Really enjoyed taking Professor Williams' class. The workload felt manageable at almost all times, learned a lot from the discussion sections, and had a grade booster presentation that also gave a good push to learn about real world applications of a more conceptual class. Highly recommend taking this class. Shoutout to Anthony, as he was the best TA I've had here personally!

No clue why older students at a certain EE club at UCLA worship this man. This class has got to have the highest ratio of work involved to content learned that I have ever taken here. Firstly, the content between weeks 1-4 was, in my opinion, completely irrelevant to understanding the content in Weeks 4-6, contrary to what others might say. You don't need quantum shit to understand intrinsic/extrinsic semiconductors, band structure, and eventually photodiodes. Secondly, the homeworks have got to be some of the most braindead but most involved pieces of shit I have ever done. Imagine doing brainless integration by parts for 6-8 hours on a fucking homework, I could not. 7 homeworks too, which I think could really have been cut down a notch. Final was easy enough, and they had 2 quizzes, 1 of which was on pure quantum; I literally had two midterms the day after the first 2H quiz in 2 upper div classes, so I obviously thought it was more important to study for those than for a dumb lower-div quiz, so I bombed the first one, while acing the second one.

Alot of people in the aforementioned club will harp on about how goated this class is, and how ass other upper-div EE classes are. Sorry to say, but I disagree, a lot of these "hard upper-div EE classes" are actually far less work and cancer than this godforsaken class. If you are pondering about taking 2H because you have been told by the old grandmas and grampas of a certain EE club to take ECE 2H, think again, they are misleading you. Just take it with Chee Wei Wong in Spring, a lot less work and irrelevant content and similar if not easier difficulty.

Williams is a pretty good professor in the EE department. This is a lower div that introduces you to semiconductor physics and quantum mechanics. If you haven't taken Chem 20A at UCLA, I'd recommend you do before taking this class.

In terms of lecture style, he is kinda dry. Most lectures are just writing derivations on empty slides and explaining concepts with pictures. A lot of hand-waving, especially for the first half of the class with quantum. The class got a lot more interesting later on as we went more into semiconductors and how they work.

Workload was pretty light for most of the quarter. The only major assignment that took up a lot of time was the final presentation, where you present on any approved topic tangentially related to course material. Other than that, I did all of my homeworks the day of, and the TA Anthony was pretty forgiving with partial credit. You get a homework drop and a lot of the problems from the textbook, so if you didn't really care, you didn't have to put much effort in the hw, especially since it's only 25% of the final grade.

Exams were fair. You get a new cheat sheet every assessment (i.e. 1 for quiz 1, 2 for quiz 2, 3 for the final). A lot of them were conceptual explanations with some plug-and-chug for calculation problems, so it wasn't too bad if you pay attention in class. Anthony also held review sessions that had similarly-styled questions. Highly recommend going to those.

Not sure if there was a curve or not since our class did alright on the quizzes (~80-85% avg) and pretty well on the presentation (~90% avg).

From what I've heard about the other ECE 2 profs, I'd say take 2H with Williams if you're at all interested in semiconductors or circuits.

I was probably the only non-EE major taking this class, but I ended up really enjoying the material. I knew next to nothing about semiconductors aside from a brief 20-minute portion of a lecture in Mat Sci 104, and this class really opened my eyes to why they were such a technologically significant development in the 20th century. Grading breakdown was 25% HW, 30% for two quizzes, 15% Presentation, and 30% Final. I thought that the lectures, while very well done by Professor Williams, were not entirely necessary, because he essentially narrates what he writes down. Also all of the previous year's recordings were made available for our viewing. I would still suggest you go to them since he occasionally hints at conceptual problems that he may ask on exams, and most of the time they end up showing up in some form. Homework was pretty standard - a mix of textbook problems and problems written by the professor. Some of the earlier homework involving quantum mechanics were quite time consuming, but the load lightens significantly towards the latter half of the class. The exams all followed a similar format of being 80% conceptual and 20% computational. Most of the problems involved some sort of "explain what happens to x process when y condition is changed". The actual questions ranged from very straightforward to difficult, and they really depend on your complete understanding of what goes on conceptually. Fortunately, grading was pretty lenient, and a lot of partial credit was assigned just for getting in the ballpark of the right answer. There was also a final presentation about any topic even tangentially related to semiconductor physics. It consisted of a slide deck and a three minute presentation followed by a question by either the professor or the TA. This was honestly the most stressful part of the class for me but it was also graded very leniently, which I appreciated, especially in a quarter with a demanding Week 10. Compared to the other engineering classes I've taken at UCLA, it's definitely on the heavier side in terms of workload, so I'm not sure why the department listed it as a lower division class. But you can definitely do well in the class if you put in the effort.
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I also just want to give a shoutout to Anthony for being probably the best TA that I've ever had. He is always able to explain the most convoluted concepts from lecture in a way that we can understand. He led review sessions for each of the exams and gave some important insights on how to approach some of the conceptual problems. Technical knowledge aside, he was also very personable and approachable. Thank you for all your help this quarter, Anthony!

Professor Williams is a very dry lecturer. He goes off his slides at inconsistent paces and the slides are usually very dense. The class goes at a very fast pace, with not very easy content matter (since it is an honors class). This class consisted of 7 homeworks (basically one a week), two quizzes (which are basically two smaller midterms), a final presentation, and a final (which was different from all the previous years). This class demanded a lot of time, especially since the topics jumped from quantum, semiconductors, and then pn-junction and photodiodes. If you are really interested in the topics mentioned above and can handle the fast-pace and workload, I recommend you take it.

Prof Williams is a pretty good lecturer and explains concepts really well for an intro class. Instead of a midterm and final, we had ~weekly homework (7 total, dropping lowest score), 4 quizzes (every 2 weeks) and a final paper. The quizzes were hard, but his overall grading is pretty lenient. I got a 50% on one of my quizzes when the average was a 90 and still ended up with an A-. The final paper had you write 2 pages about any topic relating to the class. Would recommend