MSAE E3111

Homework, Group project, two tests, a python test, and a final. A ton of work, but totally do-able and simon is hilarious!

2 midterms 20% each (2nd one was takehome), final (50%!!! make sure to study), homework (10%)

PSet every week (poorly worded questions, but easily graded) 3 Midterms (probably easy, but the curve'll boost you either way) 1 Final

This class turned out way more useful than I initially anticipated. If you're not a quantum physics guru, a lot of the material will go over your head as it did mine. However, if you work on the homework in groups, and truly study as much of the material as you can... you will do fine. I had no material science background, barely remembered physics, and I did surprisingly well. You should go to class all the time though because he doesn't post lectures and moves pretty fast! We also learned python in the class which wasn't mentioned anywhere. The course had a simultaneous python group project which will turn out fine if the work is distributed.

William Bailey is a very nice professor, and is more than willing to help you. That being said, he is a little out of touch with the undergraduate knowledge level. He jumps through concepts without explaining them, and he usually speaks off a slideshow (which is not interactive at all and is unproductive) for 75 minutes. I ended up mostly self-studying for this class. Applied Physics majors need to take this class, so there isn't an alternative. Just be ware and prepare to learn off a textbook.

This class demonstrates the risk of grading on a curve. Basically no one taking it took it seriously, so--gradewise--no one had to. I felt bad for Prof Duby, because the whole class had clearly given up on the course by the second lecture. As an example of the grading, on the second midterm, everyone must have bombed, because we were reassigned it as a pset to boost the grade. It doesn't help that the book is a piece of crap and that the questions tend to be ill posed

Problem sets every week or so. Usually pretty easy. 2 midterms. The first one was pretty hard and long but the second (class average was about a 60%) was much more manageable (avg. ~85%). 1 final. About the same level of difficulty as the second midterm. It was cumulative with heavy emphasis on the stuff we did after the second midterm. He does have a knack for curveball questions, so you have to watch out for that.

Ten (almost-weekly) homework sets (10% of your grade), two midterms (25% each) and a final (40%). The second midterm was ridiculously easy. The problem sets are not too time-consuming.

Not the best professor you will ever have. Billinge is very disorganized and his interest in the class is questionable. He is usually unprepared for lectures and seems to wing every class. Whenever he finds himself in a rut, which happens fairly often, he picks on a few students in hopes of fishing a good explanation... oddly enough, this is probably the best aspect of the class. The inadvertent class participation actually helps in bringing across points. However, there have been a couple occasions where the entire class came to a standstill because he forgot an key element in a derivation. Billinge assigns 4-5 problems every week or so. He usually gets them from the textbook. On the syllabus he said he would assign each problem set on a Friday to be due the following Friday but almost assigns the problem set a few days late and almost always expects us to turn them in the original date. The problem sets are not usually hard so it's never a big deal. Ever so often he assigns a problem that is beyond where the class is at that point and, after you spend a few hours on it, he emails you the night before the hw is due saying that the question is dropped. After we turn them in though, the TA takes like a month to grade them. The TA for the class was ok and usuall helpful but there always seemed to be huge communication gap between the professor and the TA. The structure of the cl…

This course is real fun. You get a pretty comprehensive treatment of a very fascinating subject, that starts right from first principles of statistical mechanics and slowly works its way up to the thermodynamics of ideal gases, and so on that is probably familiar to you. Studying the theory is fun, and the book (Charles Kittel and Herbert Kroemer, Thermal Physics) is extremely good - study it very systematically, and you'll really understand the subject. Prof. Bailey - well, he's a little clueless in class. He knows his stuff, but that sometimes doesn't translate into knowing how to teach basic thermodynamics. I didn't really look forward to going to classes, although I loved the subject. He's definitely a nice guy, and will answer questions very patiently; but while it is definitely possible to make the class interesting, he tends to spend a lot of time going slowly through each derivation, which detracts from the focus he gives to the essential points of the theory, that make it interesting and useful. But while he is not the liveliest of professors, he is certainly not intolerable - some of the classes are pretty good. On the whole, definitely look forward to the class - especially the subject matter of thermodynamics. If you like physics at all, you'll love this class.