Lectures were enjoyable and he's often funny. You can tell he genuinely cares about his students. Don't use your phone during lecture, as he will call you out in front of the class.

Exams: Pretty similar to the homework, there weren't any trick questions, pretty straight forward. All exams were two parts, the first being conceptual and the second being word problems. You're allowed a cheatsheet *However* you can only use it for the word problems. So on the conceptual part you can't use your cheatsheet and it's best to know formulas by heart. Overall highly recommend professor Pilon for 105a

Pilon is alright, but this class was incredibly frustrating. (Taken as an online class). I felt like I had a good handle on everything before the midterm, but the midterm wrecked me so much I had to Pass/No Pass this class. There were two parts on the midterm, one for 'conceptual questions' where we weren't supposed to have a cheat sheet, but all the questions were about details of the equations or plain ridiculous (apparently we had to memorize the critical point of water). The second part, with in-depth calculations were more reasonable, but still more difficult than the homework, and not enough time was given. Because there is only one midterm I didn't feel confident in my grade after it and switched my grade type, which made me lose interest in the rest of the material. The lectures are fine, they are easy to learn from, but because they aren't live it is hard to ask questions or connect with the class. Homework assignments also take forever.

I actually really enjoyed this class, even though it was also the source of most of my stress during the quarter. You have to really have a good grasp of the subject matter to get a good grade, there's no skating through. If you take it in person, know that Pilon likes walking around through the lecture hall when he asks you to derive equations or solve problems so he can see the work everyone is doing. So either sit in the middle zone that he can't reach or come to class knowing material from previous lectures well enough to not reference your notes. It's definitely worth it to come to class in-person, as he says a lot of important information that isn't part of his recorded slides. Plus, he's funny and makes a lot of jokes.

Overall, I would recommend Pilon for anyone who's willing to put in time and effort.

Prof. Pilon is a wholesome professor, and definitely loves teaching students and is good at what he does. During quarantine though, he only posts lectures online (no scheduled lectures). The "curve" screwed everyone (10% homework, 40% midterm, 50% final), and the average on the midterm was 68%. Textbook isn't required, since he types up all the questions, but the pdf is on Libgen. Both exams were proctored on Zoom by him and the two TAs. Definitely a risky grading curve, but he means well and the class is straightforward and builds heavily on concepts in the earlier weeks.
DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS IF YOU DON'T HAVE MOTIVATION TO ATTEND/WATCH LECTURES. I fell behind by 7 weeks and it was exhausting to catch up before the final and come back from the brink of failing, don't play those games like I did.

He's a nice guy, but can be a little frustrating as a professor. I took him during the quarantine quarter. Homework assignments were generally pretty long and took a long time to finish. The material wasn't really hard but the midterm was kind of ridiculous. There were two parts for both the midterm and final: one conceptual and one problem-solving (just like homework problems). The midterm was frustrating because in the first part there were questions with 9-12 variations of different formulas and we had to pick the right ones. Pretty much none of the class bothered memorizing formulas since we were allowed a cheat sheet for the problem-solving portion, and the sheer number of answer options made it pretty hard to get those questions right. There was only the one midterm and I did a little above average (average for the first part was about 60%, about 75% for the second part, and about 72% overall based on how they were weighted), but I still took the class P/NP because he grades by making the highest-overall-scoring student the new 100% and adds his difference from 100 to everyone's grade (so if the highest overall grade is a 95%, that becomes 100% and 80% becomes 85%, 77% becomes 82%, etc), and there were people who got pretty close to 100% on the midterm and he wasn't clear if he would make any grading adjustments or what his grading scale was. I didn't want to deal with the unpredictability so just went P/NP. The final was way easier and more fair than the midterm since they listened to the students' complaints and adjusted accordingly. Overall I'd say the class was interesting and the professor was alright, gave good examples of real-world applications, and was open to giving and receiving advice to and from students.
Edit: the final was so easy that its average was about 95% overall. I didn't put much effort into studying for it since I didn't need a high grade to pass, and I still aced it, but ended up with a P because I made the class P/NP expecting the final to be of similar difficulty to the midterm so fuck me.

So I took this class knowing very well that the material wasn't relevant to my discipline, and thus was not very engaged with the subject matter. That being said, Pilon was probably the best professor I could have asked for in this situation. Definitely don't miss his lectures. He loved creating dialogue between himself and the students. He is not a fan of tardiness or phone usage during class. If you're MechE or Aerospace he will probably like you. The midterm and final were difficult but weren't super beyond the scope of the textbook problems. I'd say if you make this class a high priority (I didn't) you will be rewarded. OR you can generally slide through the exams if you have a thorough cheat sheet and cursory understanding of the material. For some reason the homework grader was super harsh and petty and would mark you down hella if you deviated from the VERY specific homework format so DO pay attention to that. Pilon himself said not to get too caught up on grades, however, so do as you like.

I highly recommend Professor Pilon. He is obviously passionate about teaching and helping his students . He not only teaches thermodynamics, but also how to analyze and solve problems in general which can be applied to all future classes. The homeworks are quite time consuming and can be pretty difficult, but utilizing the professor's office hours really helped. There is one midterm, which wasn't necessarily difficult but VERY time consuming. Hardly anyone finished the exam because there are two parts (one qualitative, the other quantitative), and each question of the quantitative section had 4 or 5 subquestions. It really tested whether or not you had the material down to the point where you could solve the questions without thinking, because there was no time to think. The final was similar, it took a lot of time and i found myself rushing through things. The discussion sections themselves weren't really helpful. They went through problems very similar to the assigned homework questions (which was great) and they posted the complete solution on CCLE. My TA however rambled on for the full two hours and often confused me more than I was before. The best piece of advice is to go the lecture. Pilon is engaging and makes it worth it. He doesn't tolerate tardiness (he'll call you out on it) and really doesn't like the use of phones or computers. The textbook is somewhat helpful for the material, but it isn't really needed otherwise. You really only need it for the tables in the back (most of which can be found online). All the homework questions are posted in a separate document. Overall, i really enjoyed the class and would highly recommend it.

Professor Pilon is probably the funniest professor I've had at UCLA. His lectures keep you awake because of his interactions with the class. Best formula for an A in his class: just attend lectures and keep doing his homework. Pilon also gives a lot of practical knowledge like teaching us how engines and power plants (solar, wind, gas, etc) work which was cool.

Don't often rate professors but taking the time to do this because you should make it a goal to take this guy. He gives some of the best lectures I've had at ucla. You can tell he mainly teaches graduate courses through his professionally and preparation for each lecture. One of the best you can have as an undergrad so really try and take this guy, you won't regret it. Midterm was tough, but he'll make you want to study the material. Just study and keep up, do practice problems from the book and you'll be fine.

Definitely best accent and facial expression of any professor at UCLA. Very funny in class, but also teaches fundamentals and applications clearly. Often gives in depth application to IC engines, solar power, etc. Midterm harder than expected, but fair. TOO MUCH LINEAR INTERPOLATION, but that is the courses fault.