Having now completed two weeks worth of OU study on Relativity and Astrophysics; I have found, to my surprise, that the astrophysics course seems to have far less reading in the early stages, than the relativity course.
If I were to gauge them in terms of study time taken; I would say that on average Astrophysics (S382) seems to take about 6hrs per week for each of the first two chapters. There were a few things that caught me out initially. Firstly, I had to spend some additional time on being thorough when calculating sums and using scientific notation. I also got tied up with a small bit about nucleosynthesis during the proton-proton chain. I felt that the question on that topic, didn't fully correlate with the preceding diagrams.
As for the relativity course, there are a lot of conceptual difficulties when one starts to delve into the algebraic manipulation of some of the Lorentz calculations. But, as with Pure mathematics, I found that a strategy of 'just keep reading' held me in good stead. This allowed me to gloss over any difficult passages and then come back to them at the end of the chapter, with a much better 'big-picture' view, from which to tackle them.
The relativity course (S383) did seem to take me about 10hrs of study per week for the first tranche. More than I expected, but then we have just covered the history and mathematics of motion, courtesy of Messrs Newton, Galileo and Lorentz.
No small feat in two weeks!
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