Remember the Tides?

It was a week or two ago that we learned about tides (or was it 3?). We learned about what causes high and low tides, and the difference between spring and neap tides. Do you still remember tides? The reason I ask is because I was able to go on a field trip to observe them over our Presidents' Day break. This is what I found:
Using these pictures and the following info, attempt to answer the numbered questions.

• Both pictures were taken from the same exact spot (The zoom for both snapshots was the same, too). The picture on the left was taken at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The picture on the right was taken 5 1/2 hours later, at 7:30 pm.
  
• The high temperature on this day in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico was about 85 degrees F. I tell you this not because daytime temperature influences tides. I tell you this so that might be jealous, and that you might be reminded that this snowy, frigid winter will not last forever.
  
• The moon phase on this particular day was a "New Moon".

1. What causes high tides and low tides?
2. Approximately how many high tides would there be on this day? How many low tides would there be?
3. On the day when the picture was taken, was there a Spring or Neap tide? If so, which one? How do you know this?
   

Yeah.... We're kind of a big deal

We've represented this school, the city of Sioux Falls, the state of South Dakota, and the United States well with our participation on Ediscio Flash Cards. Thanks to your diligent work in keeping up with your assigned learning schedules, we currently have the top 5 "most popular" cardboxes that the German-created educational site hosts.
I have a feeling that the Earth, Moon, and Sun Effects cardbox will soon join the others at the top. The flash cards included will prepare you very well for the multiple choice portion of the standard check next Monday. The standard check will also include some short answer/essay questions. I have decided to share those questions in this blog post so that you could think about them, prepare for them, and actually answer them if you'd like to type out your answer in a comment. (Otherwise, you will write your answers out in class on Monday.) Here they are:

1. If the moon happened to be closer to the Earth than it actually is, what would happen to the length of time it takes our moon to progress through all of its phases (from new moon back to another new moon)? Would the length of our month be longer, shorter, or the same? Why? (Hint: Use your knowledge of Kepler's Laws to answer this one.)
2. Would we experience a change of seasons if Earth’s axis was not tilted? In your answer, be sure to include at least two factors that cause winter temperatures to be colder than summer temps, and why this seasonal change in temperature would or would not be felt if Earth's axis was not tilted.

When I Grow Up..

.......I want to be an astronaut. In the last several decades, many boys and girls in this country have said those words. Would you really like to be an astronaut?
I'd like to revisit some questions that we thought, wrote, and talked about yesterday. Imagine that you're an astronaut in the 1960s, like John Glenn in the video clip below. What kind of emotions would you feel as you put on the spacesuit? How about as you board a tiny capsule that happens to be sitting on a 6.5 million pound, longer-than-a-football-field rocket? How about when you break free of Earth's gravity and view the Earth from above?

• What would it be like to be an astronaut during those tense (yet thrilling) moments?
• In your experiences, is there anything that you might be able to compare it to?
• Why would the title of the When We Left Earth episode (from which this video clip came from) be "Ordinary Supermen"?