This class was great! Professor Chen is fantastic, his lectures are clear and engaging. He is really nice and clearly cares about the material and seeing students succeed. The class itself was chill: 4 homework assignments, 4 in-person labs, 1 lab report, 1 group project, and a final. The homeworks and final were very reasonable, as were the assignments.

OMG... he is so hard to understand.

the 187L class is very fun though. lots of hands on stuff and you get to learn about things your average mechanical engineer wouldn't know about. although, alot of students from other engineering departments.

we did a project which was cool. he gave us two weeks and he made us design a nanoparticle to deliver drugs to cure liver cancer. o.O

the final was really really easy if you were paying attention to lectures and did your labs and understood everything--which shouldn't be that hard.

I would say just have fun in the class and if you don't understand something ask or google.

I took "Nanoscience and Technology" class from him. He does not speak perfectly but it is understandable. The course required lots of work but not very tough work due to its being multidisciplinary class. There were weekly hws (20%) which were generally not very difficult but required to review the lecture notes and some google search. I mean they took some time. Other than, there were totally 4 quizes (25%) which were multiple choice 5-6 questions. Although I was fine, I will not give good feedback about these since they were a lot tricky. In one quiz, I was the lowest of the class whereas in another I was the highest. So, if you need to be lucky. Also, there were more than 1 correct answer; but the Prof. said "select the most correct" :) It was really weird. There was not a midterm but a final (30%) and a class project(25%) that required a team work and a class presentation but not any additional report. Final was composed of analytical problems, multiple choice questions and concept questions. It was not easy also not hard. Class presentations needed to be mainly based on a new idea that you would purpose. You need to organize your team and propose a novel idea to solve a scientific or technical problem. Finally, the grading seems not bad.

I am finishing up his Nanoscience and Nanotechnology class, and I felt compelled to write about this guy. He clearly puts zero effort into the his lecture and literally copies and pastes text and images from textbooks. He offers a very sub-par explanation of the subject and when you try to ask him a question about the material, he just stares at you like he doesn't understand what you're saying, and then offers a response on a completely unrelated topic. The class is very easy, too easy. I came to graduate school to learn and instead we're being spoon fed the most trite and watered down explanation of nano-technology. Not once did we delve into detail into the true physics behind any of the technologies we discussed. Instead of explaining the material, he just hands it to you to memorize. Yes you can regurgitate it, but you don't truly grasp it. I've learned way more on wikipedia that i've learned in his class.
Bottom Line: Easy A, but that's not why I came to grad school.

I liked the Nanolab class. It was really interesting and Professor Chen taught it in a way that was easy to understand.

There are weekly quizzes and lab reports. The quizzes are one question and are simple if you did the lab the week before. Lab reports are simple as well. The TAs are very lenient on grading it. There is no midterm for the class, but there is a final. Again, the final is simple as well. There are some short answer questions and a design problem that is easy if you were paying attention during labs/lecture.

Last, but not least, we had a project. This project involved us coming up with a way to fabricate cicada wings. It dealt with choosing the right material, fabrication processes, and characterization tools to try and market this to Professor Chen. It was fairly easy and no report was required; just a presentation.

Grade breakdown was: 25%-project, 25%-final, 40%-lab reports and 10%-quizzes.

I learned a great deal about nanotechnology in this class. I earned an A+ in the class, so I might be biased, but it is something that students do not normally have knowledge about. It actually encouraged me to take more classes in the nano-field.

Any Mechanical Engineer looking for an easy A on an ELECTIVE, please take this class. He's a chill guy with super easy lectures and the labs are even easier. You don't have to do anything, the TAs do everything for you and you just have to turn in the lab reports which are super duper easy. I put in less than 30 minutes of work every week and ended up with a sweet A. There are only 4 lab reports to turn in (the last one is a 4 weeks lab report). There's an easy final and group presentation where the professor will shred you, but you'll end up getting a good grade on it irrespective. Please do yourself a favor and take this class cause the worst grade you'll get is a B and that's only if you really really messed up. Even if you're half decent you pull an easy A for a 4 unit class.

Easy mech e elective with a light workload. Took it online so format was weekly hw that took less than an hour even if you didn't watch lectures or go to lab. Had one final group project worth 40% that we had basically the whole quarter to do. Professor will rip into your group with questions but then give you a good grade. If you like semiconductors and computer chips, the class is also really interetsing