Roger Hamlett wrote:

It is wrong to think of the tides as being caused by the Moon 'pulling'.
The key is that the whole 'Earth-Moon' system, is orbiting around their
common mass centre (actually inside the Earth). In it's simplest form, the
bit of the Earth closest to the Moon, gets pulled more, and bulges upwards
towards the Moon, but at the same time, the part furthest away, gets
pulled less, and with the centripetal effect, bulges up in the opposite
direction. Worse, the actual 'tides', lag the pull, and can get
accelerated/decelerated by the local geography, so (for example), there
are places that actually get four tides (or more!) a day, as the water
takes different routes round the local land masses.

Where can I see a page or two on this non Newtonian physics that shows
how a mass 1/4 of a million miles away can have more effect on tiny
particulates than a mass 81 times greater and no distance at all? Got a
link?