Science Common Sense

1306 - What is the regular pattern of tidal changes?

Imagine you're at the beach, watching the ocean. The regular pattern of tidal changes is like this:

• The water comes up and gets closer to the shore, that's called 'high tide'.
• Then, it goes back out to sea and gets farther from the shore, that's called 'low tide'.

This happens about twice a day, so we have two high tides and two low tides, every 24 hours.