CH ENGR 104A
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Laboratory I
Description: Lecture, two hours; laboratory, six hours; outside study, four hours. Enforced requisite: course 100. Enforced corequisite: course 101B. Recommended: course 102B. Investigation of basic transport phenomena in 10 predetermined experiments, collection of data for statistical analysis and individually written technical reports and group presentations. Design and performance of one original experimental study involving transport, separation, or another aspect of chemical and biomolecular engineering. Basic statistics: mean, standard deviation, confidence limits, comparison of two means and of multiple means, single and multiple variable linear regression, and brief introduction to factorial design of experiments. Oral and poster presentations. Technical writing of sections of technical reports and their contents; writing clearly, concisely, and consistently; importance of word choices and punctuation in multicultural engineering environment and of following required formatting. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Likes to pretend he is very strict and is teaching us something about reality that no other class in the country can offer. Always talks about how engineers should be super attentive to detail, and then sends an email full of grammatical errors and confusion. Always talks about how engineers should be able to follow strict formatting guidelines, but is never clear on what those guidelines are. He promises to email certain things to help us on lab reports and/or projects, but rarely follows through. He misplaces things that you hand to him, which is probably why you will receive a grade for an assignment, but never get it back. He asked half the groups to resend him project proposals because he lost them. He talks about past examples of how students improved from 37% on a lab report to high 80's, but then cuts down the total number of lab reports to 3 in the entire quarter because he can't seem to find time to correct them all. So you basically have 2 chances to learn exactly how a perfect lab report should be before your final report is due. Even the grading scheme is arbitrary, about 50% of the points on a given report are given or taken away without telling you why. Out of all the assignments of this class, I saw my scores of one homework, one oral presentation, and one lab report, and he didn't even bother to post the rest onto myUCLA. and bam, 2 days before the next quarter begins, a letter grade is posted out of no where, a B. Not that I'm complaining about the B, but he gives no justification for the grade and could be giving out grades completely at random for all I know. I can say with confidence that I did not learn anything from this course. Maybe you need to kiss up to him to get an A, that way when hes randomly distributing letters to your gradebook, there is a higher probabilty of getting an A cuz he knows who you are. You have to keep pestering him to really know what he wants, and he'll keep telling you 'you know everything, you just dont know it yet' or '42'. Unless hes become a slacker cuz hes near retirement...in which case I would probably do the same in his position. its all good.
Likes to pretend he is very strict and is teaching us something about reality that no other class in the country can offer. Always talks about how engineers should be super attentive to detail, and then sends an email full of grammatical errors and confusion. Always talks about how engineers should be able to follow strict formatting guidelines, but is never clear on what those guidelines are. He promises to email certain things to help us on lab reports and/or projects, but rarely follows through. He misplaces things that you hand to him, which is probably why you will receive a grade for an assignment, but never get it back. He asked half the groups to resend him project proposals because he lost them. He talks about past examples of how students improved from 37% on a lab report to high 80's, but then cuts down the total number of lab reports to 3 in the entire quarter because he can't seem to find time to correct them all. So you basically have 2 chances to learn exactly how a perfect lab report should be before your final report is due. Even the grading scheme is arbitrary, about 50% of the points on a given report are given or taken away without telling you why. Out of all the assignments of this class, I saw my scores of one homework, one oral presentation, and one lab report, and he didn't even bother to post the rest onto myUCLA. and bam, 2 days before the next quarter begins, a letter grade is posted out of no where, a B. Not that I'm complaining about the B, but he gives no justification for the grade and could be giving out grades completely at random for all I know. I can say with confidence that I did not learn anything from this course. Maybe you need to kiss up to him to get an A, that way when hes randomly distributing letters to your gradebook, there is a higher probabilty of getting an A cuz he knows who you are. You have to keep pestering him to really know what he wants, and he'll keep telling you 'you know everything, you just dont know it yet' or '42'. Unless hes become a slacker cuz hes near retirement...in which case I would probably do the same in his position. its all good.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Pros: Actually learn a few useful things about statistics. You also learn a decent amount about some cool chemical engineering stuff. Cons: Easily one of the most difficult classes I've ever taken at UCLA in terms of detail, workload, and grading. He is fair, I'll give him that. But the sheer amount of work for this class is unbelievable - although the reports are only 5 pages, and the presentation a max of 10 slides, every single word choice must be absolutely flawless to get anything above a B. Tim Grasel is an insanely detail oriented grader who loves nothing more than to mark you off for formatting mistakes which you forgot somewhere in his 25pg Style Guide (just for this class), or maybe just because he was feeling like it and couldn't find anything reasonable to grade on. The facets of this class are numerous - lab notebooks, punctuality, oral presentations, homeworks, readings (hundreds of pages on statistics), design of experiments, designing your own final project (if it doesn't work you'll get a bad grade), quizzes, investigation reports, feedback forms, proposal, SO MUCH STUFF, and something is due every week.. Your grade is very dependent upon how much time you put into this project. For an A, you should be spending 20 hours/week doing stuff for just this class PER WEEK on OFF WEEKS and easily twice that on weeks where stuff is due. Lectures are absolute garbage. Don't go. Even after attending you will not be able to do the homework based on those alone. My rating of this class is like 2/10, and only that because you actually do learn some useful things. Grasel himself and the course organization gets a 0/10. This class is your worst nightmare; if you're terrified of this class after reading this, GOOD. YOU SHOULD BE.
Spring 2016 - Pros: Actually learn a few useful things about statistics. You also learn a decent amount about some cool chemical engineering stuff. Cons: Easily one of the most difficult classes I've ever taken at UCLA in terms of detail, workload, and grading. He is fair, I'll give him that. But the sheer amount of work for this class is unbelievable - although the reports are only 5 pages, and the presentation a max of 10 slides, every single word choice must be absolutely flawless to get anything above a B. Tim Grasel is an insanely detail oriented grader who loves nothing more than to mark you off for formatting mistakes which you forgot somewhere in his 25pg Style Guide (just for this class), or maybe just because he was feeling like it and couldn't find anything reasonable to grade on. The facets of this class are numerous - lab notebooks, punctuality, oral presentations, homeworks, readings (hundreds of pages on statistics), design of experiments, designing your own final project (if it doesn't work you'll get a bad grade), quizzes, investigation reports, feedback forms, proposal, SO MUCH STUFF, and something is due every week.. Your grade is very dependent upon how much time you put into this project. For an A, you should be spending 20 hours/week doing stuff for just this class PER WEEK on OFF WEEKS and easily twice that on weeks where stuff is due. Lectures are absolute garbage. Don't go. Even after attending you will not be able to do the homework based on those alone. My rating of this class is like 2/10, and only that because you actually do learn some useful things. Grasel himself and the course organization gets a 0/10. This class is your worst nightmare; if you're terrified of this class after reading this, GOOD. YOU SHOULD BE.
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