This activity is used in a 200-level undergraduate oceanography course and is a required core course for Geography majors. The course is considered an intermediate level course in that students are required to have taken at least one of the following courses as a prerequisite: Physical Geography, Physical Geology, or Meteorology. While skills and concepts are geared towards students with some background in the geosciences and those that are expected to take additional courses in the major, the content is an introduction to ocean science.

This activity is designed as an introduction to the subject of tides, and as such, no background understanding is expected. However, the activity does start by asking students questions about the origin of tides in order to identify any existing assumptions or misconceptions they might have and to get them thinking about ways to investigate the origin of tides in more detail. Knowing that tides exist is useful, but not required.

This activity is used to introduce the subject of tides. It takes the form a think-pair-share activity where students think about questions individually, discuss ideas with their neighbors, and eventually leads to a group discussion. This process is repeated multiple times through the course of the activity. The activity itself is designed more to raise interest in the subject and generate questions about tides. Subsequent class time is then used to fill in the details of a conceptual/theoretical model of tides.

This activity includes two handouts. The first is a short questionnaire to get students thinking about tides and generating questions which lead to more in-depth investigation of the topic. The second handout provides tidal data that students use as the basis of their investigation. A series of questions are included to help guide students observations. The ultimate goal is for students to generate a description of various tidal phenomena and to generate questions regarding the origin of these phenomena. The explanation of these phenomena comes from subsequent class discussions and lecture.

• Assumptions about tides (Acrobat (PDF) 108kB May29 13)
• Tidal Observations (Acrobat (PDF) 222kB May29 13)

This activity starts by having students complete a short questionnaire that explores their existing understanding of tides. Most students have at least some idea about the existence of tides from having visited a coastal region and many have some idea about the connection between tides and the moon. When pressed to think about some of the details about tides, most students then realize that whatever existing ideas they have about tides cannot adequately explain all of the details. When asked to think about ways to investigate the cause of tides students generally come to the idea of collecting observations of water level variations and comparing those variations with some sort of astronomical data. Once the class discussion reaches that point the second handout is distributed to students which has a set of questions designed to focus students observations toward some of the key characteristics of tidal variations. Students generally work in small groups to explore the various tidal records that are provided, answer the specified questions, and generate their own list of questions that have evolved from their observations. Subsequent class time is then used to fill in the details and provide a conceptual/theoretical model that explains the observed tidal phenomena in the various records.

I use tidal predictions, as opposed to actual observations in this activity, simply due to the accessibility of the data, but the activity could be easily modified to utilize actual observations. I typically bring display a record of tidal observations that is compared with predicted water level variations to demonstrate the accuracy of tidal predictions and also as a means for discussing causes of non-tidal variations in water level.

Given adequate time I prefer to have students access and download tidal records directly for specified locations and time periods (as opposed to just including the graphs as done here) as I like to continuously emphasize the availability of oceanographic data to students and get them used to the idea of utilizing existing observational data to investigate ocean processes.

Students should be able to correctly define the tidal period, describe the differences in the pattern between locations, and identify the fortnightly pattern of tidal variation in the 2 month data sets.

NOAA Tides and Currents website: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/

Data used in this activity are derived from the NOAA Tides & Currents website. Additional background information on tidal processes is also available from this site.