This is probably an age-old story, but the professor is a nice person who makes life hell as the teacher of this class. Her grading is completely subjective and is probably dependent on her day to day mood. Her grading scale started as not good, good, excellent and eventually devolved into very good but not excellent, ok, and a bunch of other subgrades that never really made any sense with the amount of feedback given

This class is not hard content, but the lab reports are miserable because she is extremely picky and inconsistent with the criteria. ALSO, she likes to do this thing where she discusses the grade for each lab report in front of the entire class, so if you screw up, she will likely roast your entire group in a public forum. Even if you do well, she might find something to pick on and roast you for that as well. The material itself is boring but it's not too big of a deal. Clear out your day for the lab reports because that will be a massive time sink in this class

Most of the time TAs run this class and the professor only shows up during your presentations. Many people say that the way the professor critiques your presentations and reports is very random. I (more or less) do agree cuz sometimes when I read her comments on our presentations and lab reports I get confused as if there's nothing else for her to criticize and she's intentionally looking for something to criticize. Her labs are poorly designed because in all of the lab sessions we probably spent more time waiting for our turn than actually doing the lab itself. Furthermore, it is so hard to get meaningful data in some of the experiments because of poor lab preparation and equipment. People say this is TA's fault but I was given the impression the TA also received very little instruction from the professor. But to be honest it is hard to teach a class in a lab format so I guess I can't blame the professor too much. It is sometimes frustrating to do the work in this class but I guess that's just what actually happens when you do materials science experiments in real life. On the plus side, you do get to visualize what you are learning in 131 so I'll say this class is pretty useful.