Professor
Thomas Mason
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Professor Mason is a really good Chem 20B professor. He teaches you everything he needs to know. The exams are really easy, especially if you took AP Chemistry in high school. Homework is worth 30% of your grade so as long as you put some time into it you'll get a really good grade in the class. The lectures can be really boring but he shows you all the formulas you need to have on your formula sheet.
Winter 2019 - Professor Mason is a really good Chem 20B professor. He teaches you everything he needs to know. The exams are really easy, especially if you took AP Chemistry in high school. Homework is worth 30% of your grade so as long as you put some time into it you'll get a really good grade in the class. The lectures can be really boring but he shows you all the formulas you need to have on your formula sheet.
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Most Helpful Review
I thought Mason was quite effective. He covered what needed to be covered, and I left 20BH with a solid knowledge of thermodynamics and equilibria. This is only his second year teaching 20BH, but I think he has improved a lot, compared to last year's rating and comments. He only keeps one midterm this year, and makes it 30% of the grade. The final was 40%, and the homework 30%, which I thought was really generous. He offers extra credit on every homework assignment, so that helped a lot. These problems might sound intimidating at first, but keep searching (Internet, thermodynamics textbooks, etc) and you'll improve your homework grade a lot. The first midterm in my opinion was not hard, but it was really time constrained, and you really need to do many practice problems before hand. Don't rely on the cheat sheet too much; within the time limit (50 mins, 4 problems, average 3 parts per problem) you need to know what you're doing really well. My advices: watch out for sig. figs on the homework (he's strict with them, you might lose up to 1 point - each hw assignment is 10 pts - just for these), do lots and lots of practice problems before exams, and you should be fine. Really try to include every single equation that you think is important on the cheat sheet. One equation can make a 20 pts difference on the exam. Darcy was a TA for my year (Winter 2007); she's an amazing TA who never gets tired helping people. And really funny. No matter who you have for TA, just go to her session for reviews and such. About the book Statistical thermodynamics by Engel and Reid, you don't really need it. It helps for many extra credit problems, but they have it at college library and Young, so go check those out.
I thought Mason was quite effective. He covered what needed to be covered, and I left 20BH with a solid knowledge of thermodynamics and equilibria. This is only his second year teaching 20BH, but I think he has improved a lot, compared to last year's rating and comments. He only keeps one midterm this year, and makes it 30% of the grade. The final was 40%, and the homework 30%, which I thought was really generous. He offers extra credit on every homework assignment, so that helped a lot. These problems might sound intimidating at first, but keep searching (Internet, thermodynamics textbooks, etc) and you'll improve your homework grade a lot. The first midterm in my opinion was not hard, but it was really time constrained, and you really need to do many practice problems before hand. Don't rely on the cheat sheet too much; within the time limit (50 mins, 4 problems, average 3 parts per problem) you need to know what you're doing really well. My advices: watch out for sig. figs on the homework (he's strict with them, you might lose up to 1 point - each hw assignment is 10 pts - just for these), do lots and lots of practice problems before exams, and you should be fine. Really try to include every single equation that you think is important on the cheat sheet. One equation can make a 20 pts difference on the exam. Darcy was a TA for my year (Winter 2007); she's an amazing TA who never gets tired helping people. And really funny. No matter who you have for TA, just go to her session for reviews and such. About the book Statistical thermodynamics by Engel and Reid, you don't really need it. It helps for many extra credit problems, but they have it at college library and Young, so go check those out.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - Homework was a lot, but the tests were much easier than homework problems and extra credit was offered on both the midterm and final (I think like 5% of the test grade available). I was nervous about this class from his other reviews on here but he explains everything well and clearly outlines what is what's important to know. only thing that frustrated me about this class was the textbook, it had multiple errors and used weird notation that was often unexplained but was necessary because it was the source of the homework problems.
Fall 2021 - Homework was a lot, but the tests were much easier than homework problems and extra credit was offered on both the midterm and final (I think like 5% of the test grade available). I was nervous about this class from his other reviews on here but he explains everything well and clearly outlines what is what's important to know. only thing that frustrated me about this class was the textbook, it had multiple errors and used weird notation that was often unexplained but was necessary because it was the source of the homework problems.
Most Helpful Review
At first he sounds boring--but no he is not. He does not look approachable, but he is. Class is rather easy and straight forward. I'd like him to expand more on concept rather than giving plug and chug equations. Notes are crystal clear -- you can follow what he's doing even when he's doing it in class. Paces his lectures extremely well.
At first he sounds boring--but no he is not. He does not look approachable, but he is. Class is rather easy and straight forward. I'd like him to expand more on concept rather than giving plug and chug equations. Notes are crystal clear -- you can follow what he's doing even when he's doing it in class. Paces his lectures extremely well.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Dr. Mason was OK. He followed his own specific textbook very closely (Widom) instead of what I thought was the stronger book (Reif). His lectures were very dry and typically boring. The material itself is really interesting and worth it alone to take the class. You play with all various partition functions in a variety of different applications. His tests were nearly 100% plug and chug and were extremely easy in my opinion.
Fall 2018 - Dr. Mason was OK. He followed his own specific textbook very closely (Widom) instead of what I thought was the stronger book (Reif). His lectures were very dry and typically boring. The material itself is really interesting and worth it alone to take the class. You play with all various partition functions in a variety of different applications. His tests were nearly 100% plug and chug and were extremely easy in my opinion.
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