Game time! Waves in motion, a trip to the Pub and lessons learnt this week!
Welcome back one and all to another blog post from Life of a Space Geek, its my fourth week in and my fourth blog post!
This week has been an interesting one full of some gaming fun, starting a new topic on my degree and also learning some lessons about online groups.
You may remember from last weeks blog post that I had just started on Topic 7 all about the plate tectonics of the earth and how it moves under our feet. I wont lie it was a pretty tough topic to get through, but it was really good practise for looking at things on Google Earth that I didn't know you could do. I can now see where the plate boundaries lie across the earth and where all the volcanoes lie and at what sort of distance, plus I can now tell you what sort of distance you would expect to see these volcanoes from the plate boundaries and why. It was also interesting to see what the Earth looked like millions of years ago in respect of the continents and what positions they were at that time. I had never thought that the United Kingdom could be so close to the Equator!! If only that were true now, I would relish the warmer climate at the moment! (Especially this week as we are forecast snow and temperatures well below 0 degrees).
This topic concluded with a particularly fun game called Slip, Slide and Collide, I thought it was a clever way of asking a student to try and remember what they have learnt on the topic and in all honesty I do wish that some of my other topics had concluded with something like this!
It may seem a little like a childish game but I found it really helped cement the knowledge I had learnt.
The link is below, why not give it a go and see how you get on?
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/slip-slide-collide
So with Topic 7 now behind me I have now started Topic 8. This topic is all about Waves and the different sort of waves that occur, so far I have looked at waves in the ocean (the most obvious one that most people will think of), waves in the sky (yes really!) and of course electromagnetic waves. Coincidentally the book "the universe in your hands" that I made reference to last week is currently describing these waves and the light spectrum, and how we can determine what other stars are made up of just by looking at the light that they emit.
I didn't even realise up until this point that there was a different in waves, and now I know there are Transverse Waves and Longitudinal Waves.
This week has been an interesting one full of some gaming fun, starting a new topic on my degree and also learning some lessons about online groups.
You may remember from last weeks blog post that I had just started on Topic 7 all about the plate tectonics of the earth and how it moves under our feet. I wont lie it was a pretty tough topic to get through, but it was really good practise for looking at things on Google Earth that I didn't know you could do. I can now see where the plate boundaries lie across the earth and where all the volcanoes lie and at what sort of distance, plus I can now tell you what sort of distance you would expect to see these volcanoes from the plate boundaries and why. It was also interesting to see what the Earth looked like millions of years ago in respect of the continents and what positions they were at that time. I had never thought that the United Kingdom could be so close to the Equator!! If only that were true now, I would relish the warmer climate at the moment! (Especially this week as we are forecast snow and temperatures well below 0 degrees).
This topic concluded with a particularly fun game called Slip, Slide and Collide, I thought it was a clever way of asking a student to try and remember what they have learnt on the topic and in all honesty I do wish that some of my other topics had concluded with something like this!
It may seem a little like a childish game but I found it really helped cement the knowledge I had learnt.
The link is below, why not give it a go and see how you get on?
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/slip-slide-collide
So with Topic 7 now behind me I have now started Topic 8. This topic is all about Waves and the different sort of waves that occur, so far I have looked at waves in the ocean (the most obvious one that most people will think of), waves in the sky (yes really!) and of course electromagnetic waves. Coincidentally the book "the universe in your hands" that I made reference to last week is currently describing these waves and the light spectrum, and how we can determine what other stars are made up of just by looking at the light that they emit.
I didn't even realise up until this point that there was a different in waves, and now I know there are Transverse Waves and Longitudinal Waves.
This topic touches on the Physics element, and I have surprised myself and others by saying that actually I quite like this Physics thing! You know when something just clicks? That's what I have and it is quite unexpected! That is the beauty of this first year, this module covers all the different science disciplines and helps a student to decide which path they want to take. As much as I would love to have concentrated on astronomy alone I am grateful that I have had a chance to look at each discipline and now know that I have an interest in Physics as well as the astronomy side.
This week on a personal note hasn't been great, I had planned to attend an event taking place at the OU campus but due to illness I wasn't able to attend however I was delighted to find out that the organisers were providing a live feed via facebook, so i was still able to attend virtually.
The event in question is held in the OU Campus Cellar Bar! Yep you heard me right! The idea is that they have Phd students come in and talk about their research across all different areas. This months event was of particular interest to me as there was a talk from a Phd student in the Astrobiology department of the OU. The talk in question was "Was there life on Mars?". A question which I am sure a lot of others in the industry want to know.
It was a fantastic event and I enjoyed watching so my thanks to https://twitter.com/PubhD_MK for organising this.
Moving onto my next paragraph, I have learnt this week and that sometimes just sometimes you can be the most understanding person in a group but there will always be people that just simply will try and bring others down.
I was disappointed with a group I was a part of on another social media site this week, one that was meant to be encouraging to one another. Often it is easy to sit behind a keyboard and type out something without thinking of the consequences of how your words may effect the person you are directing them to.
I made a decision to come away from that group as I do not want to experience the negativity that just a handful of people were bringing to it. Its a shame as there was some really encouraging posts but for those few that made it unpleasant it meant I felt uncomfortable being there.
So lessons learnt this week that not everyone has the same intentions as you!
No new book recommendations from me this time I am afraid, although I am still enjoying this one, go get yourself a copy if you can!
I almost forgot too! I have applied to be a member of The Institute of Physics! Waiting on my application to be approved, fingers and toes crossed that I am accepted! If anything I'm looking forward to seeing the type of events that are run by them and receiving my hardcopy of the magazine!
For those of you that are on the S111 journey with me, snow is forecast this week! Lets try to remember what we have learnt about how those snowflakes have formed, how no snowflake is the same and how that snowflake came to be!
Until next week space geeks!
Em
A good decision to join the IoP. I joined a few month back, the magazine is good and the lectures (speaking for the Lancashire ones) have been fantastic :). I'm sorry you felt the need to leave the group, although I do understand why.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I decided to join is due to they hold iop events at the ou campus here so I don't want to miss out! No need to apologise Jonny, just one of those things :)
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