This week I was heavily involved with the cloud chamber practical presentation. The tutorial to support this activity wasn't as informative as it could have been. It was just my tutor reading from slides that had already been made available in advance. There were only five other students attending out of potentially 20 (realistically 18 due to withdrawals) bods still remaining in the tutor group. I've already finished my PowerPoint slides and have made a good start on the accompanying script. When it's finished I need to upload it to something called 'OpenStudio' which is an area on the module website where results and observations from experiments are stored for personal use and/or shared with group members when collaborating.
I've looked ahead a bit to Topic 6 which is called Nuclei and Particles. There is a TMA question on this which involves plotting a radioactive decay graph by hand without the use of Excel or another graph drawing package. This doesn't appear to make a lot of sense, but then again maybe they are testing for something here that's not immediately obvious.
Topic 6 is the first topic in the module that was not written primarily for S112 and then adapted for use with SM123. There are only three unique topics in total if you exclude the Python weeks. The others are Topic 7 is Components of the Universe, Topic 8 Exploring the Solar System and Topic 9 How the Universe works. This is the part of the course that I have been looking forward to the most because astronomy (T7), planetary science (T8), and cosmology (T9) are not subjects I have ever studied before.
I've got the deadline for TMA03 in my sights now. It's 17th March. Not sure the freehand drawings of electron orbitals are a vote winner though.
[EDIT]
I was supposed to have a 2 hour tutorial tonight but it didn't happen. I think the tutor is on long term sick leave. I sympathise, and hope they get well soon, but the communications from the OU are absolutely appalling. It's not the first time something like this has happened either.
[Further EDIT]
The tutor emailed me (and others no doubt) to say that they were experiencing pain due to a suspected appendicitis and hoped to reschedule the tutorial another time.