What is the course about?
The movement and balances of water and energy.

Types of Questions:
Why do we have weather?
What is the evidence of climate change?
How do humans impact the atmosphere and hydrosphere?
What do they mean by 'isolated...

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i failed the midterm and the exam because i "didnt draw the correct diagram" to their liking. it pisses me off i so well except for theose 2 things n i pretty much failed the course. i have no interest in weater or climate at all. please avoid

Crappy Class!

im taking this course next term, but it's currently in conflict with my enviro sci 2q03 lab and all of the other lab times conflict with either a lab or tutorial im in so I was wondering if missing 1 lecture per week is do-able if I get the notes off someone and take advantage of office hours and that sort of thing?

does anyone know when is the quiz/test for 1A00?
i am not in canada until monday the 10 and the course isnt showing on Ave....

Yo mlagille! Missing a Envir Sc 2Q03 lab will screw you over. Go talk to Luc about the situation, he may be able to advise you about what to do.

Consider if you need 1AO3 for any future courses, or if you can post pone taking 2Q03. If you are planning on taking limnology or organic contaminates you only need 2QO3 and 2WO3, which only require a math class, chem 1a03 and one of the first year earth sc courses.

Is there a lab manual that needs to be bought for enviro sc 1A03? just like for enviro sc 1b03. Also, I signed up for enviro sc 1A03 for summer school 2011. My timetable shows the lecture time but no tutorial time. When are the tutorial/labs carried out (are they during the lecture time!!)?
thanx

There is a lab manual if anyone is wondering. It has instructions, questions you need to answer and chats for data you get from your lab time.

Which is better, 1A03 or 1B03?

This course was dry as hell. First half, slept through class. Second half, didn't show up. If you are taking this class because you heard it's easy, I strongly advise for further consideration.

This course was on the boring side.. Also, If you do not have a strong science based background, you have to put in a bit more work to understand the course material. I found the textbook extremely helpful for the quizzes. The tutorials were okay, as long as you went to the lecture that explained them.

DO NOT TAKE this course if you want easy marks - it does require work and the content can be dull at times.

I took this class second term of last year.

The prof (Bernier) was really friendly and approachable, but his lectures were pretty boring to me. But that's mostly due to the course material more so than the prof. I don't really know if this is suppose to be an easy class, but was definitely the easiest class I had in second term (and pretty much the whole year).

The labs were pretty easy and not really heavy in terms of work. The only problem I had with the labs was with the ones that required you to write a discussion. They were marked pretty harsh and I often got low marks on them, the rest like labeling maps and such were easy 80-90s.

The midterm had pretty easy MC questions, but I had trouble with the graphs they required to draw. The opposite was true for the exam, where the multiple choice was pretty hard, but the diagrams and such were fairly simple.

Oh and there was the online quizzes which were really simple and they give you more than enough time to finish considering the difficulty and length (easy freebie marks).

This course was ok. I don't think it requires as much work as some people think. Yes some of the content is boring but I found it pretty straight forward. I thought it was easier than both 1b03 and 1g03 (no stupid field trips like in 1g03 and no written assignments like in 1g03/1b03). Plus bernier is awesome.

Okay, I took this course last year (Winter 2011) with Dr. Bernier and honestly, as long as you're somewhat/even the slightest bit interested in weather, climate, water, etc, you will do fine. I'm not going to lie though, I probably went to only 10% of the lectures throughout the course, not because the material was boring, but because I was absolutely horrible at getting up for 8:30 AM lectures haha. But nonetheless, the lectures I'd say were affordable to skip because I found the material to be decently easy (but then again, I'm interested in that sort of stuff) and so ended up with a pretty high mark in the course.

Dr Bernier was also very flexible with the course breakdown in the sense that if you did poorly on one part of the course, it would not hinder your chances of doing well in the course.
So there were 6 labs that had to be completed throughout the semester, each worth 5% for a total of 30%. Honestly, this and the 15% (3 online quizzes each worth 5%) are the easiest free marks you could possibly receive, so please don't skip the lab sessions. Because without going, you will be missing important lab info that only the TA could help out with. And that's pretty much half of the grades for this course.

The midterm and final both consisted of MC and SA questions, which would always include a drawing a couple of diagrams. Now the midterm and final were pretty easy as well, with the exception of the diagram-drawing questions. Even if you were slightly off, or the TA did not "like" your drawing enough, you would pretty much lose close to all marks for those questions.

One more piece of advice: textbook isn't needed unless you plan on skipping classes on a regular basis, because Bernier's notes are in skeletal form (there are some blanks on the lecture notes that you can only get by going to class, or with a textbook i suppose). But like most other courses, going to lectures can never hurt, and in this case, can save you a good $100 too.

Overall, I recommend this course to anyone looking for a fairly easy elective (when i say fairly easy, it doesn't mean you can't get away with doing ZERO work) / someone interested even a little bit in the environmental/earth sciences.

Originally Posted by alee90

Overall, I recommend this course to anyone looking for a fairly easy elective (when i say fairly easy, it doesn't mean you can't get away with doing ZERO work) / someone interested even a little bit in the environmental/earth sciences.

Sorry, I meant to say "it doesn't mean you CAN get away with doing ZERO work", so yes, a bit of work must be one at least

Also I want to add that some of the material in Envir Sci 1a03 overlaps with material in Earth Sci 2GG3 (Natural Disasters) and Earth sci 2WW3 (Water) incase you decide to take those as well