MAT SCI 200
Principles of Materials Science I
Description: Lecture, four hours; outside study, eight hours. Requisite: course 120. Lattice dynamics and thermal properties of solids, classical and quantized free electron theory, electrons in a periodic potential, transport in semiconductors, dielectric and magnetic properties of solids. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Awful and outdated textbook, way too much content expected to be covered in this course. Course needs to trim off extra topics as there is not enough time to cover them well and the core material suffers as a result. Lecture presentations were very confusing and only amounted to copying textbook equations with no context or explanations, and lecture slides are a collection of textbook figures with no commentary or context presented. Homework exercises were pulled straight from the textbook, very confusing, and not useful for preparing for exam material. Midterm exam was well beyond the mastery level reasonably achievable from lecture presentations and studying of textbook, leading to an average score below 50%. No dedicated office hours in an already confusing and difficult course made the experience even worse. Lecture presentations routinely went over the allotted time and still did not cover the content adequately. Update after final exam: The final exam was significantly different than the midterm exam, largely for the better. Questions were mostly focused on providing descriptions of course concepts with a reasonable level of depth. Additionally, while the written assignment did feel a little tacked on, likely to fulfill some ABET requirement for graduate courses, it was not too strenuous to complete and will likely serve as a nice grade buffer if it is not graded too harshly. Overall, while Professor Frieman did have shortcomings as a lecturer and preparer of homework and exams, I believe that the issues with this class primarily stem from the selection of course content being exceedingly large. Even at the fast pace of this class, we still ended the quarter around two weeks behind the content listed on the syllabus and only covered content from 4 out of the 5 intended chapters. I believe that if Frieman continues to teach this class he will undoubtedly improve as he showed towards the end of this quarter, but it is still hard to recommend this class without specific prior experience in its content unless the breadth of content is significantly reduced.
Fall 2024 - Awful and outdated textbook, way too much content expected to be covered in this course. Course needs to trim off extra topics as there is not enough time to cover them well and the core material suffers as a result. Lecture presentations were very confusing and only amounted to copying textbook equations with no context or explanations, and lecture slides are a collection of textbook figures with no commentary or context presented. Homework exercises were pulled straight from the textbook, very confusing, and not useful for preparing for exam material. Midterm exam was well beyond the mastery level reasonably achievable from lecture presentations and studying of textbook, leading to an average score below 50%. No dedicated office hours in an already confusing and difficult course made the experience even worse. Lecture presentations routinely went over the allotted time and still did not cover the content adequately. Update after final exam: The final exam was significantly different than the midterm exam, largely for the better. Questions were mostly focused on providing descriptions of course concepts with a reasonable level of depth. Additionally, while the written assignment did feel a little tacked on, likely to fulfill some ABET requirement for graduate courses, it was not too strenuous to complete and will likely serve as a nice grade buffer if it is not graded too harshly. Overall, while Professor Frieman did have shortcomings as a lecturer and preparer of homework and exams, I believe that the issues with this class primarily stem from the selection of course content being exceedingly large. Even at the fast pace of this class, we still ended the quarter around two weeks behind the content listed on the syllabus and only covered content from 4 out of the 5 intended chapters. I believe that if Frieman continues to teach this class he will undoubtedly improve as he showed towards the end of this quarter, but it is still hard to recommend this class without specific prior experience in its content unless the breadth of content is significantly reduced.
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