This was my second OU course, I decided to take this one as during my school days, it wasn't one of my favourite subjects (maybe it was because when the hand went up to answer a question or even to ask one, it was never acknowledged). Anyway, when it came to my fourth year options, science was dropped. I did really enjoy Geography but to do other subjects that one had to "go", a shame really as my teacher wanted me to continue with it. If I could go back, I would drop one of the "other" subjects and do that one instead!
So, S103 Discovering Science was a great journey. Although not being a mathematical person some of it was hard to get my head around (balancing equations, and reversing equations) but if you persevere you can achieve much!
There are 12 blocks of study in the S103 course, TMAs (Tutor Marked Assessments) throughout the course and a final ECA (End of Course Assessment).
The 12 blocks:
Block 1: Water for life. This block explores the nature and importance of water on which all life depends.
Block 2: A temperate Earth? Investigates global temperature changes and the phenomenon of global warming as a consequence of both natural and human-induced activities.
Block 3 : the Earth and its place in the Universe introduces you to the galazies that comprise the Universe and our solar system as a tiny speck in the Milky Way Galaxy, it then focuses on the Earth examining its internal structure and dynamic behaviour.
Block 4:
Unity within diversity looks at the nature of life that inhabits the Earth's surface, the features that all life-forms have in common and how organisms are related to each other and how they differ.
Block 5: Energy considers the fundamental physical property that keeps us alive and active, keeps the sun shining and (literally) makes the world go round.
Block 6: Our world and its atoms explores the very nature of atoms which are the building blocks of all materials.
Block 7: The quantum world takes you inside the atoms to learn about the even tinier particles of which the hundred or so known types of atom are made and which helps to determine their differences.
Block 8: Building with atoms looks at how atoms bond with each other in different combinations, through chemical reactions to produce the enormous diversity of materials known to humankind, from fertilizers to polymers and pharaceuticals.
Block 9: Continuity and change is about the chemistry of living organisms and the chemical processes that provide the energy to maintain life and moves on to consider how a blueprint for development is passed down from one generation of organisms to another. It also looks at evolution.
Block 10: Earth and life through time looks not only at how life has evolved since it begain about 3,800m years ago but also at how the pattern of continents and ocean basins and the rocks which they are made of have evolved over geological time.
Block 11: Universal process takes you beuond the Earth and the solar system once more and back some 11,000m years to the moment when the Universe originated in a cosmological "big bang". It then looks at what happened in the first second of its existence.
Block 12: Life in the Universe. This block speculates on how and why life on Earth began and whether it is likely to exist anywhere else - are we alone? maybe this question will be answered one day?!