I liked Dr. Fisher, I thought he was very approachable and explained concepts well. Occasionally, he would go on long tangents though. The material wasn't extremely difficult, but definitely keep up with the work. The midterm and final were a time crunch, I didn't even finish either of them. Granted, I did the bare minimum learning the concepts and paid for that in a major way on the midterm. The discussion sections were really helpful when I started going to them Week 8 lol. Something to keep in mind was that his online recorded lectures EXACTLY matched his lecture notes in person, so if you missed class it wasn't super bad.

Professor Fisher is greatly entertaining and knowledgeable in a variety of topics concerning thermodynamics and the engineering world at large. He is easy to reach, and willing to help during office hours. I would definitely take another class with him just because it was fun to be there.

That being said, it really feels like an upper-division STEM course in the sense that you are responsible for the majority of your learning. Lectures seem helpful, but once you start homework, you realize there's layers of depth that Fisher hasn't covered. Discussions are helpful because you can see a few examples done, but really, textbook reading and office hours are implicitly mandatory.

The group design project is actually pretty interesting, though if you don't work with other motivated people you'll definitely struggle, as it is not an easy assignment. Side note, but Colab absolutely sucks and is the worst, most annoying coding software I've worked with. That is the one thing I wish was changed about the project. Start early, ask lots of questions both to the professor and the TA responsible for grading your project, and you'll be fine.

Depending on your confidence in thermodynamics, the class might be more or less difficult, but regardless the worst thing you can do in this class is fall behind. Don't underestimate the course, there is a difficulty spike as soon as you start mixtures and chemical equilibrium. It's doable, just tread carefully.

If you think you are smart, this is the class to re-examine yourself as a student. The exams are only 1 pages but 2 hours is never enough, because open book exams are harder than the closed book ones. You might need a PhD in quantum mechanics before taking this class.

Really tough course. the first 3 weeks made absolutely no sense to me initially but it's mostly abstract nomenclature that I've never dealt with before. By week 4 or 5 the content started coming together and actually made sense. Fisher wrote the textbook so is very knowledgeable on the topic. Even though the material is very difficult the workload is normal other than having 4 exams as well as the final. Overall an interesting class and would recommend it