Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Physics’ Category

Quite why it is, I don’t know but the astronomy TMAs have all taken me an awful lot more time than expected to do and, of course, the final one is no different.

It seems that I’m not the only one with this problem as an awful lot of people seem to be having serious difficulties with this one. All for the same reason too: it appears to be seriously difficult. And yet, once it clicks, it’s actually quite easy to do.

The key thing to do is to basically ignore that astronomy label and consider it purely as an exercise in mathematics for almost all of the questions. Thus, if it asks you to calculate the radius of some orbit what you need to do is to look for some equation in one of the chapters of the book referring to that question that can be used to calculate the radius in terms of the information that you have to hand. That seems even more so for the seemingly much more complicated cosmology question. After all, at first glance when you’re asked to calculate the critical density of the universe, I’m sure that most peoples’ reaction would be “eh?”, but it’s very easy to answer that one (no, really, it is).

Which “just” leaves me with about 1 1/2 questions to do. I’d have done them this evening but with the spurt of progress my brain went into meltdown!

As to whether my answers are actually right or not, who knows? but at least I have some kind of answer when yesterday I was seriously contemplating handing it in with questions unanswered.

I think I’m due a rest day after the intensive activity yesterday and today!

Somehow I managed to get it into my head that the astronomy assignment was due on the 19th and only found out late yesterday that it was due tomorrow. As it happens, I’ve actually been working on the assignment off and on for a few weeks so had answers to all the hard bits written out which “just” left those to be typed up and the 1600 word report on the solar luminosity experiment.

As it uses lots of symbols, the astronomy takes ages to type up so that pretty much filled the slots available yesterday. Today it was the turn of the report which I’d usually have done over several days but somehow I managed to get it finished in a few hours. Probably not my greatest work but at least it’s done.

What really surprised me was just how accurate the luminosity came out given that the experiment only used stuff that you’d find in your house. Granted it wasn’t nearly as accurate as you’d get with professional gear but when you’re using a normal house bulb, a piece of paper, a drop of oil and a ruler to work it out, it’s pretty amazing to come up with 7 x 10^26 W vs the real figure of just under 4 x 10^26 W.

Anyway, that leaves the way fairly clear for the biology revision. I’m well ahead on the astronomy reading so could drop that for a few weeks, the next astronomy assignment isn’t due ’til July 16th, I’ve almost completed the pre-reading for the biology summer school and I’m fairly rattling through the planetary science course with that assignment not due ’til the end of July. Which seems to rule out excuses for not doing the biology revision!

Looking at course reviews before you’ve started a course seems to be completely different to looking at them once you’ve started on the same course sometimes.

Take the astronomy course that I’m doing at the moment. The key words in the reviews of it could be summed up as “fascinating” and “maths”. Critically, none of them use “challenging” (read: “very difficult”).

Reading those reviews a year ago, the course sounded quite interesting to me. The maths didn’t bother me as I’ve done quite a bit before this although I did slip in the Maths for Science (S151) course just in case my very rusty university maths needed a bit of oiling. So, in effect, it read as a fascinating course overall.

Over half-way through it has a different feel to me. There is quite a lot of maths in it or at least in the cosmology half of the course and I’d say that a glance at that section in advance would put off many a prospective student of the course. However, what I’d not allowed for was the sheer amount of time that it would take up. The course materials are, as usual, very readable but the time needed to do the assignments is far, far beyond anything that I’ve ever needed to take doing an assignment before. Quite why that should be, I’m not quite sure but it seems to be a combination of the time taken to type up all the symbols used (which is substantial, even on a short answer) and the amount of leafing back and forth to find out various facts required to answer the questions. Overall, it seems to equate to something like double or more the amount of time needed for any previous assignments that I’ve done at this level.

I’d also question the “fascinating” aspect that many mention in their comments. Yes, there are lots of pretty pictures and going through the theories as to how the various objects depicted got to be that way is interesting at the start but somehow the long list of theories that seem to build up like a freight train seems to get tedious all too often. So much so that it has me questioning whether I should carry on with physics at all. Yes, it’s that bad sometimes. Oddly, biology which seems to have just as many theories knocking around doesn’t ever seem to get to that building freight train stage and that’s puzzling.

Anyway, must get back to the assignment now… for reasons which escape me, I “knew” that the return date was May 19th but it’s actually May 14th so I need to get a move on!

In theory my course decisions for the next couple of years should be very easy in that I spent time on working out my overall course schedule a couple of years ago.

Now, to be fair, the OU messed me up by changing the goal posts last year and cutting short all the named science degrees. However, that simply resulted in a change in the sequence of the courses rather than a change in the overall strategy. Now that I’m actually getting going on the courses it’s introduced a few more thoughts.

To begin with my overall plan was to do both a physics and a psychology degree. In practice, I ended up started on the psychology degree last year though once that was underway it turned out that it was sensible to add in a biology course which I’m in the process of finishing off. Then, thanks to the OUs cancellation of named science degrees, I needed to get going on the physics hence I’m in the midst of the astronomy course right now.

Overall, this has the effect that I’m effectively in the midst of a psychology, biology and physics degree or rather courses from all three. The problem is that I’m finding that the biology is both much easier than expected and extremely interesting too. On the other hand, I’m finding that the astronomy isn’t as interesting as I’d expected it to be. Strangely I now find myself wondering if biology rather than physics would be the way to go for me. Thus, I’ve not yet gotten around to signing up for the major physics course starting this October.

Ordinarily, this would be fine but with the withdrawal of all named science degrees kicking in over the next couple of years it means that when I choose either physics or biology I definitely won’t be able to do the other one.

Now that I’ve sort-of decided on what courses I’ll be doing over the next couple of years it’s more or less a matter of waiting ’til the registration period opens and signing up.

Of course, it’s not quite as perfect as that given the OU change the courses on offer each year so if you’ve a reasonable list of courses you’d like to do chances are that there will be at least one change in the running order each year. Complicating things even more is that they’re gradually moving from a February to October cycle to an October to June one which means that if you’re planning more than a year or two in advance, you’re going to have to make some changes. This year there’s also the matter of them doing away with the named science degrees so me and many others are rethinking the sequence of courses that they’re doing with a view to hitting their named degree while it’s still available.

Thus far, I’ve been lucky this year in that there’s been no change in The physical world (S207) which starts as planned in October. However, there is the option for me to accelerate my progress with the physics degree my slotting in Using mathematics (MST121) next January. That would mean that I’d be overlapping one of the major courses (S207) with what should be the relatively easy (for me) MST121. That does beg the question: why do MST121 at all if it’s going to be so easy? Well, thanks to the regulations for the physics degree I need to either do that or something like the introductory science course (looks interesting but gives me 30 points more than I need) or a technology course (also interesting). In principle, MST121 seems to be the most useful of the trio of options.

It’s usually not necessary to enrol incredibly early for the OU courses but given the number of people who admit to intending accelerating the progress on their science degrees I suspect it could be prudent to enrol somewhat earlier than usual this year. That will certainly be the case for the summer schools which are in their last run in 2011 though enrolment for them doesn’t open ’til mid-October.