On your marks, get set.......

It's 18th September at last!

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So what, I hear you cry! Well, today is the day that the Open University, S104 - Exploring Science course website opens 'for business' and that business is the quest for 'knowledge'! I've had brief look at the site already and it all makes everything seem more real if you know what I mean. After months of build up it's really here and I need to get myself organised, pronto! There are no details of my course tutor as yet - I think these details will be given early next week. Poor guy (or gal?), I'm sure he/she will be enjoying his/her last week of peace before his spare time is forever interrupted by the likes of little ol' me asking increasingly stupid questions over the next nine months!

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So the long road to what will hopefully be a degree in Geoloogy starts here! By gum, it's exciting and I have to say a little bit scary, but I've already made a tentative start on the course work and it's a fairly gentle start with a look at Global Warming as I mentioned last week. This weekend I will have a crack at the first 'task' which is to design and make a couple of rain gauges to measure precipitation over a 2 week period. One gauge is to be open topped and the other to have a funnelled top. The former will show the effect of evaporation you see, while the funnel topped one will minimise it! So, this will take me back to my 'Blue Peter' days of making stuff with washing-up bottles and sticky tape! I'm sure I will get some cracking data here in the soggy north-west of England where it's done nowt but chuck it down all summer! Sod's Law dictates of course that we will now suffer the driest October 'since records began', but as the course book says, zero rainfall provides just as valuable data as a fortnight's daily downpours! Once Alyn's rain gauges are up and running I might just photograph them and post a pic on my next blog for you to have a laugh at, or perhaps marvel at my ingenuity and dexterity!!

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I've also already had a sneak preview of the second course book which covers amongst other things, geology. Now that book looks like it's going to be great fun! We're supplied with a small kit of rock samples, fossil plaster casts, what looks possibly like litmus paper, a hand lens for examining said samples. All exciting stuff! Now if I remember rightly, there's a test you do for a particular rock, limestone I think, that fizzes when vinegar is poured onto it. The acidic vinegar causes a chemical reaction with the calcium carbonate, I think, maybe?? Please don't laugh! I've probably got that hopelessly wrong, but hey, I've only just started! Gimme a break!

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One thing I've noticed myself doing already is thinking critically, an essential skill in academic work I do believe. Global warming for example is a subject that creates a huge amount of debate, not least at my mothers dinner table on a Saturday night! I have long argued that it is the long term trends that are relevant, not one hot summer. After only working through a few chapters of book one, I am already wondering over what length of time does one need to judge such things for the true picture to be formed? Hmmm!?!

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Let me finish book one and I'll tell you more!

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Cheers for now!

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Alyn.