Great lecturer. His tests aren't the easiest, but homework is worth a significant fraction of the grade, so it's not too hard to get an A. Strongly recommend.

Scerri is a great lecturer! He is very thorough and is great in his field. He also has this sense of ego which does often lead to a few chuckles (and a girl laughing hysterically at the front row)

Scerri makes this class quite difficult. He teaches decently, but he has an egotistical attitude which makes him very unpleasant at times. I've seen several incidences, where a student would ask a perfectly reasonable question that's then either shot down or answered in a very derisive manner. Though I had questions at times, I never asked them, as I was afraid he'd shoot them down like he did the others. It's unfortunate that he has this defensive attitude; he'd be a good professor otherwise.

Professor Scerri is an extremely competent teacher, the material he teaches is hard but his coursereader and teaching combined are enough to get you to grasp what is going on. I enjoyed his class and his teaching style a lot. He think that he is a God definitely, but he kinda is, so it's okay. Overall I'm extremely happy I took it Chem 20a with scerri over the other teachers because he was a very good professor. The one negative about him is he will apply a negative curve to your grades if he feels like too many people did well and in the end that's what kept me from an A in his class so keep that in mind.

Selling textbook mint condition for only $70. Text me at 818 585-4397. BTW fantastic professor!

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I took Chem 20A with Professor Scerri and a few things you need to know before even going to his class:

GET A COURSE READER (even if it's old and used-which can be good because not everyone thinks the same)
DON'T GET HIS PERIODIC TABLE BOOK- he writes it himself and it's about his research but really he tells you everything you need to know about it in lecture.

For lecture, he spends a lot of time talking about the periodic table, which seems irrelevant to the rest of the world of chemistry but it's still on the midterms and homeworks.

He's pretty condescending when he answers a question and sometimes dismisses your question if he thinks it's too stupid and has you come talk to him after class. He's got an attitude problem...

His TAs aren't that great but they definitely vary so try to find out which are the best by going to other discussions.

He tests small details that he may have only mentioned once and if you think that this is an easy class just because it's podcasted, you're wrong. Often times he knows the students can just go look at them online (some of them were audio only or not available so not always reliable) so he goes really fast, even with the course reader. He tends to dawdle with subjects he likes and we were behind when it got to 10th week so he rushed it.

All in all, he's only okay. Not an easy A but an A- is doable (even the engineers or the I-skipped-a-year kids got A-'s too).

2 Midterms and a final. He has questions he writes himself in the back of the course reader for practice.

I learned a few interesting things but I didn't learn what I thought was the bulk of chemistry and what I definitely needed to know until halfway through the course.

Scerri's sense of humor is quite odd but made the class much more tolerable than expected. He plays the guitar during one of the lectures which was pretty cool.
His style of teaching is not my favorite. It can be very boring at times since the material is so dry. But his curve is generous. I got a C+ , better than I expected considering that I had no prior knowledge of chemistry. Do be aware that Scerri tends to make a huge jump in the beginning since he assumes most of his students know how to calculate yields, empirical / molecular formulas, convert from moles to molecules etc. Study your butt off and you should be fine