The Open University - Basic science: understanding numbers

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Introduction

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/basic-science-understanding-numbers/content-section-overview

Video content is not available in this format.

Janet Sumner is your guide through this course. She is a Media Fellow at The Open University with a specialist interest in volcanoes. Janet will appear at the start of each week to tip you off about the highlights and challenges, to remind you what youve learned and to help you make the most of these four weeks of scientific discovery.

Over the next four weeks you will look at how scientists:

• communicate with each other
• calculate area, volume and density and what this means for the Greenland ice sheet
• present numbers using significant figures, decimal places, fractions and percentages
• use different types of averages, draw and interpret graphs and find correlations in data.

This course is going to assume that you are new to studying science, so dont worry if you havent studied science before.

The course starts off simply, but by Week 4 you will be calculating the density of the Greenland ice sheet! This week, youll be focusing on how numbers are used in science.

To test your knowledge you can try the end-of-week quizzes and theres a final end-of-course quiz.

There are plenty of opportunities to communicate with other learners. There are forum threads for activities in each week. Please join in!

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1.1 Water, water everywhere

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/basic-science-understanding-numbers/content-section-overview

Video content is not available in this format.

In this video, the issues surrounding bottled water are discussed along with many, many, MANY numbers.

The video also makes some assertions about contamination of bottled water by PET in plastic bottles, which were raised as a possible danger to health a few years ago. However, no convincing scientific evidence has been produced to prove this effect. Weve left the section on plastics in the video because its important to understand that science advances by testing hypotheses. This is a process which includes scientific study and debate, and can take several years, during which time scare stories continue to circulate. The Cancer Research UK website has a good explanation of the situation concerning the plastic bottles.

As you watch the video, focus on how important the numbers are to the story that the narrators are conveying. How do the narrators try to help the viewer to comprehend the numbers?

1.2 Reflecting on numbers

You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/basic-science-understanding-numbers/content-section-overview