I think that the extra light of a full moon would have had an impact over a century ago but not today. Very few people seem to notice or care what the phase of the moon is.
And trying to determine if there was a full moon affect c1875, never mind earlier, would be extremely hard to do.
One of my favorite what-ifs:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
Aha! Of course, we don’t need to go as far as blowing up the moon, just enough to end the waffling would do the trick.
April 19th is Full Moon Friday! And it’s Good Friday! And the start of a four day weekend in some places!
I would urge everyone who has access to…data…to check for spikes in…stuff.
j
And when the moon is noticeably full, that means that the weather is nice enough for more people to be outside at night, having more accidents, arguments, fun, whatever.
No one talks about the full moon effect when it is hidden by crappy weather.
I’ve worked in a 911 center for over twenty years. There was a time that I would have sworn that the full moon did something. On a very slow midnight shift, my co-workers and I pulled up statistics for every full moon in the previous year. We compared that data with the same day the week before and after. The differences were neglidible. We were shocked. We all had stories of the “full moon night from hell”. After some deep thought we decided that we thought it was true because we would notice that it was a full moon and every call that was beyond the “norm” just confirmed to us that it was because of the full moon. Of course this was far from scientific, none of us were wearing white coats and we all left our safety glasses at home,
This is what passes for woo logic:
The moon affects water, i.e., oceans, creating tides.
A human is 97% water. Therefore, the moon can move a human. Or maybe just in the brain.
I like the legend that I first saw in an Auel book. The Earth is Gaia, a female, and the moon is her mate. Once a month he turns his back to her (probably because he does not want her to hear him muttering the phrases of the moon).
My favorite article on the “Full Moon Effect”.
I worked in dispatch for 5 years and heard the same stuff. All it was good for was making people either dread that night or brag about having it.
Power outages so people light candles?
Why? Did someone else write your post? I find this a really weird attitude. Anyways, apologies for having misunderstood you.
I’ve been on the SDMB for 20 years and the number of times I have to repeat myself using almost the exact same words and people still don’t understand me is ridiculously high. It happens on Twitter too. I reread my post and saw that all the details were there, you just misunderstood. I didn’t see any need to clarify.
It wasn’t personal, I was just a bit blunt with it. I may have been in a bit of a funk at that moment.
Fair point - I was operating under the assumption that the data did indicate some sort of statistical anomaly during full moons. If it doesn’t, then the answer to the OP’s question is even simpler: because most people don’t bother to look at the data.
Thanks! I always wondered about this but never looked into it. How the moon works is something that confuses me. To me, it didn’t make sense why the earth doesn’t eclipse the moon during a full moon. Wouldn’t the sun need to be directly behind the earth in order to light the complete half of the moon that faces us?
Does this help?
I think it is simply because people are inside the house more when it is raining, increasing the probability of them doing something that will start a fire inside the house.
Yes! Thanks. It’s the 5.14 degree angle that I was missing. But I think it is consistent with my assumption that we’re not truly seeing the full half of the moon during a full moon. There’s a bit missing due to that angle. So I now assume that a full moon refers to the point in the month during which we see the maximum portion of the moon that would be possible to see in that month (and not literally the whole half).
I also found a video I first saw years ago describing how tides work, and why most people don’t quite have the complete picture. Some of you may be interested: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pwChk4S99i4
The moon is the second largest natural satellite relative to its primary. There are bigger moons around the outer planets, but the planets they orbit are very much bigger than Earth. The only moon relatively larger WRT its primary is Charon, which orbits a barycenter outside the body of Pluto, and the two are tidally locked to each other, so if your were on Pluto, Charon would always be in the same position in the sky from where you are standing.
/useless-trivia
What 911 said.
“Every nurse, cop, or paramedic will tell you things happen during full moons.”
No. Only the ones who fall victim to noticing errors.
I’m a nurse who has worked on dementia units, and in other mental health settings. Chistmas makes things worse. Sundays are a bad night in nursing homes. Heat makes people act out.
Full moon is just a notcing error. For every crazy night with a full moon story people have other crazy night without a full moon stories.
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It may seem like it has an effect because people believe it does. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. I admit I do believe in Mercury retrograde’s disruptive power though! Oh, and I believe that when I see 11:11 on the clock that angels are around me (um, yeah…right).