Book 1 is entitled Global Warming and serves as a gentle introduction to science. Several topics are coved including both the water and carbon cycles as well as precipitation rates and surface temperature.
The highlight of this book for me was the rain gauge experiment. Here we are asked to implement 2 rain gauges, one with a funnel the other without, from household materials and then measure the daily rainfall over a two week period. I spent a long time working out what I would use as my gauges. The obvious choice was to use soft drinks bottles, however as we were asked to measure the depth of the rain collected (rather than the volume) and the bottom of these bottles is not flat I had to work out a method of flattening them. I eventually settled on pouring self-levelling floor compound (it's like mortar used by builders but very runny) and then sealing it with waterproof carpenters glue. This worked a treat especially when I attached a printed depth gauge to each one.
In all a very interesting start to the course and a book I enjoyed reading.
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