Microelectronics has enabled designers of integrated circuits to exercise complete control over the electrical characteristics of each component they create. This unit will illustrate how such control is achieved and the various methods that can be applied in differing circumstances.

The sun dominates our lives by defining our day, but how much do you know and understand about it? This unit will help you to explore the workings of the brightest star in our universe looking at its structure and the main processes taking place within it. You will also examine the phenomena of sun spots.

The fascinating phenomenon of superconductivity and its potential applications have attracted the attention of scientists, engineers and businessmen. Intense research has taken place to discover new superconductors, to understand the physics that underlies the properties of superconductors, and to develop new applications for these materials. In this unit you will read about the history of superconductors, taking a brief look at their properties. You will also learn about modelling the properties of superconductors and the two different types of superconductor that exist today.

Surfaces are a special class of topological spaces that crop up in many places in the world of mathematics. In this unit, you will learn to classify surfaces and will be introduced to such concepts as homeomorphism, orientability, the Euler characteristic and the Classification Theorum.

In this unit, we study one aspect of the fluctuating nature of an organism's environment. We consider how organisms living in a temperate climate, such as that in Britain, are adapted to cope with winter. You will see that there is much diversity of adaptations among organisms, with different species coping with the demands of a fluctuating environment in quite different ways. As cyclic variations are a widespread feature of environments, the range of adaptations to them is an important source of biological diversity.

Pictures speak louder than words. But how can you use diagrams to help you? This unit looks at how diagrams can be used to represent information and ideas about complex situations. You will learn how to read, draw and present diagrams to help illustrate how ideas or processes are connected.

Maps and plans, architects and engineers, drawings, graphs and tables: all are models we use in everyday life. This unit will introduce you to the modeling process enabling you to recognize that systems models may be used in different ways as part of a process for: improving understanding of a situation; identifying problems or formulating opportunities and supporting decision making.

What is systems thinking and practice? The essence of systems thinking and practice is in 'seeing' the world in a particular way, because how you 'see' things affects the way you approach situations or undertake specific tasks. This unit will help you to learn about the problems of defining a system and meet some of the key concepts used in systems theory: boundary, environment, positive and negative feedback, etc.

This unit looks at how telescopes and spectrographs are designed to improve our ability to observe the universe. You will examine how different technologies have been developed over the last four hundred years to enable us to look deep into space.

This work-based unit encourages early years practitioners to think about the values and principles underpinning how they work with other professionals. It explores beliefs about teamwork, examines frameworks for professional communication and concludes with identifying possible changes in practice.

This extract is concerned primarily with the chemistry that underpins the operation of the three-way catalytic converter that is placed in the exhaust systems of motor vehicles in order to reduce the emissions of primary pollutants: carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds, including hydrocarbons. Discussion of the various effects of these pollutants and the consequent introduction and refinement of 'automotive emission regulations' has not been included, nor is there a look forward to future research trends. These topics are covered in the original Case Study.

Operations management is one of the central functions of all organizations whether producing goods or services, or in the private, public or voluntary sectors. This unit will provide you with a basic framework for understanding this function and discusses the role of operations managers, in particular the importance of focusing on suppliers and customers.

This unit introduces the topic of vectors. The subject is developed without assuming you have come across it before, but the unit assumes that you have previously had a basic grounding in algebra and trigonometry, and how to use Cartesian coordinates for specifying a point in a plane.