Since enrolling in this course as a freshman in Fall Quarter, it's still one of my favorite classes I've taken to date.

In terms of workload, there is not much required work outside of class -- we had one midterm, one final, a Wikipedia project, and an outside reading (not a textbook, though it was said the final would test some knowledge from the book). I found the book, Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik, to be very interesting and digestible for people of all majors; I've even recommended it to a couple of friends. The Wikipedia project was a group assignment, where you researched a prominent scientist who didn't have a Wikipedia page yet and wrote/designed one for them. For instance, our assigned scientist, Tehshik Yoon, is still active in his research and has a life story and accomplishments that would only be found on UW-Madison and publication websites without Wikipedia.

Professor Spokoyny (prefers to be called Alex) allowed us full-page cheat sheets for both the midterm and the final. Thus, even though the class covers a wide variety of topics and examples that may be hard to recall in full, the cheat sheets can be used as a reference to jog one's memory. The material itself (pun unintended) is very understandable, and Alex presents it in an engaging way when he lectures (full disclosure: I am a STEM major, though I hadn't taken any classes at UCLA yet). He uses a lot of real-world examples, often delving into historical events and analyzing society as a whole in order to convey a concept. We also had some cool demos in class every week that we could play around with. I remember his tests being very doable if one pays attention in lecture (attendance counts, by the way) and the averages being quite high. He's more invested in making sure you understand the course material than in making the tests difficult.

Lastly, Alex and his TA were very open to helping the students and spending extra time with us to make sure we understood the material and were on track with our assignment. The office hours setting was very casual, and you could ask about anything you wanted to, really. This class is smaller than many GE's; when I took it there were around 30 students. It made it much easier to interact with the professor and TA, to ask questions, and to be engaged during lecture.

Overall, I think this is a great class to consider if you have extra units to fulfill or need a physical science GE. It's very laid-back, but you do need to pay attention in lectures and do some practice problems to exceed on the tests. The material is delivered so that it's understandable for students of all majors, and the professor is very open to helping you through it. I'd say the topics were pretty engaging, ranging from empty space to food storage methods to colors. If you get the chance to, I'd say take it!

I really enjoyed taking this course with Alex! Alex is an engaging lecturer and the course is super relatable to our everyday life! Also, the cheatsheet makes exams easy - memorization is not required.

Strongly recommend!!!

One of my favorite classes I have ever taken. The information you learn in this class is useful no matter which major you are. It is not difficult to understand and it changes the way you view the world. If you are at all interested in product design, economics, or anything to do with materials, this class is perfect. I cannot recommend this more as an easy GE that is interesting.

I believe Alex is a phenomenal teacher who wants to help impart his passion for the course content onto the students, but I don't believe he was effective in doing that. Despite the fact that he does cool experiments during class and puts effort into making the content digestible, lot of people I talked to in the course were not that engaged in the material. I think it is due to the fact that the course was too lecture-heavy and there was not enough room for discussion to unpack these topics. It was their first year doing a lab for this course and it was way less interesting than the lectures. I wish that Alex could be a little bit more interactive with the students and share a dialogue with the students, rather than just default to his scripted lecture jokes. His prefernce for select subject matters and bias on science's relationship with market capitalism is also a hindrance on direct learning of the material world. The class should be more aptly named, "Alex's Thoughts on the Material World." That being said, he is always open to a chat during Office Hours and is in general a pretty relaxed guy. It's really fun as a humanities major to actually learn science in a 1 on 1 conversation from someone who is so heavily involved in the science world (he runs a lab developing neutron-based cancer treatments and therapies). It's not a bad class in the slightest, you will learn a lot from it, and you won't have to worry too much about your grade, but I was let-down given all the hype that is on this BruinWalk page. Shout-out to the TA, Qiao Qiao Wang, she's really chill and has good energy.

g

Never Never take his class. He is the worst professor that I ever met at UCLA.

He didn't teach any useful knowledge relating to inorganic chemistry. On his test, he asked question like "What is the biggest company that manufacture Al?" Why should we know the answer to this kinds of non-sense questions.

He taught based on his own interest. All the lectures relating to main-group elements were historical-based. And for his tests you need to memorize all the historical facts... He always claims that he want us to be successful in his class, but base on his test and the way he assigned grades, his claims were not true.

If you took his Chem 171, you will definitely have a hard time in Chem 172 since he basically prepares you for nothing.

Professor Spokoyny makes chemistry really interesting. His lectures are often engaging and at the end of each one he gives a memorable demonstration that really locks in the material taught. The lectures are two hours, so they can be hard to stay focussed in, especially since they are just slides. It is vital that you pay attention and take notes. All of the tests are based on things he says in class, not on the slides. This makes it difficult to study if you have missed a significant amount of lectures. Overall great GE.