Question

When the Sun, Earth, and Moon are in this position, the high tides will be lower than normal levels because

Answer 1

Ok, I’ll try to help, but I’d need to see the picture of the positions of the sun, earth, and moon to help you fully.

So, the first thing to note is that gravity is an attractive force, meaning that; something that has mass, call the m1 will “pull toward” another mass, call it m2. The two objects pull on each other, mutually.

If an object has more mass it pull more, and if an object has less mass, it pulls less.

Another thing to note is that distances matter. The closer the objects are to each other, the more pull they’ll “feel”.

So, the ocean tides are the effect of ocean water responding to a gravitational gradient, the moon plays a larger role in creating tides than the sun does. But the sun's gravitational gradient across the earth is significant and it does contribute to tides as well.

So, when the bulge of the ocean caused by the sun’s gravity, partially cancels out the bulge of the ocean caused by the moon gravity. This produces moderate tides known as the neap tides, meaning that high tides are a little lower and low tides are a little higher than average.

I hope that helps.