MECH&AE 133A
Engineering Thermodynamics
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Requisites: courses 103, 105A. Applications of thermodynamic principles to engineering processes. Energy conversion systems. Rankine cycle and other cycles, refrigeration, psychrometry, reactive and nonreactive fluid flow systems. Elements of thermodynamic design. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
He's a tough professor, no doubt about it. But his classes are extremely engaging because he will call on anyone on the spot. Sometimes he can go a bit fast, but you will learn. Just go to class, stay awake and you'll learn. His tests are usually like 3 or so questions. They are typically fair, basic you just have to KNOW the equation. Definitely a MUST prof at UCLA.
He's a tough professor, no doubt about it. But his classes are extremely engaging because he will call on anyone on the spot. Sometimes he can go a bit fast, but you will learn. Just go to class, stay awake and you'll learn. His tests are usually like 3 or so questions. They are typically fair, basic you just have to KNOW the equation. Definitely a MUST prof at UCLA.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - For the life of me, I will never understand why Professor Amar continues to teach at this institution. He is a fine professor. The class is fine. It covers the back half of the 105A textbook, and covers the classic thermodynamic cycles. It met the job. Amar is an awful professor. He spent the first 3.5 lectures repeating content from 105A - review that long is excessive and wasted my time. He does not know how to use a computer. He doesn't post his lecture notes, and it's difficult to do practice problems when you have to copy extensive problem statements instead of utilizing slides. His premise is that he adds more value than the textbook, which is rather bold. His lectures have step by step guides on how to solve problems, but he regularly overcomplicates concepts. The examples in the textbook were far more effective. Half this class is reading steam tables, and he manages to severely over complicate even that menial task. All we have to do is find the enthalpy at every point in the cycle, and yet it took weeks to go through that content. He should have never been allowed to return after his two heart attacks. He should not have replaced Fisher for this quarter, and he should not be teaching two classes this quarter (or even one class). He wastes time and is ineffective. Everything I learned in this class came from working through the homework and reviewing the solutions. He cares, he's passionate, and he's kind, but that doesn't overrule his weaknesses. There was a class where he wanted to distribute some worksheets. Instead of posting them on BruinLearn like any normal professor, he printed them all out. Fine. He handed them to the front of the class and asked us to distribute them ourselves. It took 30+ minutes for every student to get every sheet of paper. And the sheets were not particularly useful in our understanding - they didn't add much to the textbook, and were honestly just a mess. The class ie needlessly hard. I attended office hours for the professor and TA as well as the final discussion, and none of these sessions actually covered in depth what would beon the final. In fact, the week 10 discussion covered 2 problems that previously had been covered on HW and whose solutions were already available, and 1 problem that the professor explicitly ruled out. Huge chunks of the class like refrigeration, Otto/Diesel/Dual Cycles, Cooling Towers, and more were never assessed, while exergy and the Rankine/Brayton cycle were excessively emphasized and final problems on Combustion and Maxwell’s relations were assigned that were all borderline impossible. The class is a shitshow, there’s no rhyme or reason, and Amar is oblivious to how poorly everything is executed. Thermodynamics is interesting too, making it all the more disappointing to slog through this class. As compensation, the curve is generous and I scraped through with a far better grade than I deserved. Amar is a nightmare. The MAE department secretary was visibly fed up with him when I attended Office Hours. He forgets thinks constantly, including to write one of his students a letter of recommendation. He doesn’t communicate with his TA, so the course is poorly integrated. He is a bad teacher. UCLA should hire the best and brightest, especially for core classes like thermo - yet we use the same lecturer (NOT a professor) as CSUN, suggesting the department is unwilling or unable to hire a proper thermodynamicist. What a disappointment. For a man so close to death, he wastes an awful lot of his own time and even more of ours. I wish him all the best, but I beg the administration to encourage him to retire as soon as possible.
Spring 2025 - For the life of me, I will never understand why Professor Amar continues to teach at this institution. He is a fine professor. The class is fine. It covers the back half of the 105A textbook, and covers the classic thermodynamic cycles. It met the job. Amar is an awful professor. He spent the first 3.5 lectures repeating content from 105A - review that long is excessive and wasted my time. He does not know how to use a computer. He doesn't post his lecture notes, and it's difficult to do practice problems when you have to copy extensive problem statements instead of utilizing slides. His premise is that he adds more value than the textbook, which is rather bold. His lectures have step by step guides on how to solve problems, but he regularly overcomplicates concepts. The examples in the textbook were far more effective. Half this class is reading steam tables, and he manages to severely over complicate even that menial task. All we have to do is find the enthalpy at every point in the cycle, and yet it took weeks to go through that content. He should have never been allowed to return after his two heart attacks. He should not have replaced Fisher for this quarter, and he should not be teaching two classes this quarter (or even one class). He wastes time and is ineffective. Everything I learned in this class came from working through the homework and reviewing the solutions. He cares, he's passionate, and he's kind, but that doesn't overrule his weaknesses. There was a class where he wanted to distribute some worksheets. Instead of posting them on BruinLearn like any normal professor, he printed them all out. Fine. He handed them to the front of the class and asked us to distribute them ourselves. It took 30+ minutes for every student to get every sheet of paper. And the sheets were not particularly useful in our understanding - they didn't add much to the textbook, and were honestly just a mess. The class ie needlessly hard. I attended office hours for the professor and TA as well as the final discussion, and none of these sessions actually covered in depth what would beon the final. In fact, the week 10 discussion covered 2 problems that previously had been covered on HW and whose solutions were already available, and 1 problem that the professor explicitly ruled out. Huge chunks of the class like refrigeration, Otto/Diesel/Dual Cycles, Cooling Towers, and more were never assessed, while exergy and the Rankine/Brayton cycle were excessively emphasized and final problems on Combustion and Maxwell’s relations were assigned that were all borderline impossible. The class is a shitshow, there’s no rhyme or reason, and Amar is oblivious to how poorly everything is executed. Thermodynamics is interesting too, making it all the more disappointing to slog through this class. As compensation, the curve is generous and I scraped through with a far better grade than I deserved. Amar is a nightmare. The MAE department secretary was visibly fed up with him when I attended Office Hours. He forgets thinks constantly, including to write one of his students a letter of recommendation. He doesn’t communicate with his TA, so the course is poorly integrated. He is a bad teacher. UCLA should hire the best and brightest, especially for core classes like thermo - yet we use the same lecturer (NOT a professor) as CSUN, suggesting the department is unwilling or unable to hire a proper thermodynamicist. What a disappointment. For a man so close to death, he wastes an awful lot of his own time and even more of ours. I wish him all the best, but I beg the administration to encourage him to retire as soon as possible.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - I liked Dr. Fisher, I thought he was very approachable and explained concepts well. Occasionally, he would go on long tangents though. The material wasn't extremely difficult, but definitely keep up with the work. The midterm and final were a time crunch, I didn't even finish either of them. Granted, I did the bare minimum learning the concepts and paid for that in a major way on the midterm. The discussion sections were really helpful when I started going to them Week 8 lol. Something to keep in mind was that his online recorded lectures EXACTLY matched his lecture notes in person, so if you missed class it wasn't super bad.
Winter 2024 - I liked Dr. Fisher, I thought he was very approachable and explained concepts well. Occasionally, he would go on long tangents though. The material wasn't extremely difficult, but definitely keep up with the work. The midterm and final were a time crunch, I didn't even finish either of them. Granted, I did the bare minimum learning the concepts and paid for that in a major way on the midterm. The discussion sections were really helpful when I started going to them Week 8 lol. Something to keep in mind was that his online recorded lectures EXACTLY matched his lecture notes in person, so if you missed class it wasn't super bad.
Most Helpful Review
This is my first review after completing 3 years here and deservingly so because like others said, I also believe he is the best professor in the MAE department. I took 105A with Prof. Amar, which got me interested in this course. And if you have taken a course with him, you know how effective he is at teaching since he teaches through examples with actual numbers, but had to deal with his tricky quizzes and exams. Prof. Marner is even more effective than Amar, without the tricky exams. Marner uploaded lecture outlines before each lecture so that class would flow more smoothly and save our hand muscles because he cares about his students. Just go to class and complete his lecture notes and that will be all you need in order to succeed in his class. He does simple and short derivations (the First Law of Thermodynamics will be used a lot), but then dives right into sample problems to help you understand the material because nobody likes being bored by derivations using countless variables. He also gets the class involved by calling on students to help him solve the problems to make the lectures less boring because if someone gets something wrong he will make fun of him/her in a non-condescending manner. Don't worry if he makes fun of you though, he is like a loving father like others said. You can read the textbook (Moran and Shapiro) for some clarification, but his notes are good enough to complete 90% of the homework problems. Problem sets consisted of 5 problems, usually 2 from the text and the 3 others from outside sources. You will do well on his exams if you understand the homework because the exams are at the same difficulty level as the homework problems, which aren't too difficult to begin with. And don't slack off on the design project. My group did and frantically put a 20 page report together all during 9th and 10th week, but luckily the TA, Mike, was a generous grader even though he seemed stringent about grading when I talked to him about the past reports. All in all, you will learn a lot in this class, not just thermodynamics but also life lessons. After the final exam, he shook everyone's hands, stated their names, and thanked them for being a part of his class. I wished he had thought me heat transfer as well.
This is my first review after completing 3 years here and deservingly so because like others said, I also believe he is the best professor in the MAE department. I took 105A with Prof. Amar, which got me interested in this course. And if you have taken a course with him, you know how effective he is at teaching since he teaches through examples with actual numbers, but had to deal with his tricky quizzes and exams. Prof. Marner is even more effective than Amar, without the tricky exams. Marner uploaded lecture outlines before each lecture so that class would flow more smoothly and save our hand muscles because he cares about his students. Just go to class and complete his lecture notes and that will be all you need in order to succeed in his class. He does simple and short derivations (the First Law of Thermodynamics will be used a lot), but then dives right into sample problems to help you understand the material because nobody likes being bored by derivations using countless variables. He also gets the class involved by calling on students to help him solve the problems to make the lectures less boring because if someone gets something wrong he will make fun of him/her in a non-condescending manner. Don't worry if he makes fun of you though, he is like a loving father like others said. You can read the textbook (Moran and Shapiro) for some clarification, but his notes are good enough to complete 90% of the homework problems. Problem sets consisted of 5 problems, usually 2 from the text and the 3 others from outside sources. You will do well on his exams if you understand the homework because the exams are at the same difficulty level as the homework problems, which aren't too difficult to begin with. And don't slack off on the design project. My group did and frantically put a 20 page report together all during 9th and 10th week, but luckily the TA, Mike, was a generous grader even though he seemed stringent about grading when I talked to him about the past reports. All in all, you will learn a lot in this class, not just thermodynamics but also life lessons. After the final exam, he shook everyone's hands, stated their names, and thanked them for being a part of his class. I wished he had thought me heat transfer as well.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - This course is very straightforward and covers all the basics of many different thermodynamic cycles, engines, etc. I have no interest in this subject so I found that a bit draining. However, the professor's explanations are very straightforward and it is not too difficult to pick up the new concepts. The homework assignments were challenging and often frustrating as they relied on methods that were not well explained in the class. Also be prepared to spend hours looking up values in the tables. The midterm exam was awful, not that difficult but it was waaaay too long, it took me about 7 hours to complete in total. I don't know why professors during COVID are deciding its ok to give students a 24-hour exam window and then assign an exam that takes 7-10 hours to complete fully (this is not the first class that has done it). If a normal exam window is 2 hours, the exam should be designed with that time window in mind! Also, the group project was rough as we were given very little instruction or guidance (no examples to work from), we had to do it basically from scratch.
Winter 2021 - This course is very straightforward and covers all the basics of many different thermodynamic cycles, engines, etc. I have no interest in this subject so I found that a bit draining. However, the professor's explanations are very straightforward and it is not too difficult to pick up the new concepts. The homework assignments were challenging and often frustrating as they relied on methods that were not well explained in the class. Also be prepared to spend hours looking up values in the tables. The midterm exam was awful, not that difficult but it was waaaay too long, it took me about 7 hours to complete in total. I don't know why professors during COVID are deciding its ok to give students a 24-hour exam window and then assign an exam that takes 7-10 hours to complete fully (this is not the first class that has done it). If a normal exam window is 2 hours, the exam should be designed with that time window in mind! Also, the group project was rough as we were given very little instruction or guidance (no examples to work from), we had to do it basically from scratch.
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