[Earth from space] S103

Block 1

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Water for life.

This is the introductory Block of the course, and is a fairly painless introduction to science, via the familiar medium of water. It is scheduled to take you 2 weeks. Section headings:

  • Life in the desert?
  • Water in living organisms.
  • Properties of water.
  • Communicating science.
  • Water, society and the environment.
  • Afterword.
Interleaved with the text are boxes which introduce or revise maths or science concepts. There are further helpful maths revision exercises provided on the Block 1 DVD, so if your maths is rusty then this will help. The maths covered in this Block is: fractions, ratios and percentages. Using a calculator. Decimal places. Areas and volumes, density. Scientific notation, powers of 10, units of measurement and converting between them.

Also included in this Block's work is the first practical experiment - finding out how much water is present in potatoes. This involves cutting about 500g of potatoes up into fine slices and heating them in either your microwave or convention oven (or even your airing cupboard) until they are pretty much dried out. Unfortunately they pass the edible point before you get to the end of the experiment, so eating the remains isn't really an option!

At the end of this Block there is your first TMA to do - it is quite simple and does not count for assessment purposes. It is merely there to give your tutor a chance to see what your work is like and to point out any shortcomings you may have. That way you get a chance to improve before submitting the first TMA that DOES count, the one that follows Block 2.

On to Block 2.

HELPFUL LINKS

Image credits: JPL, NASA
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