S103 – Discovering Science
Below is the summary and course content from the OU's web site, the rest can be found here. My experiences about the course can be found here.	Level 1 60 points Length 9 months
Summary This course introduces a range of topics from global warming to the origin of life, ecology and genetics to earthquakes and volcanoes, chemical reactions and the structure of atoms to the origin of the universe. Important concepts, and scientific, mathematical and communication skills are developed in the context of these topics. Discovering science can be taken as a single course or as leading to study at a higher level. You need no knowledge of science before you begin, and only a basic knowledge of maths. Course Content · What happened when the Universe began? · Why are some countries plagued with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, while others suffer none? · How does the evolution of plants and animals occur? · What is meant by radioactive decay? · How do drugs work? · Might there be life elsewhere in the Universe? You will explore these and other awesome questions when you begin Discovering science. The course uses the approaches taken by physicists, Earth scientists, biologists and chemists to develop your understanding of planet Earth. This includes Earth’s materials and life-forms, the wider spheres of the Solar System and our Galaxy, and the physical laws that govern all matter in the Universe. There are twelve blocks of study: The first two are introductory and deal with water and with global warming. The following five deal with taking apart everything – from the Universe down – to see how it is made; the next four reconstructs things to see how they work; and the final block looks at life in the Universe. You will have some element of choice about which of the later blocks of the course to study. Block 1 Water for life explores the nature and importance of water, on which all life depends. It also introduces the study, writing and mathematical skills that you will need and that are developed throughout the course. Block 2 A temperate Earth? investigates global temperature changes, and the phenomenon of global warming as a consequence of both natural and human-induced activity. Block 3 The Earth and its place in the Universe introduces the galaxies that comprise the Universe, and our solar system as a tiny speck in the Milky Way Galaxy, and then focuses on the Earth to examine its internal structure and dynamic behaviour. Block 4 Unity within diversity looks at the nature of the life that inhabits the Earth’s surface: the features that all life-forms have in common, how organisms are related to each other and how they differ. Block 5 Energy considers the fundamental physical property that keeps you alive and active, keeps the sun shining and (literally) makes the world go round. Block 6 Our world and its atoms explores the nature of atoms, the basic building blocks of all materials. Block 7 The quantum world takes you inside the atom to learn about the even tinier particles of which the hundred or so known types of atom are made and which help 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 pharmaceuticals. Block 9 Continuity and change is about the chemistry of living organisms and the chemical processes that provide the energy to maintain life, moving on to consider how a blueprint for development is passed down from one generation of organisms to another (genetic theory). It also asks how changes within populations of organisms take place (evolution). Block 10 Earth and life through time looks not only at how life has evolved since it began about 3,800 million years ago, but also how the pattern of continents and ocean basins and the rocks they are made of have evolved over geological time. Block 11 Universal processes takes you beyond the Earth and the solar system once more, and back some 11,000 million years to the moment when the Universe originated in a cosmological ‘big bang’; and we look at what happened in the first second of its existence. Block 12 Life in the Universe Finally, we speculate on how and why life on Earth began and whether it is likely to exist anywhere else – a question that may very well be answered before the twenty-first century draws to a close.
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