MAT SCI 104
Science of Engineering Materials
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour; outside study, eight hours. Requisites: Chemistry 20A, 20B, 20L, Physics 1A, 1B. General introduction to different types of materials used in engineering designs: metals, ceramics, plastics, and composites, relationship between structure (crystals and microstructure) and properties of technological materials. Illustration of their fundamental differences and their applications in engineering. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Ozolins is your classic cool, calm, collected, European, fukboi professor. He comes to class almost always in some type of polo (often a pink one or baby blue one), dressed in a way that accentuates that although he is on the older end, he still is fit and has a body of younger times. This is a very typical class where if you do not come to lecture, you can still do fine. The textbook is quite detailed and well written, which translates to relatively ease in studying the content if you put in the time. The practice tests for this class for the quiz and midterms were completely useless, since our fukboi prof just does whatever he wants, albeit has some morals and would not completely destroy the class. I attended every lecture, read over the powerpoints, translated all the information from his class onto my 1 pg cheat sheet (8X11) and did fine ultimately in the class. Also, a NASA scientist does a guest talk towards the end about the space shuttle tiles and that single lecture was more entertaining, informative, and awesome than the rest of the class combined. Highly recommended.
Winter 2016 - Ozolins is your classic cool, calm, collected, European, fukboi professor. He comes to class almost always in some type of polo (often a pink one or baby blue one), dressed in a way that accentuates that although he is on the older end, he still is fit and has a body of younger times. This is a very typical class where if you do not come to lecture, you can still do fine. The textbook is quite detailed and well written, which translates to relatively ease in studying the content if you put in the time. The practice tests for this class for the quiz and midterms were completely useless, since our fukboi prof just does whatever he wants, albeit has some morals and would not completely destroy the class. I attended every lecture, read over the powerpoints, translated all the information from his class onto my 1 pg cheat sheet (8X11) and did fine ultimately in the class. Also, a NASA scientist does a guest talk towards the end about the space shuttle tiles and that single lecture was more entertaining, informative, and awesome than the rest of the class combined. Highly recommended.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Ngl based on the reviews before taking this class, I thought this class was going to be a lot worse and the tests were going to be a lot harder. But I also will say that I studied A LOT for this class and I did slightly above average on all of the tests except one. The very first quiz I did horrible but did way better on all of the other exams, but as long as you get around the average which was about 70-75%, then you'll be okay because he curved the class up to a B+. The lectures are very unhelpful and I ended up teaching myself everything from the textbook because he basically takes the graphs and all of the content from the textbook. I will say though that there were like a few questions on the exams that he only said in lecture, but it was really minor application stuff so that was annoying. I used youtube videos to study and those basically replaced me going to lecture because those were a lot more helpful and they explain it better than Professor Pei. Also my TA's were so unhelpful omg, one of them told me the wrong answers to the test multiple times when we were going over the answers for the test. Office hours are also very unhelpful, so make some friends in this class. Also, because he doesn't release the answers to the test but luckily my TA went over the answers in class, but again some of them were wrong. Do the homeworks though, because he takes some questions that were similar to those and uses them on the test. On the final and midterm you have more than enough time, but I felt on the quizzes you are definitely racing against the clock a little bit. Overall, the class moves fast though because it's an intro to materials, but at least for some of the tests, you just need to know surface level stuff. The content can be really interesting, I just felt like you had to know a lot and then the tests doesn't test you on too much. Try not to take this class with him, try to take it with Gorsky, I heard he's better because this class was not easy and I developed so much anxiety in this class because him and the TA's are just so unhelpful and they don't really care about you. So, he doesn't assign that much work, but you definitely have to put in a lot of work outside of this class to do well (even though he told me that if I understood the lecture slides, I would be fine) and actually understand the concepts.
Spring 2020 - Ngl based on the reviews before taking this class, I thought this class was going to be a lot worse and the tests were going to be a lot harder. But I also will say that I studied A LOT for this class and I did slightly above average on all of the tests except one. The very first quiz I did horrible but did way better on all of the other exams, but as long as you get around the average which was about 70-75%, then you'll be okay because he curved the class up to a B+. The lectures are very unhelpful and I ended up teaching myself everything from the textbook because he basically takes the graphs and all of the content from the textbook. I will say though that there were like a few questions on the exams that he only said in lecture, but it was really minor application stuff so that was annoying. I used youtube videos to study and those basically replaced me going to lecture because those were a lot more helpful and they explain it better than Professor Pei. Also my TA's were so unhelpful omg, one of them told me the wrong answers to the test multiple times when we were going over the answers for the test. Office hours are also very unhelpful, so make some friends in this class. Also, because he doesn't release the answers to the test but luckily my TA went over the answers in class, but again some of them were wrong. Do the homeworks though, because he takes some questions that were similar to those and uses them on the test. On the final and midterm you have more than enough time, but I felt on the quizzes you are definitely racing against the clock a little bit. Overall, the class moves fast though because it's an intro to materials, but at least for some of the tests, you just need to know surface level stuff. The content can be really interesting, I just felt like you had to know a lot and then the tests doesn't test you on too much. Try not to take this class with him, try to take it with Gorsky, I heard he's better because this class was not easy and I developed so much anxiety in this class because him and the TA's are just so unhelpful and they don't really care about you. So, he doesn't assign that much work, but you definitely have to put in a lot of work outside of this class to do well (even though he told me that if I understood the lecture slides, I would be fine) and actually understand the concepts.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Pozuelo was a kind person and clearly knowledgeable about materials science, but she really was not good at lecturing. I didn't watch most of her lectures and chose to read slides and the textbook instead, but it was abundantly clear in the few hours I did spend that she simply does not know how to explain stuff in a way that is appropriate for an introductory class. The lecture alternated between basic level info that you probably already know to higher level info that was clearly not useful nor testable, with not nearly enough time spent at an intermediate level appropriate for the course. Far too frequently there would be questions on the homework that were absolutely not answerable with the content given in lecture, as if she somehow expected us to read 50 pages of the textbook every week as well as attend the lectures. The textbook, btw, is actually great and absolutely reading it is a great way to learn, but the quality understanding you can get from the book is way overkill for what the class actually requires and I stopped reading the book when I realized it was not time effective. Back to homework, the problems were a strange blend of dense computation and straight up short response to conceptual questions, in such a way that made it completely unclear what the professor wanted you to actually know. There were two quizzes, a midterm, and a final, of which the first two to occur were pretty darn hard, and the second two were way easier. There was a curve at the end of about 1/3 of a letter grade, which was annoyingly small. TLDR; the course was poorly organized and unclear in its objective, and the lecturing by the professor was not worth watching. I would avoid Pozuelo.
Fall 2020 - Pozuelo was a kind person and clearly knowledgeable about materials science, but she really was not good at lecturing. I didn't watch most of her lectures and chose to read slides and the textbook instead, but it was abundantly clear in the few hours I did spend that she simply does not know how to explain stuff in a way that is appropriate for an introductory class. The lecture alternated between basic level info that you probably already know to higher level info that was clearly not useful nor testable, with not nearly enough time spent at an intermediate level appropriate for the course. Far too frequently there would be questions on the homework that were absolutely not answerable with the content given in lecture, as if she somehow expected us to read 50 pages of the textbook every week as well as attend the lectures. The textbook, btw, is actually great and absolutely reading it is a great way to learn, but the quality understanding you can get from the book is way overkill for what the class actually requires and I stopped reading the book when I realized it was not time effective. Back to homework, the problems were a strange blend of dense computation and straight up short response to conceptual questions, in such a way that made it completely unclear what the professor wanted you to actually know. There were two quizzes, a midterm, and a final, of which the first two to occur were pretty darn hard, and the second two were way easier. There was a curve at the end of about 1/3 of a letter grade, which was annoyingly small. TLDR; the course was poorly organized and unclear in its objective, and the lecturing by the professor was not worth watching. I would avoid Pozuelo.
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