Courtney Madison

Due: 12/08/11
LBS 380
Research Project; Phases of the Moon
The topic of this research paper stemmed from the desire to know how space affected the Earth
and its inhabitants. Because this subjects was so broad and vastly under researched, out topic narrowed
down to the lunar phases and how they affect us. We decided to split up the categories into how the
phases of the moon affect us negatively, neutrally, and positively in addition to some coverage of the
myths surrounding how moon phases affect humans and animals on Earth. Briana took positive effects
and myths while I took neutral and negative effects.
I realized as I began doing my research that before I could really dive into the effects of the
phases of the moon, we first had to ask the most basic of questions; what are the phases of the moon? I
was confident and highly aware of the New Moon, Full Moon, First Quarter, and Third Quarter phases. I
knew that the Full Moon is the phase in which the Sun directly hits the full face of the moon and
illuminates it from a point where we can see the moon on Earth while the New Moon is the phase In
which the Sun is still directly hitting the moons face, but on the side that we cant see on Earth, and so
the moon is not illuminated for us to see. The quarter moon phases are the ones in which the sun hits the
moon at a 90 angle and so only a specific portion of the moon is illuminated.
What I was not aware of was the Waxing Crescent, Waxing Gibbous, Waning Gibbous, and
Waning Crescent. Through my research I found that a vast majority of students and adults are not aware
of or familiar with these phases. This has a great deal to do with the lack of knowledge regarding what the
words in these phases mean. Despite their difficult appearance, these phases are relatively simple to
understand once the terminology is clarified. Crescent is named so because the word itself means semicircular. Due to the fact that the moon is less than half illuminated and so has a semi-circular appearance.
Gibbous is named so because the moon is more than half illuminated and so has a more full appearance.
The word waxing means to grow while wane means to shrink. Putting these concepts together, a

Waning Crescent is the phase where the moon is only half illuminated and appearing smaller as it moves
toward the New Moon phase.
I also discovered that there are no effects from the moons phases that do not affect the Earth or
its inhabitants. Whether the effects are positive or negative, they are still significant and relevant to daily
life and workings of the Earth. I therefore replaced my objective to finding neutral effects of the moons
phases to the basic research of what the phases of the moon are. The negative effects that the moons
phases have on earth are actually closely tied to the positive effects. I found that the New Moon and Full
Moon dictates the high and low tides in the ocean. The change between high tides and low tides cause
high speed currents in the ocean that makes fishing either severely difficult or relatively impossible.
Because deep seas fishing is a central source of food for many places in the world, this can greatly affect
the amount of food gathered for many areas of the world. Fishing experts have learned to fish in specific
areas in the ocean at specific times to avoid these currents and assure the highest acquisition of fish
possible.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the specific information that I was charged with gathering for
this project, my impression of the Moons effects on Earth were bleak. Even after reading Brianas
portions, the positive effects still did not seem to outweigh the severity of the negatives.