Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tides are driven by the differential gravitational force of the Moon, which pulls harder on the side of Earth facing it than on the opposite side. This creates two tidal bulges aligned along the Earth-Moon axis. As Earth rotates, most locations pass through both bulges in roughly 24 hours and 50 minutes, producing two high tides and two low tides each day.
Spring tides occur around new moon and full moon when the Sun, Moon, and Earth align (syzygy), causing the solar and lunar tidal forces to reinforce each other; tidal range is at its maximum. Neap tides occur at first and third quarter moon, when the Sun and Moon are 90 degrees apart as seen from Earth, and the solar force partially cancels the lunar force, producing the minimum tidal range. There is about a seven-day interval between springs and neaps.
The Bay of Fundy on Canada's east coast is often cited as the location of the world's highest tides. Measurements at Burntcoat Head in November 1998 recorded a maximum tidal range of 16.3 m and a highest predicted extreme of 17 m. Leaf Basin in Ungava Bay, northern Quebec, recorded comparable values in March 2002, with a maximum range of 16.2 m.
Isaac Newton, born in 1642, was the first person to explain tides as the product of gravitational attraction between astronomical masses. His explanation was published in the Principia in 1687, using his theory of universal gravitation to identify the Moon and Sun as the origin of the tide-generating forces.
Yes. Tidal dissipation averages about 3.75 terawatts, creating a torque on the Moon that gradually transfers angular momentum to its orbit and a corresponding drag on Earth's spin. Day length has increased by about 2 hours over the last 600 million years, and the Moon is receding from Earth at about 3.8 cm per year as a result.
Tidal prediction uses harmonic analysis, a method systematized by William Thomson starting in 1867. Tide heights are measured at a port for more than a year to extract the local amplitude and phase response at each of the roughly 62 significant tidal frequencies. Those constants are then used to project future tides. Arthur Thomas Doodson published a comprehensive harmonic form for the tide-generating potential in 1921, distinguishing 388 tidal frequencies, and some of his methods remain in use today.