DeepEarthScience

Last week, I was sitting on the beach looking at the " Oosterscheldekering ", one of the largest engineering constructions on Earth. It was designed to protect Zeeland from flooding during large storms and extreme high tides. As a boy I was always remembered of the power of the water (my complete family is from the island Schouwen-Duiveland, where the storm of 1953 hit hard). It gave me a sense of aw and pride, that engineers designed and build these large constructions. Maybe even, it gave me motivation to go into engineering. As I was admiring the view, I was thinking about tides and their cause. One of the most common questions about tides is: Why are there two high (and low) tides a day? If tides are caused by the Moon, due to its gravitational attraction, there should only be one tide a day, because the Earth rotates only ones a day, right? The answer to this problem is: Correct Frame of Reference! Since we, humans, know the Earth is round, we tend to place ...

A few years ago I was obsessed about Einstein's theory of gravity. I wanted to know everything about it, so I browsed a lot on the internet, trying to find information about the topic (I could have gone to the library, however I was still in the frame of mind that everything on the internet is correct). So one day I came across the following website: Bending Spacetime in the Basement . Wow, can one do this at home?!? First take a good look at the website. He's got a point by stating that he is bending spacetime. It unfortunately has nothing to do with warp-drives and wormholes (Which was what I was looking for), but his experiment is quite cool nonetheless. It somehow proves (I will discuss this later on) that the theory of gravitation found by Newton, not only works for planet and stars, but also for smaller everyday objects. Everything attracts each other. Impressed by the simplicity of the experiment and the fact that it is about gravitation (I think this is one of...