Even as a physics major I have to scratch my head looking at the varied descriptions of why there is a tidal bulge of water on the side opposite the moon.  Some argue it's centrifugal force, some argue it's gravitational gradient. So here's a serious question -- if the Earth and the Moon were simply held apart by a big stick, and not rotating, would there still be a bulge of water on the side away from the moon?

How do magnets work and why are they able to repel and attract only certain metals, but not others?

I have been taught that acceleration due to gravity is affected by surface area and not mass. I still find it hard to believe that a situation like in my question would be possible?

High tides are created by the alignment of the sun and the moon, so why was today’s tide (4th Jan 2011 with a solar eclipse) just a moderate high tide?

We (the UK) have had a lot of snow and sub-zero temperatures recently, followed by brief thaws and then sub-zero temperatures, and the water in the pond has frozen white and then these large dendrite-like structures have appeared - the pond is still frozen solid. There are also what looks like bubbles frozen into the ice below the surface and odd dents in the surface..

Changing as few as possible of the laws of physics, what would be the effect on life on earth - particularly human life - if there was no such thing as snow?

If I've understood this, at least to some extent, everything always travells at the speed of light (or c to be more precise), provided you take account of the speed of travel through time as well as space, something at a fixed point in space travels through time at c and something travelling through space at c ceases to travel through time? The earth, sun etc. are not fixed points in space, they move through space as does our galaxy as well.  My question is really where this puts us on a scale from a fixed point in space too something travelling through space at c, and how much of an effect do we experience (I realise we would be unaware of it), compared to something not moving through space at all.  If I were to look out into deep space and by some weird coalescence of improbabilities were to see a person standing at a fixed point, unmoving in space, how much faster would they appear to age (travel through time) from my perspective (still traveling at normal earth speeds) or would this be the case at all? Many thanks,