Dr. Liu is a very humble and caring professor. For his first time teaching this course, I think he did an awesome job. He made the content very easy to understand. He is soft-spoken so it could be hard to understand what he is lecturing about during class. I recommend sitting in the front during lecture. His midterms and final are very similar to the practice midterms and final. He also hosts a lot of office hours during the week so if you can't make it to one, you're bound to make it to another session. His discussion worksheets are very hard but the midterms and finals are not like the worksheets. The clicker questions are based on accuracy which is annoying but helpful so you actually try to get the right answers during lecture.

Liu legitimately cares about his students' understanding of the material and tries his best to address student concerns. I came in with no Chemistry experience, and a nasty 14A grade and I did better than I thought I would. Professor Liu offers many resources for students seeking extra help and has very extensive office hours for busy students. He uploads all of this lecture slides in advance and his practice worksheets and tests are very similar to the real thing. On top of this, he offered extra credit problems on the midterms and finals

I honestly had a really tough time in this class and a bunch of breakdowns. Professor Liu is a really sweet guy, but I didn't really like how fast he lectured and I didn't think he made much sense at times. I did well in the class at first, but I started doing extremely poorly on quizzes and exams towards the end, and I hated my TA. I wish I was able to attend more of his office hours because I probably would have been able to get a better grade, but I personally struggle with conceptual stuff, and Professor Liu made 14B more conceptual than I thought it should have been in my opinion

Chong is a great professor who's able to simplify fairly difficult electrochemical concepts to something more manageable. His lectures were good, and he always made sure to show the practical applications of concepts to experimental design or current research.

In regards to material, the class starts with a fair amount of physical chem. After Week 3, the class transitions from more theoretical lectures to applications, like cyclic voltammograms. If you're interested in chemistry research, this class is incredibly useful, as you'll learn how to interpret CVs from literature and from sample data.

The course only consisted of 3 problem sets and 1 final. As a result, most of the work was concentrated around the problem set weeks. The problem sets were difficult but doable, and grading was lenient. The assigned work complemented the lectures very well, and you'll need to think really critically about experimental design or CV interpretation to answer the questions.

Overall, this is a great choice for a chemistry upper-div if you enjoy physical or inorganic chemistry. Difficult content and problem sets, but it's interesting!

I am honestly shocked by how great of a professor Chong Liu was. I was in Lavelle's 14B class for a good amount of time, and Prof. Liu's lectures were far more clear, his expectations far better expressed, and his tests far more fair.

Plenty of opportunity to miss class and skip the iClicker, just not to a crazy amount. Discussion is optional, which is awesome.
Tests are very similar to discussion worksheets and practice exam material. No textbook required, but could be good to look over if you already have it or can borrow from a friend.

The grade is broken down strictly into exams and iClicker out 350 Points:

iClicker = 75 points
Four, 10 minute quizzes = 25 points each (lowest is dropped) - 75 points total
Two midterms = 50 points each
Final Exam = 100 points

TLDR for this class
- Great professor: Often funny unintentionally, well-paced lectures, good explanation of various topics, and emphasizes understanding (for this reason the lectures are slower allowing students to better grasp the material)
- Good TAs: I had J. Sun as my TA; she explains very well and helps out with the exercises (HW) well.
- Take-home Exercises & Final: Ignore the Final date and location on MyUCLA as the professor releases the date and deadline for 3 exercises and final exam. This is the most difficult part of the class as the exercises are very through and long. The questions are usually not straightforward and challenging (albeit some questions are very easy to solve). You'll have 2-4 weeks to work on the exercises and then only 4 days to do the final exam.

Overall, I'm impressed with professor Liu! I enjoyed being in his class even though I despised the exercises & final. They are difficult and LONG (beaware the "Irreducible Representations" and "SALCS", you'll soon understand haha) so be sure to make a group and work with peers so that you can maximize your grade. I personally didn't finish the entire final so I ended up with a B+ but you can definitely get an A in this class. Majority of the class got A's (18 points) on all the exercises so GET started on them early. I didn't and it caused a lot of stress for me.

As mentioned above, his lectures are well-paced and slower which made learning a lot better. The lectures were bruincasted from Spring 2021 but it's quiet and you can't hear them well so definitely try to attend lecture and especially discussion as the TAs will guide the class to solving the exercises. He's also very helpful in office hours and not boring/dry in lectures. Don't worry about your grade until the final.