How does the moon controll the tides?
Gravity is right, but I want to answer in a little more detail. In reality, both the sun AND the moon control the tides. It’s just that the moon, being so much closer, is twice as important as the sun. So let us pretend for now that only the moon is important. Imagine the Earth as a perfect sphere of water. Nothing else exists. Now let us add a moon. Each has gravity. Pretend for one second that we have some force to keep them apart so that they don’t pull together and smash into each other (in reality, they don’t because they orbit a point between each other). The water-Earth ends up stretched out and looking kind of like a blunt football — the end close to the moon *and* the end far away from the moon stick out quite a bit. Unlike what was said above, the tides are about the same whether you are pointed at the moon or directly away from the moon. Now imagine that the water-Earth is spinning, revolving once per day, just like in reality. Even though the Earth is spinning, the “shape”
