S186 – Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis – is my latest foray into the Science Short Course collection. The course author is David Rothery – he was also responsible for S196 Planets: An Introduction, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I have high hopes for this one. The subject’s a little off what I’d normally be interested in, but the OU are dangling the Certificate in Contemporary Science over my head. What can I say – I’m a sucker.

The main component of this one is another of Rothery’s books, Teach Yourself Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis (Get it here…), which is 296 pages of everything you need to know about volcanic & tectonic activity. Obviously, I haven’t read it yet, so the verdict on how good it is remains open – I’ll let you know in a month or two – but at first glance it looks good.

There’s also a hefty course book with additional materials and activities, and a DVD-ROM with a selection of video clips to back up the other materials. There actually seems to be quite a bit to the course – if you took the time to watch all the videos, you’d be doing terrible things to the time required to complete the course, I reckon – but the OU seems to have worked hard to give you everything needed to get the points taught by the course across.

So first impressions are good. The ECA result will be the true test of that, though…