Sell the totally useless course reader and workbook. $30 or best offer. Contact me at **********.

You will definitely get an A in this class as long as you do all the required textbook problems, go to lecture and take good notes, and do the midterm /final review posted by the TA's for the course.

Lavelle is a fun man, and he is also quite hip. He is in with the memes, and understands the importance of "exercising your mind and body". For the final lecture before winter break, Lavelle displayed a GIF of a dancing orangutan, and he too got down.
He is not at all self-absorbed or snobby, as some of the past posts have claimed. He is very proud of the many hours of helpful resources available to you, but only because he is happy to see you learning. I feel as if he is doing all he can to help us learn and understand the material (especially in an online setting).
Before taking this class, I'd heard a lot of chemistry horror stories and I am happy to declare that I did not experience this with Professor Lavelle. I recommend taking his class.

Selling 7th edition pdf version of textbook for 20$ (1/4 the price)! Regular price at UCLA store for ebook is 80$! Text me @ **********

One of the questions on his final was "draw cisplatinum" something he never even mentioned in class, then he said it was on his slides but he DOES NOT POST HIS SLIDES. That was probably the most UNFAIR class I've ever taken and i didn't even think the material was hard, he just was awful and unfair. 10/10 DO NOT RECOMMEND AVOID IF YOU CAN OR TAKE SOMEONE ELSE, don't do this to yourself.

Dr. Lavelle is a great lecturer, and you can really tell how passionate he is about chemistry. He always comes to class with a smile on his face, puts on some intro music and does a little jig before class begins, and embraces all topics and questions with a positive attitude. Many people say that Lavelle is slow and boring, but both quarters that I've taken his class we've actually been ahead of schedule. He speaks at an understandable pace in my opinion. If it happens to be too slow for you, the lectures are recorded and posted on BruinLearn so you can set that puppy to 2x speed if you wish. One pet peeve I had about Lavelle's teaching was that he'd spend a lot of lecture time deriving equations using calculus or all kinds of substitutions, but these were never tested nor discussed again, we just got the already-derived versions on an equation sheet. Compared to Chem 14A, the tests in 14B were quite a step up in difficulty. Free response took over the exam format and the weight of those are quite heavy compared to that of multiple choice. The practice problems he recommended from the textbook were extremely useful and the weekly homework was very manageable. Everything on the exams is discussed in class, so there's no trickery there. Overall, I would recommend taking this class with Dr. Lavelle!

This was a classic Lavelle class, so if you've had Lavelle before there is going to be no surprise. He has lectures that he thinks is helpful, and they are, but they don't help for a lot of the questions that he asks. He thinks he is helping, but not really. It would be like him lecturing about how to do addition, and then on the tests he is asking you do to 324 multiplied by 473. However, his grading scheme is helpful. I didn't do well on either of the midterms, and did okay on the final and was able to pass the class. TAs are super helpful, so that's who I would go to if you need help.

not the most engaging lecturer, but he has so many office hours, worksheets, TA office hours, and outside help that an A is definitely achievable if you put in the time to use his resources. His exams were a bit tougher than I expected, but if you do the textbook homework (which is optional) you can recognize some of the questions and how to approach them.

Before reading this review please know that Dr. Lavelle is in the process of reverting back to his pre COVID tests which were a bit harder than the tests we had. Our tests were still half multiple choice, but Dr. Lavelle may change this. Dr. Lavelle's class is definitely not going to be the easiest A you will get at UCLA. The material covered in CHEM 14B is defiantly much tougher than the material covered in CHEM 14A. Overall, however, Dr. Lavelle does provide with the tools needed for one to succeed in his class. His midterms and final were very fair and contained the problems provided in his syllabus (DO THEM). He also provides UA review sessions which proved to be very helpful. I will say that Dr. Lavelle's lectures themselves are not very useful and tend to be very boring. They oftentimes are spent deriving equations rather than actually doing problems. In past midterms and final he has used these derivations but not on ours. However as he is transitioning back to his pre COVID style, I would expect these lectures to be more useful. The UA sessions were by far the most useful portion of this class. They happen outside of lecture and discussion and help solidify understanding on topics. Shoutout to Gabriel! The reason I got this A was partially because I attended his UA sessions every week. Closer to midterms and finals I would definitely recommend trying to do at least 3 UA sessions to cover all your bases. Remember that just like with any class you get out of this class as much as you put into it. If you really put all your effort in, it is not a difficult class to get a B+ or A- in. Going for the A requires more effort than what is expected though so be warned.
In all honesty I am very neutral on Dr. Lavelle. I think his difficulty (or perceived difficulty) is very much to do with the fact that CHEM 14B is a jump from 14A. I would recommend taking Lavelle any day over Scerri. Good luck if you plan on taking this class!!!!

I had this professor for both Chem 14A and 14B. For me, the biggest pain was the shift in their exam types: 14A used Bruinlearn, 14B in-person on paper. The formatting of the paper exams left much to be desired, especially with the clumsiness of check-marking the multiple choice answer you wanted for your question, and that slight confusion led to some misunderstandings and hurt my scores a little.
Lavelle's lectures are recorded, great when I couldn't attend them. This term he focused the bulk of his lectures on deriving, particularly thermochemistry equations for that unit, which only clicked after I did the practice problems. Derivations were not on the exam. Focus easily strayed during lectures when he stretched such background on a couple work equations across one day's 90 minute lecture, which to be fair was warranted considering how confusing the work and entropy unit was. I felt that he assigned a lot of textbook readings and problems that overemphasized the difficulty and extent of content taught, as most of his recommended outline problems were not really in the exams. This problem was present to me for both the thermochemistry and electrochemistry unit, where I focused much attention on practice only to discover how 'easy' the real exam was. Each exam is 10-12 questions, very short, some worth partial credit. The final exam had questions for content proportional to weeks the units were taught.
While he teaches many, many equations, you will probably only use very few on the exam, so don't worry about memorization and understanding every specific residual, just get the broad strokes and particular conditions down then spend time somewhere else.
Generally alright if you have your schedule together. I never attended UA sessions and my TA was newer so I didn't really rely on him for much more than pep talks and the occasional gem of insight for practice exam questions, so you can get an A if you give a certain minimal effort here.