This activity ties together spring tides, neap tides, moon phases, chart reading skills, graphing skills, and analyzing data skills. When making the worksheets, I used the data for high tides since it showed a better range of data for the students to create the graph.
This activity was also a good review on how to create line graphs by hand for two sets of data. Students are used to making bar graphs so we reviewed how to set up line graphs and plot points on the graph.
When plotting the data, you can really see the differences in the tidal heights. We also used the phrase “Neap ain’t that deep” to remember the difference between spring tides and neap tides.
Worksheets
- Atlantic City, NJ – January 2015 High Tide Data worksheet (pdf)
- Seaside Heights, NJ – February 2015 High Tide Data (pdf) (image link)
- “For example, in the year 2015, the February 18 new moon will closely align with perigee and the the September 28 full moon will closely coincide with perigee, to bring forth perigean spring tides.”~EarthSky
- Blank Worksheet (pdf) for students to choose data from a different location.
- Tide charts (link) – select the state and city of your choice, set for Atlantic City
- Current Moon Phases (link) – The Old Farmer’s Almanac
- For more lessons about tides, see my Space Science Page.
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