Professor
Christian Schneider
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - I have mixed feelings about this class. On one hand, yes, this class is probably one of the most useful and practical classes you will ever take in your life, beyond that of just physics but real life. It is mostly handholding as you learn the techniques, components, and basic theory of electronic circuits each week in lab as a typical "experiment" a week until you do your final project. On the other hand, this class is a time sink. I had little to no experience with circuit building and it took a very, very, very long time for me to get the hang of it, in terms of troubleshooting, using an oscilloscope, what the hell ground means. My weekends and afternoons were largely dedicated to finishing labs and getting stuff to work so I can put it on my lab report. The final project took up a lot of time to figure out how to get some components to work and solder the damn thing. On top of that, the prelabs I found to be very challenging. The written midterm is fine, the lab practical was a disaster. The lab reports are very reasonable once you get the damn circuit to work and probably took less time than the prelabs themselves. In terms of the class structure, there is a significant spike in difficulty once you get to Week 4 with Transistors and it basically stays that way the rest of the time as you learn how to use IC chips etc. The professor's lectures were garbage and pretty useless, the books are amazing and the help received from TAs and professors was also very valuable.
Fall 2019 - I have mixed feelings about this class. On one hand, yes, this class is probably one of the most useful and practical classes you will ever take in your life, beyond that of just physics but real life. It is mostly handholding as you learn the techniques, components, and basic theory of electronic circuits each week in lab as a typical "experiment" a week until you do your final project. On the other hand, this class is a time sink. I had little to no experience with circuit building and it took a very, very, very long time for me to get the hang of it, in terms of troubleshooting, using an oscilloscope, what the hell ground means. My weekends and afternoons were largely dedicated to finishing labs and getting stuff to work so I can put it on my lab report. The final project took up a lot of time to figure out how to get some components to work and solder the damn thing. On top of that, the prelabs I found to be very challenging. The written midterm is fine, the lab practical was a disaster. The lab reports are very reasonable once you get the damn circuit to work and probably took less time than the prelabs themselves. In terms of the class structure, there is a significant spike in difficulty once you get to Week 4 with Transistors and it basically stays that way the rest of the time as you learn how to use IC chips etc. The professor's lectures were garbage and pretty useless, the books are amazing and the help received from TAs and professors was also very valuable.
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