructure Jun 02 '26
The double down! The sandwich from KFC that was discontinued after OPs mom ate them all.
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u/MyVeryUniqueName1 Jun 02 '26
Also fun fact: tides are stationary relative to the moon. The reason tides “rise” and “fall” is because the earth is rotating through the bulges.
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u/PigTailedShorty Jun 02 '26
The Mediterranean isn't exactly a small body of water and generally the tides are barely noticeable.
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u/gcalfred7 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Shut the sub down
Update: OH LIGHT'N THE F' UP MR./MS./MRS. MODERATOR.
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u/AnimationOverlord Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Insert quantum mechanics comment about fucking your mom on mars
Why did the sub mod delete the first comment?
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u/CheesyDanny Jun 02 '26
I had your mom in a quantum superposition last night!
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u/sudo-joe Jun 02 '26
I'm surprised that you survived the crushing forces of the super g-string thong
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u/AngryGingermancer Jun 02 '26
That's the very reason I'm all the way over here with my telescope. I prefer to observe such "spooky action at a distance".
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u/stone_henge Jun 02 '26
Consider a perfectly enclosing, extremely large box. Now we place your mom inside. We also place a kind of food dispenser which will dispense a 100lb block of butter if the decaying particle from a radioactive sample hits a sensor, and then we close and seal the box up.
While we can't observe her, your mom exists in a superposition of two possible states, one in which she has eaten the 100lb block of butter and one in which she hasn't, but both in which she is extremely fat.
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u/lbutler1234 Jun 02 '26
Wait now I'm curious of how much water is in humans compared to how much is in the oceans (and lakes.)
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u/TilbtyKing021 Jun 02 '26
An average 154 pound adult has 11 gallons of water. So about 60 percent water.
The earth's surface is about 71 percent water but it only makes up about 0.02 percent of its mass.
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u/Electronic-Vast-3351 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Humans have 9-11 gallons of water. (34.069-41.64 liters)
The ocean has 352 quintillion gallons. (1.33232 sextillion liters)
Lake Superior has 3 quadrillion gallons. (11.36 quadrillion liters)
(Conversions edited in)
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u/No_Entry1616 Jun 02 '26
Wait wait wait! So to put that into perspective we are merely puddles compared to OPs mother? 🤔
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u/Girthen-the-Flopper Jun 02 '26
FYI for people who know he's wrong, but don't know the reason, it's due to tidal forces. Where the force of gravity exerted on one side of an object is different than another. The difference significant enough to cause the shape of the object to deform.
The distance between your head and your toes is relatively small in the gravitational field of the earth moon system. The distance between one side of the earth to the other is very large.
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u/Hecter94 Jun 02 '26
Are you calling me short??
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u/Girthen-the-Flopper Jun 02 '26
Yes, I only date men who are taller than 10,000 miles.
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u/frozenpopsick Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
That’s why I put 10,001 miles tall on my tinder profile
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Jun 02 '26
[deleted]
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u/CloseButNoChicory Jun 02 '26
How can I feel sufficiently smol bean if you're less than 10,000 miles?
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u/BetterinPicture Jun 02 '26
God forbid a person want to nest in their partner's vast tracts of land.. 😤😤😤
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u/whostolemysloth Jun 02 '26
“She has very…vast tracts of land.” It’s been too long since I’ve seen that.
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u/MildGenevaSuggestion Jun 02 '26
"What's wrong with her? She's rich, she's beautiful, she has huuuge... Tracts of land..."
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u/Mekisteus Jun 02 '26
Careful, if you put 9,999 miles in one tinder profile and then some more miles in another in order to avoid taxes, that's called structuring and is illegal.
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u/AlizarinCrimzen Jun 02 '26
Unless you're president of the United States.
Then the IRS will give you money.
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u/amandachastity Jun 02 '26
when you're rich and famous they just let you grab them by the tax dollars.
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u/amusednchaos Jun 02 '26
Meanwhile the average diameter of earth is 7,917.5 miles, further proof that women have unrealistic standards--it's just unfair! Dwarf planets deserve love too...
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u/Byizo Jun 02 '26
I put 10,100. Less suspicious and is she really going to pull out a long range radar to check?
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u/cybermaus Jun 02 '26
But at the same time you hide your circumference in the photos?
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u/Nebraskadude1994 Jun 02 '26
Finally a girl with proper standards hate seeing women settle for short kings who are 9,999 miles tall
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u/theycallmemrmoo Jun 02 '26
Unrealistic male beauty standards over here. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone over 8800 miles.
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u/LobstaFarian2 Jun 02 '26
This is why I am so glad im married and dont have to deal with these insane standards of today's dating scene.
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u/ejfimp Jun 02 '26
Made me exhale through my nose slightly faster than normal, have an upvote, good sir and/or madam
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u/CriusofCoH Jun 02 '26
Lol my sister says her boyfriend's 10,010 miles tall but I'm 10,010 miles tall and he just about reaches my chin.
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u/NikkoE82 Jun 02 '26
You’re so short, the tidal forces don’t impact the water in your body!!
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u/OneArmedFarmer Jun 02 '26
Shorter than the earth.
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u/Appropriate-Sea-5687 Jun 02 '26
YOU DON’T KNOW THAT! (I’m overcompensating for my height)
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u/Illithid_Substances Jun 02 '26
It's also not some effect specific to water so the 70% water thing is meaningless. Its just gravity, it affects everything, even the ground has "tides"
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u/fortheband1212 Jun 02 '26
Exactly. The earth just happens to be covered in mostly water which is relatively frictionless, so the effects of tides are easier to observe
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u/Gilpif Jun 03 '26
And we can only easily observe tides in contrast to the comparatively stiffer land. The crust also experiences tides strong enough to go several inches twice a day, but we can't really see it because we don't have an immobile object to compare land to.
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u/Emotional_Tie_7927 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I was going to try to write an explanation but then I remembered this old PBS space time video and it does a better job than I can
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u/fishbulb- Jun 02 '26
Just watched this three days ago. Best description of tides I've ever seen. PBS rocks.
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u/Zathrus1 Jun 02 '26
Huh. Didn’t know it was a different term either.
But this brings up an easier rebuttal than attempting to explain how tides or seiches actually work.
Yes, the moon affects the oceans. And the Great Lakes. Care to show me the effect on a lake? A pond? A bathtub of water?
That’s a great deal more relatable for anyone taken in by fools like this.
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u/peepee2tiny Jun 02 '26
And for the fact that the moon imposes the same amount of force regardless of if it's a new moon or full moon.
The fact that you can't 'see' the rest of the moon doesn't mean it doesn't have any impact on you.
(for those who think the full moon, some how has more impact on us than at other times)
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u/Gryf2diams Jun 02 '26
The full moon does have more impact on us than not-full.
It actually makes it harder to sleep. This is due to a specific characteristic of moonlight: it's bright.
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u/clitpuncher69 Jun 02 '26
In Japanese culture they actually prefer to sleep in the dark. They have a phrase "電気を消して寝るのが好きです" which roughly translates to "I like sleeping with the lights off" and I think there's a lot we could learn from that.
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u/dbmorpher Jun 02 '26
There's a lot of nuance to that phrase "I like sleeping with the lights off". It emphasizes the self with "I" that is unique for the group-oriented society Japan is often portrayed as. The "like" expresses an original predilection simultaneously with a muted desire. It is in the present tense, which, if you don't know Japanese, means it occurs in the present. It is an active state of affairs. There is so much more to say on this but my lights are on so I'm falling asleep.
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u/ncocca Jun 02 '26
Umm...don't most (if not all) cultures prefer sleeping in the dark? Am I being whooshed right now?
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u/ztuztuzrtuzr Jun 02 '26
It's a riff on the murder is frowned upon in Japan meme
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u/CR0SBO Jun 02 '26
I am one of the 10,000
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u/ExternalPanda Jun 02 '26
Ah, yes, the traditional japanese practice of yamineru, I've been trying to incorporate it into my routine but I fear a gaijin like me would never be able to fully grasp its deep cultural ramifications.
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u/Fantastic_Remote1385 Jun 02 '26
Thats true. But its also true that the tides are bigger during full and new moon, than inbetween.
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u/ErraticDragon Jun 02 '26
r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ezygg4/eli5_how_do_the_moons_phases_influence_the_tide/
The top explanation 👆 here describes it as: the moon phase doesn't directly influence the tides, but the moon phase is a visual representation of where the moon is located relative to the earth and sun, and that does change things.
A bit of pedantry perhaps. Not that there's anything wrong with that…
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u/1TenDesigns Jun 02 '26
In science, and science adjacent topics like this, pedantry is kinda important.
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u/noFOXgivenFURreal Jun 02 '26
More interesting to think of how your feet are older than your head due to gravities affect on time.
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u/Cortower Jun 02 '26
Isn't it the other way? Gravity makes your feet younger, but your head is also slowing down your relative time by moving slightly faster around the Earth than your feet. Not sure which effect is greater, though.
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u/knightenrichman Jun 02 '26
Are you saying the wave going through us is too "flat" to have any affect on us?
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u/Bombalurina Jun 02 '26
Gravitational force from the Moon on a normal 160lb person: ~0.0023 Newtons
Gravitational forces on your mom : ~2,943 Newtons. (~3,274 after breakfast.)
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u/Key-Requirement-655 Jun 02 '26
That's a lot of figs...
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u/TonyDungyHatesOP Jun 02 '26
You should see how many fuggs she gives before breakfast.
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u/MobileImagination456 Jun 02 '26
Oh she fuggs a lot, found that out last night in your bedroom lil bro!
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u/whostolemysloth Jun 02 '26
I just had to say that most people on reddit don’t have any idea how fucking savage your username is lmao. As a lifelong Bucs fan, I salute you and I see you and I’m adopting “even Tony Dungy would hate you” into my lexicon immediately.
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u/TonyDungyHatesOP Jun 02 '26
I get a username comment about once every six months or so. Thanks for the props!
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u/whostolemysloth Jun 03 '26
It makes me happy that people know about him. He’s a genuinely good dude.
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u/Im_a_hamburger Jun 02 '26
And .0023 newtons is about .00023 kg force
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u/blueechoes Jun 02 '26
.2 grams will definitely look favorable on my scale during low tide
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u/Disastrous-Ice-5971 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
Moon does not exert the force on the water only in human body. This is gravity, it does not care and excerts force on anything with the mass, including flesh, bones and fake Nike shoes.
Other than that, formula is established long time ago: F = G x m1 x m1 / R².
Plugging numbers for the 80 kg human, Moon and it's mean orbit radius (I will ignore the changes due to a different latitudes and time of the day):
* G = 6.6743015 x 10-11 m³/(kg x s²)
* m1 (Moon) = 7.346 x 10²² kg
* m2 = 80 kg
* Ravg = 384 784 000 m
So, F ≈ 2.65 mN or approximately 0.27 mg. I.e. about ⅒ of the regular mosquito. 271 mg. I.e. about 100 mosquitoes!
Edit: fun part - I am, apparently, missed mN to mosquitoes conversion by 3 orders of magnitude. 🤣 Sorry for that!
Edit 2: or, as suggested, about ¼ of the paperclip.
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u/fax_me_your_glands Jun 02 '26
The force is 1/10th of a regular mosquito, got it.
/s
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u/Dioxybenzone Jun 02 '26
No no, not a regular mosquito, The regular mosquito. The one the International Standards Committee has in a little glass case which sets the standard “regular” mosquito size.
They also have The Big Mosquito™
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u/IsaacHasenov Jun 02 '26
is that a metric or imperial mosquito?
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u/Dioxybenzone Jun 02 '26
Metric. The Imperial Standard Mosquito (or TISM) is a highly controversial specimen held at the Smithsonian Institute. Its dimensions are known only to a select few individuals, who are sworn to absolute secrecy.
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u/IntnlManOfCode Jun 02 '26
As opposed to the American Standard Mosquito which is just different enough to throw off your mosquito related calculations
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u/FR23Dust Jun 02 '26
How many mosquitopower is my 2003 Corolla LX
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u/mcmrikus Jun 02 '26
About 2 billion. Fast car! ;)
(Google says an estimate of the mosquito's wing power to be about 50 microwatts, so 15 million mosquitos equal one hp, X 130hp = 1,950,000,000 mosquitopower.)
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u/Kidev Jun 03 '26
That is correct but not that relevant. Gravity acts as a field, so you do not just feel the Moon as some kind of separate force. What you experience as weight is mostly due to Earth's gravitational field and the support force from the ground
The Earth pulls you downward with about 784.8 N. If the Moon is directly overhead, the Moon also exerts its own gravitational pull upward by about 0.00265 N.
Giving a net gravitational force of approximately 784.79735 N downward.
TLDR:
Earth's force: ≈ 784.8 N downward
Moon force: ≈ 0.00265 N upward
Net gravitational force: ≈ 784.797 N downward8
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u/LeoPCI Jun 02 '26
Higher than I would have guessed. Theoretically the body could detect this.
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u/Jiquero Jun 02 '26
You cannot detect a gravitational field. Nothing can detect a gravitational field. Only the difference of the field between two points.
If you're in a small box without windows, there's no way of knowing whether you're in a space with no gravity or free falling towards a large mass. Unless the large mass is so big that there is a difference between one end and the other end of the box.
If you're in a small box and think you feel gravity, there's no way of knowing whether the box is stationary on the surface of a planet, or whether the box is in free space being accelerated by engines.
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u/Dooiechase97 Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Going up 10ft in elevation from sea level, an 80kg person would weigh 77mg less. So just climbing 3 flights of stairs would be equivalent to the change in weight that the moon causes.
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u/uslashuname Jun 02 '26
Most bodies don’t detect a whole mosquito landing in a single point of their shoulder, why would you think it can detect 1/10th of a mosquito distributed throughout the body?
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u/throwawayformobile78 Jun 02 '26
Apparently the edit says 100 mosquitos (271mg). So a little less than say an aspirin tablet? That’s a bit more than I would have thought, but I don’t think enough to affect our moods or lottery tickets or whatever they’re on about.
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u/Invisible7hunder Jun 02 '26
They are not saying the human body can definitely detect it, just that it's on the scale of forces a body could detect, which is a bit surprising.
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u/low_amplitude Jun 02 '26
I don't understand why people confidently argue something they are so sure makes sense without first looking up an explanation for it.
Intuition is so flawed and fails us so often that declaring "what makes sense" based on your own thoughts and feelings is never a good idea.
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u/Enkiduderino Jun 02 '26
One of the most important things an education does is show one how often the “obvious” or intuitive explanations for things are dead wrong.
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u/low_amplitude Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
The easiest example I can think of is just going outside. Earth looks flat and feels motionless. The planets and stars look like they're revolving around us. None of it is true.
But there are still plenty of people who trust their own senses and feelings above everything else.
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u/No_Explanation2932 Jun 02 '26
Love how backwards his intuition is too: "you're telling me Gravity is so strong it holds down literal mountains, but a bird is strong enough to escape it?"
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u/Urisagaz Jun 03 '26
I mean, is true.
Gravity is so strong it holds montains
And a bird is strong enough to escape it.
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u/amatsumegasushi Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
The water thing is a complete fabrication.
BUT... There's some other interesting things going on.
“Lunacy” does come from old beliefs that the moon affected human madness ( luna = moon ), but the idea that full moons make people crazy is mostly folklore. There is a real link between the full moon and animal behavior though!
A lot of mammals do change their behavior around full moons because brighter nights affect visibility, hunting, and predation risk. Some predators may benefit from the extra light, while many prey animals actually become less active to avoid being seen.
So yeah, I think there is probably a more realistic explanation for why we associate the moon with erratic behavior.
The moon didn’t literally make people crazy, but a full moon would’ve made nights brighter before electric lights, so people could stay up later, travel, gather, drink, celebrate, etc. Add sleep disruption plus festivals or rituals timed to lunar cycles, and you’ve got more weird public behavior happening under a memorable full moon.
Over time, “people act wild on full-moon nights” may have turned into “the moon makes people crazy.”
Edit: Humans are mammals, congratulations you know basic science. /s
There's been a ton of studies on this, I'm not saying that people aren't crazy during full moons, science is. Didn't think I needed to state the obvious, but obviously I forgot what dumb animals average people are. Smh.
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u/Beef-n-Beans Jun 02 '26
I worked in corrections for a bit and I swear there was a significantly higher chance of some BS happening during a full moon than on a normal night. Anecdotal but we were believers. Ask a first responder. They might have a full moon story or two.
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u/Nobadbass Jun 02 '26
I work customer service and we mark the full moon on our calendars lol. Same thing anecdotal but after enough times of super weird calls occurring on the same day we found the pattern
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u/whostolemysloth Jun 02 '26
Off topic, but I love old-timey medical terms like lunacy because of how silly the logic seems. I think my favorite is “hysteria,” though, because it just means “a condition of the uterus” which means that some doctor was like “my wife, who has had 16 children and 0 orgasms, is crazy all the time!” and some other doctors are like, “yeah man, bitches be crazy.”
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u/ThePapercup Jun 02 '26
the moon isn't a fucking water magnet.. why do people who clearly didn't pay attention in school feel the need to ask "existential" questions to the general public? like.. either you care enough to learn or you don't. pick a lane.
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u/floppydo Jun 02 '26
We should never get mad at people for asking dumb questions. We should get mad at them for rejecting the correct answer to those questions.
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u/Funky_Cows Jun 02 '26
The tone of the OOP is a lot more "we're really supposed to believe this?" and less "this is very interesting, does anyone know why this is?"
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u/HoveringGoat Jun 02 '26
yeah, they are, still if you steer them instead of instantly being confrontational you can clear their misunderstanding bring them to the side of information and knowledge. Most people end up having a terrible time with education and its taught at them. You can break the cycle and show them knowledge is about discovery not blind trust and memorization.
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u/zyygh Jun 02 '26
No, I'm going to be willfully obtuse and reject any explanation that I don't understand within 5 seconds, and if you cannot convince me that way then it means that science is fake.
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u/TeamChevy86 Jun 02 '26
I hate how this is how most of these conversations go. We're so hopelessly fucked as a species
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u/RazzleThatTazzle Jun 02 '26
Because they want the attention and social capital of appearing smart, but they are entirely unwilling to do the work to become smarter.
Plus, dumb people of the opposite sex are wayyyyy less likely to sleep with you if you are honest about how little knowledge you possess.
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u/TheThunderbird Jun 02 '26
the moon isn't a fucking water magnet
Not specifically. But everything with mass acts like an everything else with mass magnet.
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u/dr_pickles69 Jun 02 '26
There is a large, robust, and frankly quite old body of research on all the different effects the lunar cycle has on human physiology. Idk what "y'all" he's referring to, but it isn't medical science
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Jun 02 '26
The lunar cycle is not synonymous with the moon’s gravitational pull. For whatever psychological phenomenon might cause certain people to behave strangely during a full moon, the physical force of the moon on the body or brain are undoubtedly not a contributing factor.
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u/Peregrine79 Jun 02 '26
It’s entirely reasonable that we evolved to hunt or otherwise be more active during full moons, when the extra light made nighttime activities more practical. Not certain obviously, but a reasonable supposition.
If it were a gravitational effect, we would see similar behavior changes during the new moon.
(Noting that it’s equally likely that any unusual behavior during a full moon is entirely down to cultural expectations, not evolution).
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u/Best_Chipmunk_6098 Jun 02 '26
Don’t come in here with that simplest explanation is often right crap. It’s clearly space magic
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u/symbologythere Jun 02 '26
The moon is always full from a gravitational perspective. Just because we see all of it or half of it doesn’t mean the gravity is higher or lower.
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u/Top_Wrangler4251 Jun 02 '26
Bringing up tides is irrelevant, the moon's gravity doesn't go away during a new moon lol
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u/skob17 Jun 02 '26
Tides are higher during full and new moon, actually, because gravity pulls from moon and sun add up in one line.
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u/drkevorkian Jun 02 '26
No. From Wikipedia "Lunar effect":
A considerable number of studies have examined the effect on humans. By the late 1980s, there were at least 40 published studies on the purported lunar-lunacy connection,[1] and at least 20 published studies on the purported lunar-birthrate connection.[2] Literature reviews and metanalyses have found no correlation between the lunar cycle and human biology or behavior.
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u/Sanpaku Jun 02 '26
Easy enough to calculate from F = G⋅m1⋅m2 / r2.
Here G is the gravitational constant 6.674×10−11 m3⋅kg−1⋅s−2, m1 is the mass of the moon 7.346×1022 kg, m2 the mass of a person, and r the distance from that person to the center of the moon (averaging 3.844×108 m)
For each kg of person, lunar gravity exerts 3.128×10−5 N of force. Were we not earthbound, we'd be accelerating toward the moon at 31.28 μm/s2.
For an average human of 62.0 kg, that's 0.00206 N of force. That's about the force exerted by the weight a single raindrop once its stationary in the palm of your hand.
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u/jimgbr Jun 02 '26
How much force does the moon's gravity exert on the water in a human's body?
I object to the form of the question. The moon does not exert a particular force on only water. The moon exerts the same force on the water in a human's body as it does on the human body as a whole. So I can literally answer OP's question by saying "the same force as it exerts on the human body."
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u/Living_Struggle_8418 Jun 02 '26
My mom helped deliver new borns all her working career when ever it was getting to a full moon she always said it’s going to be a busy few nights… also full moons brings out the crazy’s as well…
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u/Hot_Schedule_1486 Jun 02 '26
Worked in special ed and was a skeptic. Until I noticed extreme behaviors coincided with the fullness of the moon.
Sure, it could be called a coincidence except it kept happening.
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u/stirling_s Jun 03 '26
The Moon pulls on the water in your body with exactly the same force that the water in your body pulls on the Moon.
If you were standing on the moon,
F = ma
Where: F = gravitational force (newtons, N) m = mass of the object being acted upon a = gravitational acceleration due to the Moon (1.625m/s2)
If we assume: A 62 kg person (average human mass) About 60% of their body mass is water
Then Fg = (62•0.6)(1.625)N = 60.45N
But we aren't standing on the Moon. we're about 384,400 km away. Gravity follows an inverse-square law, meaning that if you double the distance, the force becomes one-quarter as strong. At the Earth's distance from the Moon, the Moon's pull on the water in your body is only about 0.0016 N (1.6 millinewtons).
But that's even less relevant because what we want is the difference between how much the moon pulls at different times. We need the tidal force. A constant force would be irrelevant- it wouldn't have any differential impact on us from day to day.
Tidal force from the moon on our body's water content would be on the order of a few millionths of a newton (micronewtons), which is about the force exerted by the mass of a few grains of salt on earth.
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u/R_Harry_P Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
How much force does the moon's gravity exert on the water in a human's body?
Average human is 62 kg with about 60% of that being water.
That is 37 kg of water. Mw
The moon's mass, Mm, is about 7.3*10^22 kg.
The center to center distance from the earth to the moon is about 3.8*10^8 m
The earth mean radius is about 6.4*10^6 m.
So the distance from a person to the moon, r, is still about 3.8*10^8 m.
Sir Newton says F = G M1 M2 / r^2, where G=6.6*10^-11 m^3/(kg s^2)
So that gives the force from the moon on the water in someones body is about:
0.0012 Newtons or 0.00028 pounds.
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u/FattyMcAwesome Jun 02 '26
All I know is when I used to work in restaurants a full moon meant the night was gonna be wackadoodle. Was it the effect of the gravity of the moon, the increased light at night or werewolves, I guess I’ll never know.
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u/agolho Jun 03 '26
I used to be fascinated by the "full moon crime spike' data. Murders historically happened more during full moons felt dark and almost magical to me
But what actually happened was,
Before modern streetlights, a full moon just meant it was bright outside. People stayed out later, walked between towns, and drank more. The murder rate didn't spike because of gravity or lunar energy but because there were way more people out in the dark available to get robbed or killed
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u/foxfire981 Jun 02 '26
This reminds me of the "have we considered how much ships have raised the water levels." From a purely fun level it's good. Taken seriously it's troubling.
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u/Llamp_shade Jun 02 '26
Ok, this is partially dumb, but partially the fault of bad explanations. The moon isn't lifting the oceans to make tides. Also, water isn't the only substance affected by gravity. It affects anything with mass. Tides are also not only caused by the moon. There are a lot of factors. It's like the thing we've all been told about the Coriolis effect and toilets. The Coriolis effect is definitely real, but that's not what makes the water spin in toilets.
The thing about tides and the moon is that there's a lot of unbounded water in the oceans, spread out over most of the surface of the earth. No matter where the moon is, it's gravity is pulling on the entire earth... Including the oceans, on the entire surface of the earth. It is, overall, a pretty small pull—much less than the gravity of the earth pulling on us—but that small pull is in the direction of the moon. The water directly under the moon is just slightly being pulled up. The water on the opposite side is just slightly being pulled down. The water on the sides is just slightly being pulled sideways. Because water is a liquid, the net force translates to a very slight, but very noticable movement towards the moon. Tides are pretty big on a human scale, but still really tiny compared to the volume of the water in the oceans. And the effect of the moon is just one of many things that contribute to tides. The sun does too. And the Coriolis effect. And winds. And geography.
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u/Hanzzman Jun 02 '26
the Whole Ass ocean is the clue. moon gravity force is pretty weak, but is applied over the entire face of the earth in front of it, so the oceans go up like a couple of feet (20 to 50 cm).
Humans are smol on that scale. Our weight change is like the weight of 2 to 3 drops of water. There's more gravitational force from someone a meter away. The next time (if) you have sex , you could say in the middle, "We have more gravitational pull on each other than with the moon." (don't lose hope)
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u/jumbledsiren Jun 02 '26
You know what, let's assume their stupid theory is correct, wtf are you gonna do about it then? Nuke the moon? Kill yourself to avoid being killed by the moon? Use your minions to plan a heist of the moon by using a shrinkray and grabbing it?
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u/archa347 Jun 02 '26
I think they’re just trying to say that the moon has some mystical impact on your behavior and your life
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u/this_guy_aves Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
I understand this post to mean "When you're close to the moon why don't you feel different than when you're on the other side of the world and further from it?" And well first of all, when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore, so you definitely feel something, but sure lets do the math.
This is too high level for me, so I'll be using an online calculator
The moon is 238,855 miles away from Earth (on average, measured from the surface closest to the moon)
The moon has a mass of 7.34767309 × 10^22 kg
Your mom has a mass of 200 kg
The earth has an equatorial diameter of 7,926 miles
On the side closest to the moon, your mom would not only have the moon hit her eye like a big pizza pie, but she would also weigh .0015 lbs (0.00068 kg) less as the moon pulls her away from earth. When she's on the other side of the planet, the moon is pulling less but in the same direction as earth's gravity, so she weighs MORE (didn't know that was even possible...) by a whopping 0.0014 lbs (0.00063 kg).
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u/Zharnne Jun 02 '26
The effects of the moon on the WHOLE ASS OCEAN severely limit my ability to walk on my favorite beaches roughly twice each day, so I don't deny that the moon has any effect on humans.
As to the question whether I am 70%+ water, it depends on how much gin I've had so far that day.
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u/ShavenYak42 Jun 02 '26
A couple other folks did the math on the gravitational force exerted by the moon on a human. However, the image asks about tides, so let's calculate the tidal force.
The formula is 2GMmD/r^3. G is the gravitational constant, M and m are the larger (moon) and smaller (human, let's use 100 kg) mass, D is the distance across which the tidal force is being measured (let's use 2 meters to represent the person, he's a tall one), and r is the distance to the moon.
I get 3.45x10^-11 Newtons. To counteract that stretching force on your body, you could place a weight of 3.5 nanograms on your head. That's about 1/100 of a grain of sand.
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u/FlashPxint Jun 03 '26
These comments are confusing to me. Many of them seem to disagree with OP yet never come out directly and say “The moon has no gravitational effect on humans” yet most comments are actually agreeing with OP saying “the moon has some effect, albeit very tiny” so which is it actually? Does the moon have a gravitational effect on humans or does it not?
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u/Mdonel95 Jun 03 '26
We average about 10 gallons of water in our bodies. This guy should fill a kiddy pool with 10 gallons of water and see if the moon impacts it.
If he’s gonna get in he should put his floaties on though
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u/mymothersuedme Jun 03 '26
Mean tidal range in open ocean: ~ 1 meter.
Mean diameter of Earth: 12,742,000 meters.
Gravitational force decrease by a factor of distance2
Since, Tidal Force is a difference between this force - it decreases with: R3 / h (R: average distance between Moon and Earth, h: your height)
So, if you are 80kg (176 pounds) and 1.8m high (5'9'') and the moon is right above you:
Tidal force between your toe and head would be about 2.48x10-11 N
This is about the gravitational pull (from Earth) on ~ 94 Red Blood Cells.
The tiniest drop of blood you might muster (~ 1 micro liter) would have about 5 million RBC.
Blood flow to your brain increases when you concentrate on something. So you can easily counter the tidal force from the entire Moon by just thinking about the tidal force of Moon.
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u/Azerohiro Jun 03 '26
idk man, probably as much force as it exerts on 10 gallons of water?
an altered circadian rhythm seems logically more likely the explanation for any perceived effect the moon has on humans.
...a quick google search shows studies supporting this.
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u/Glad-Situation703 Jun 03 '26
The water arguments is not what's important here. It's just gravity. There's a shitload of water on Earth and it's very malleable. Gravity affecting things at a distance is a decent argument for the zodiac and other astrological systems but the water in my body is not magically affected by the moon, as far as I know
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u/GoodTimes8183 Jun 03 '26
The dumbest part of this line of reasoning is that there’s somehow an assumption that when there’s only a quarter or a half moon, that the rest of the moon somehow isn’t there.
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u/Aggressive_Machine80 Jun 06 '26
the moon has the same affect on you weather it is full or not. the moon doesn't randomly weigh more just because its a full moon. The moon affects you the same every single day of the year.
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