This class was a bit more difficult than it could have been.

Professor Goorsky was a good lecturer, but the exams ended up being difficult to prepare for and quite tricky. The problem sets, as well, were quite challenging and not really covered in class. A hard class but not impossible, especially considering the generous curve.

Professor Goorsky is an awesome professor. He genuinely cares that the students learn and is happy to help if there are any questions. Tests are pretty fair and he allows a cheat sheet. One note on the textbook: I don't recommend buying the international version. Although most of the reading material is the same, many of the appendices are missing (some of which we used quite a bit).

Dr. Goorsky is one of the best professors I've had so far. Hopefully you took Mat Sci 104 with him over the summer so you know what to expect, if you didn't then no worries.

He's very good at introducing and building up information to you, on top of explaining things. The class is structured such that you learn fundamentals and theory first. This involves topics of x-ray production, crystallography, reciprocal space, stereographic projections, and structure factor. Then he'll jump into a ton of different applications, although a lot of stuff revolved around thin film. I think one thing to keep in mind once you get to the applications bit is that the new x-ray measurements being done involved just changing the angles within the machine that unlocks new information for you. Understanding that saved my ass for a good way through.

He also negotiates with you in the beginning. He'll never have a fully complete syllabus since he'll ask you what you prefer. He allows you to pick office hours. Additionally, he originally planned for a quiz and a midterm then he asked us if we would like two midterms instead and the class chose that. Come the final, the application bit of class was tested on.

His tests are difficult however and involve you to think. My biggest issue with the tests was that I always ran out of time. The homework sets will take a while to do but you'll be teaching yourself the material as you go and they are typically well structured.

The class itself was extremely dry. Some of the material I found very cool but the material can get extremely boring throughout some weeks. I honestly wish he taught a different class but he is the crystallographic expert so I suppose it's fitting. With the class at 8AM, I ended up being utterly miserable once the first round of midterms hit.

If you're taking the lab portion of the class, good luck. I had to drop that class in week 4 due to how much work it is, so I won't write a review for it. Only tip I can give is to start that stuff as soon as you go home from lab. At the very least, put the data on excel and immediately make graphs for it even if the TA's haven't given you your task yet because you'll need all the time you can get. I probably had a total of 5 hours of sleep for 4 days trying to get one of those done.

He is really good, I've had so many crappy classes but goorsky really inspired me and mse is awesome! He explains concepts very well and taught us the potential of x rays!