Bruce Berne

Professor Berne and TA Matt made a great team and made Physical Chemistry a relatively painless experience. I really enjoyed learning the material for this class, but be warned, the textbook (though necessary to read) is riddled with errors. Also, make sure to review the basic techniques of differentiation and integration. You will need calculus for this class! Professor Berne is hilarious and does not deserve the poor reviews he has received. He truly loves the subject matter, makes himself available after class and during office hours for questions, and really does respond to student feedback. Sure, he makes some mistakes on the board but he corrects them when someone informs him and as long as you are proactive and paying attention, the occasional mistake shouldn't be detrimental to your understanding of the material. Please, please go to class. There was a contingent of students who showed up to the final and I swear I had never seen some of them before. Even though Matt posted his notes online, Berne is entertaining and his explanations are often very good.

I've been fortunate enough to have a series of great professors in the Chemistry Department. I'm happy to say I can add Professor Berne to this list. I thought by the end of it that I had a solid introduction to the discipline that is Physical Chemistry. Pre-requisites: General Chemistry (of course). Although the course requires Physics I and II as pre-reqs, I don't feel as though we went beyond using F=ma. Calculus I,II,III are needed. There aren't many difficult integrations (except in Stat Mech) in the course however you should feel comfortable with partial derivatives as they are used frequently throughout the course. Course: Physical Chemistry I covers Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and some statistical mechanics. It begins by exploring whether or not a reaction will occur spontaneously and then moves into how fast a reaction will occur. Some of this is very reminiscent of general chemistry, only taken a step further and thus more in depth. The class concludes with statistical mechanics (partition functions, the canonical ensemble, etc.) and used to derive the equations used throughout the course. Overall, it was an enjoyable subject mater. I found myself saying "this is cool" and "I love pchem" throughout this course. Class (Professor Berne): Class was very useful to attend. Professor Berne was always enthusiastic about the material he was teaching and as a result I never rea…

Its unfortunate that the Chemistry department let Bruce Berne teach a higher level chemistry course like Physical Chemistry again after so long. I apologize to Profesoor Berne, but he definitely wasn't ready to teach Physical Chemistry again, and probably won't be at another point later in his career. You can tell that Prof. Berne at one point was a fairly good lecturer and professor, but he has definitely passed his prime. Most lectures were given via powerpoint, and were lamentable at best. Most information from the powerpoints was repeated two or three times over the span of two lectures and could be found in the book in a more understandable format. Frankly, attending class was mostly superfluous and only necessary for the last week of the course when he attempted to tackle Statistical Thermodynamics. During the sections on phase changes and chemical potential, Berne switched to lecturing using the blackboard; these were his only redeeming lectures, bearable and sometimes informative. Homework wise, Berne never knew what he was assigning nor did he keep to a regular homework schedule. About a third of the way through the semester, he realized that the problems he was giving out of the book had a solutions guide sold with the book in the bookstore. After that point, he started writing his own atrocious problem sets riddled with grammar, spelling, and content errors. These p…

Overall I liked the class, though it was definitely hardcore and I doubt some of the topics covered will ever come up again. Berne and the lecture itself can be very boring and too in-depth/technical sometimes for how much brain you'd think freshmen would have. I had failed attempts to take notes, mostly consisting of humongously long formulas, which must be memorized for the exams(though to be fair he doesn't usually test you on the most horrific ones). My work ethic for this class was basically nonexistent until a midterm or final, when I skimmed all the chapters and did all the problems during an all nighter. Like I said, you have to memorize the formulas so doing things last minute worked well for me. Even if you understand the theory, the formulas don't always come easily. The curve is really good though, since Berne usually aims to have a class average of 50-60%. One standard deviation above the average is usually an A.

This is pretty much a physical chemistry class. Be prepared for some pretty deep derivations and equations. His lectures are based off of his powerpoints so some choose not to attend lectures. Midterms and final were rough. Means on the exams ran anywhere from low 40's to low 60's. However, there was a VERY generous curve at the end. You won't know your grade though as you go through the class since you don't really know how he's going to curve. Overall, you do learn quite a bit in this class and it's definitely a class to take if you have a love for Chemistry or just want to get Gen. Chem out of the way in 1 semester.

Berne is a really nice guy, and he's pretty enthusiastic about the material, but the problem is being enthusiastic about the material yourself. Many of the lectures are derivation-based, which can be intimidating, but you don't have to understand the derivations to do well on tests. It's much more important knowing what the formula is and how to use it. The exam content was pretty fair. They were all problem-based with very few conceptual questions. Sometimes the problems were simply plug-and-chug if you knew the right formulas. He always stops lecture to answer questions, but he often misunderstands or answers them by repeating what he said three second earlier during lecture. Occasionally digresses about famous chemists who've done work at Columbia. Starts class 5-10 minutes and usually ends 5 minutes late. No office hours but approachable after lecture. I found the recitations useless. If TAs were clearing up material covered in lecture, they always chose to explain stuff you already knew. Then there were times when they had to cover chapters not taught in lecture, but if you took AP Chem in high school, then you pretty much knew everything already. Some people can probably pull off just cramming for this class the night before, but I found it really helpful to keep up with the lectures by reading the chapters beforehand (he posts assignments before he starts lecturing on t…

If you want to put your love of chemistry to the test, this is the class for you. Prepare to fall asleep every class, become boggled by incredible equations, and leave tests wondering if you even answered parts of a majority of the questions correctly. Despite a relatively generous curve, Bruce Berne succeeds in making you thoroughly despise the work you're doing; even though you may understand the concepts backwards and forwards, if you can't memorize the vast number of equations for the exams you'll end up with an unappealling grade. The lecture material does not correspond with anything the TAs teach, and even they were often confused about the subjects presented in lecture. And however enthusiastic or friendly Professor Berne may be, he only succeeds in complicating easy topics with slides upon fast-moving slides of equations you may or may not need to know. This class was a decidedly unpleasant experience, no matter the final grade.

I get the impression that Professor Berne is one of those professors who is at the university for research rather than for teaching. All of his lectures are done by powerpoint presentation, most of which he says that he hasn't updated in a few years. The lectures are posted online, and it can be useful to look over some of them when studying. Some students print them off and take their notes directly onto the lecture notes--that's probably a good idea. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because the lectures are online you can skip class--there is a lot that he will talk about that isn't written directly into the presentations. On the other hand, he also tends to go off on tangents about different people who have done different things for the field of chemistry (particularly when they've got some connection to Columbia). He doesn't seem to be very good at answering students' questions, and sometimes I got the impression he didn't even understand what they were asking. Reading the book is definitely helpful in this class. Only take this class if you're prepared to take an intensive class, because that's what it is (you get through all of gen chem in 1 semester instead of 2). On the exams, he aims for the mean to be about 60%, and at the end of the semester he will curve it so that the number grades correspond to a letter grade--grades aren't calculated before you take the f…

What no one has told you so far is that this class is basically a very advanced (for first-years) physical chemistry course. If you have not taken physics, I would not recommend this course. Prof Berne derived one of the gas laws on the first day with a proof that involved partial integrals. We also learned how to solve - not just the theory behind - the Schrodinger wave equation. There is a lot of theory in this course, but what can you expect - he's a theoretical chemist. It's a very fast-paced, difficult course if you don't have the proper foundation, so make sure you know your calculus (at LEAST up to Calc. 2), physics and at least something about physical chemistry before taking this. You need to know your stuff forwards and backwards for the exams. However, the prof is VERY nice and extremely approachable - you just have to take initiative to ask him.

My impression of Professor Berne is an amalgam of the other reviews thus far. He is extremely smart and knows what he is teaching, no doubts there. Furthermore, he is also interested in what he teachers, and tries very hard to add spice to his lectures and keep students interested. I noticed many had a difficult time paying attention, even to the point of falling asleep. This may be due to the fact that the class was in the morning and he often dims the lights for his power point presentations. Although he moves fast, you can get by without bringing the slides to class, which he posts online. However, there is no denying this class is challenging. I coasted through AP Chem no problem, but had to work to maintain a good grade in this class. Your homework is not collected; the only grades are the midterms and finals. Test averages were often in the 50-65% range, but with a fair curve. My only other complaint was that the class could have been better in sync with the recitations, which are set up to teach completely different material, and sometimes the TA's said something different than Berne. All in all, a good class if you are really interested in chemistry or are intent on getting a head start, but be prepared to study.