This was a fun and engaging course that was totally worth taking for useful knowledge relevant to real life. I disagree with other posters who indicate that the HW was difficult and time-consuming. It was largely simple and on-par with lower-division courses in many science majors without any mathematical knowledge required beyond high school chemistry/physics (i.e. dimensional analysis). The highest grade in this course was accomplished by an English major. The midterm exam and final exam consisted mostly of short answer questions that were straight off lecture slides plus numbers-to-know that the instructor provided prior to exams to memorize as well as a couple longer essay questions where you could choose between two prompts for each question. Generally, there would be one prompt where you could answer conceptually and another where there was basic mathematics required similar to the HW problems. Even if you are absolutely terrible at math, you can avoid the more calculation-intensive prompts and get away with just knowing the material.

I would recommend doing the practice exams in detail as well as memorizing all the numbers-to-know before each exam. Make sure to read ALL the lectures slides which are straightforward and contain the majority of the short answers. Don't focus on the HW since you don't need to do much calculation on the exams. If you finish studying the other materials, then you should go over the HW solutions and lab backgrounds to fill in any blanks in your knowledge base.

Selling a collection of past exams, homework solutions, and highly organized course materials: uclastudent17@gmail.com

The instructor is a great scientist and a very interesting and kind person, and a decent lecturer. The course, however, has its greatest weaknesses in its homework and exams. The weekly homework has little to nothing to do with the lecture or lab content, so you must scramble to figure it out on your own or with your classmates if you happen to know any. The homework and exams are all based on assumptions, making you memorize efficiencies or try to make up a random number just to prove your calculation. There is so much expected for you to figure out on your own, which is somewhat expected from an upper division course, but in this course it feels excessive. I have even heard the TA say that the homework was easier in the past and he does not know why it is harder now!

The labs are the best part, they are very hands on but easy enough to understand, so this helps the class concepts sink in. You get to burn fossil fuels to power engines or make your own wind turbines, etc.

I was very excited for this class, but unfortunately it proved to be one of the largest stresses of my quarter, and though I tried very hard and did all the research I could for the homeworks, there was always an angle I did not investigate because I did not know it was expected of me, and this follows through into the exams which are very difficult. Thank goodness for the curve and me somehow doing well on the final!

He is not great at explaining the homework or exam questions; you often end up feeling like you would have to be in his mind to understand his thought process. Presentations were often scattered and behind schedule, moves quickly through slides even when there are statistics on there we are somehow expected to memorize.

Exams are also all assumption based; half of it is just trivia from lectures, especially numerical values such as the surface area of the Earth’s land or the temperature gradient caused by thermal conduction. The second half are essay or mathematical problems similar to the homework in feeling, but also very difficult. You will likely walk away wondering “was I supposed to know that?” or “HOW was I supposed to know that?”

But did I learn a lot? I guess, and I bonded through stress with my other classmates!

I took ESS 101 with Professor Paige in the Spring quarter of 2012, so if he teaches this in the future, my review might not be completely accurate with regards to the class. You'll have to put some time into studying for this class, so if you're a Senior looking for an easy upper division class, this isn't one of them. Go take Film 133 instead. If you're an Environmental Science major, taking this class isn't a bad idea because most of the Physics done in this class is pretty elementary.

Although the class is 4 units, it has a lab component that's substituted for discussions, and you'll have a lab once a week. You'll have 2 lectures every week, and your homework is due on the first lecture of the week. Homework based on your labs, a midterm, a final, and a field trip form the entirety of your grade.

About the professor: he's a quirky and jolly guy who laughs a lot when he gives a lecture, even if the things he's talking about don't seem like they're funny. The lectures are basically a reiteration of his lecture slides (aka he says nothing new from the slides), which he posts on the class website. You should still attend the lectures, because he randomly sprang an attendance sheet on us during lecture to make sure people were coming to lecture. You're "required" to buy and read the book, but the professor tests exclusively on his lecture slides and the homework, so I wouldn't recommend buying it if you're tight on money.

I'll do a overview about each part of the class that counts for your grade:

1. Homework

Your homework grade consists of 10 assignments and attendance for each lab, which I believe is 10% of your homework grade.

The first assignment is just simple unit conversion, like Joules to Calories, and simple Physics like PE=mgh. Should be a piece of cake if you've taken Physics 1A or Physics 6A.

The next 8 assignments are based on your lab, and you'll need your lab results to be able to do them. You will also need to go through the lectures, because you will occasionally need the equations or explanations given in the lectures. Going to your TA office hours for help on the homework is advised, since a lot of the time, the questions on the assignment will be unclear on what you have to calculate, or the way to calculate the answer is confusing when the professor doesn't elaborate on some concepts in lecture. You can also use the CCLE Discussion Forum to ask the professor some questions, and he's usually very prompt in answering them, although the TAs provide more than just one or two-line answers.

For the 10th and last assignment, there's no lab component, but you have to use a device called a Kill-A-Watt (you'll have to borrow it from the TA) to record the power usage of various electronic devices around your dorm/apartment/house. To be honest, you can pretty much just BS the power recordings by looking up their values online.

2. Midterm

You have one midterm, and it's 30% of your grade. The midterm for my class consisted of 20 mandatory short answer questions+1 essay question (you get to choose between 2 of them)+1 calculation problem (you get to choose between 2 of them).

His midterms are a bit funky. The short answer questions on the midterm feel more like a Jeopardy game show than a science class, since he'll ask you things like how long humans have inhabited the Earth, what the approximate temperature of the Sun is, and what is one piece of scientific evidence for the Big Bang.

For the essay question, you'll have to be pretty precise on each part of the question, for example, you'd need to list all physical to chemical energy conversion processes (7, but he doesn't tell you that he's looking for 7) that lead to the formation of a gallon of gasoline, starting from the formation of the solar system. For this question, you should probably memorize anything in the lecture slides that has several steps to it.

The calculation problems are frustrating if you're used to being given all the data needed to solve the answer, because you will not be given all of them. You will have to MAKE YOUR OWN ASSUMPTIONS, as in make up your own data, such as the area of the car and the efficiency of the solar cell to calculate the mechanical power a solar-powered car would use on a sunny day. The calculations themselves are not that hard, but they are often based on a combination of content from different homework and thus, different labs, so you'll have to review them and the lab backgrounds that the TA gives you. The professor will give you the photocopied pages from the front and back of your book covers as pseudo "cheat sheets" (you may not bring your own), but that won't be enough for the calculations, as you'll have to memorize some constants like the solar flux at the surface of the Earth that won't be on there.

3. Final

You obviously have one midterm, and it's 40% of your grade. It's not going to be much different from the midterm format-wise or difficulty-wise, although it's going to be longer. From what I remember, the final for my class had 30 mandatory short answer questions+3 essay/calculation questions (a choice between 2 essay questions+a choice between 2 calculation problems+a choice between 1 essay question and 1 calculation problem).

The material is cumulative, although the essay questions, calculation problems, and most of the short answer questions cover material strictly after the midterm.

4. Field Trip

You have to attend one field trip, which is 10% of your grade. The nice part about this class is that you'll get extra credit if you attend more than one field trip, so you'll have a bit of leeway with regards to your grade. In order to get your grade for the field trip, you'll have to sign in with your TA/the professor. Most people go to the Mojave Desert trip, which was on the Saturday of 9th week for my class. I personally didn't enjoy that trip because we had to be there by 7:15 AM, the field trip ended at 6:00 PM, we didn't have much time to take a nap as we had to get off and re-board the bus each time we went to each site (5 sites), and it was incredibly hot at all the sites we went to, but you may feel differently about the trip.

To reiterate what I said above, it's not a bad class to take if it's one of the required classes for your major, but it's not that easy if you're just taking it as an upper-division elective. You do gain some insight into the ways that humans are affecting the environment as well as the different energy alternatives humans currently have at their disposal, so this class is at least grounded in reality, and you might actually learn something.

I was a freshman when I took this upper division class, and I thought it was pretty easy. He is kind of a boring lecturer and awkward when he laughs at his own jokes, but overall he's not that bad. Besides this I thought it was an interesting class and we took some fun field trips. Be warned about his test though; he asks questions that seem to have nothing to do with the topic of the class, so when you study for the midterm and final, study EVERYTHING not just things that you think are "relevant". Also, don't even buy the textbook; his tests are entirely lecture based. His homework is also not that bad, takes anywhere from 0.5 - 4 hours per week. Overall pretty easy class, got an A+.