If I’m remembering correctly, Newton imagined gravity when an apple fell from a tree. But if that apple would have caught on fire would the same gravity pull the smoke down like it did the apple. What would be easier to pull. If you have 2-100’ ropes. With a Bicycle on the end of the first rope and a train on the second rope. The bike would be because it’s 1000’s of times smaller than the train and would require less force.
So why would the force of gravity pull down a bowling ball faster than it would a feather. It should take less force to move the feather.
Gravity doesn’t effect the tides. If it did, when it moves the oceans and seas +/- 10’ it would also move that small pond in my back yard. But It doesn’t move it, not 1”. Just like every other body of water that’s not connected to the oceans.
@JaySeneca you haven't quite got gravity correct there. Gravity is a mutual attractive force between two masses, with magnitude proportional to the product of the two masses divided by the square of the distance between them.
On earth, for all but the most precise of calculations, we can ignore the distance part of the equation as the variation with elevation above the earth tends to be trivial compared to the radius of the earth. This means that any object feels a force proportional to its own mass which, in SI units, works out as F=mg, where g is a constant, known as the 'acceleration due to gravity', of around 9.8ms-2. So in your bicycle/train analogy above, yes the force required to accelerate the train is greater, but gravity exerts a force in proportion to mass, so objects accelerating in freefall do so at the same rate.
The important thing to grasp is that this only works in a vacuum. If you drop two objects of the same size and shape but very different masses, they will initially accelerate at the same rate, but the heavier one will reach a higher terminal velocity and will hit the ground first. This is because the force due to gravity is different, but the force due to air resistance at any given speed will be the same, and both objects will accelerate until the two forces are in balance. So your burning apple will indeed fall faster than the smoke around it, and a bag of feathers will fall slower than a bag of coins, all other things being equal.
So in your tidal example, yes, each water molecule in your garden pond feels precisely the same gravity force from the moon and sun as the individual water molecules in the ocean. But the aggregate effect of a small movement of all those molecules is far more visible in the sea than in your pond. Probably the best way to think of it is to visualise the moon and sun causing a tiny 'tilt' in the local angle of the gravity force, which in turn causes a tiny change in the gradient of the water. A gradient of fractions of a degree wouldn't be perceptible in your pond, but could easily generate changes in levels of a few metres at the coast when the body of water is many hundreds of miles across. Something of an over-simplification, but hopefully it illustrates the point.