Professor
Benjamin Schwartz
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2018 - Ben is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA and the best professor to learn quantum mechanics from on this campus (The man is effectively a quantum mechanic (?) himself and he understands the material to the bone). This class is HARD. You start with a linear algebra review and then hit the difficult abstractions of the subject right away. The first problem set is pretty easy, the rest get extremely hard and will take a lot of effort to figure out. His grading is 50% homework so the class is meant for you to figure out stuff via problem sets, a teaching philosophy that I quite like. It's strongly recommended you have a good math background to succeed in the class because quantum mechanics is a physics class after all. He does not hold back here. Work together and work with Ben. This class is very rewarding if you take the time with it.
Fall 2018 - Ben is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA and the best professor to learn quantum mechanics from on this campus (The man is effectively a quantum mechanic (?) himself and he understands the material to the bone). This class is HARD. You start with a linear algebra review and then hit the difficult abstractions of the subject right away. The first problem set is pretty easy, the rest get extremely hard and will take a lot of effort to figure out. His grading is 50% homework so the class is meant for you to figure out stuff via problem sets, a teaching philosophy that I quite like. It's strongly recommended you have a good math background to succeed in the class because quantum mechanics is a physics class after all. He does not hold back here. Work together and work with Ben. This class is very rewarding if you take the time with it.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - This class was a bit less enjoyable than 115A/215A. The material becomes more application based and you really start digging into how to use the subject. It's kind of gross, how mathematical it can be and the class is much slower as a result. That being said it doesn't stop it from being extremely useful. You learn a lot about molecular structure and finally hit quantum chemistry in the last couple weeks, going over the basics for the popular methods you see in research (Hartree-Fock, Slater orbitals, DFT, the basis for MO theory etc.) The homework is less frequent and easier. The big thing about this class is that there is a project at the end of the quarter in which you use Gaussian to ask a science based question and write a 3-5 page paper on it.
Fall 2019 - This class was a bit less enjoyable than 115A/215A. The material becomes more application based and you really start digging into how to use the subject. It's kind of gross, how mathematical it can be and the class is much slower as a result. That being said it doesn't stop it from being extremely useful. You learn a lot about molecular structure and finally hit quantum chemistry in the last couple weeks, going over the basics for the popular methods you see in research (Hartree-Fock, Slater orbitals, DFT, the basis for MO theory etc.) The homework is less frequent and easier. The big thing about this class is that there is a project at the end of the quarter in which you use Gaussian to ask a science based question and write a 3-5 page paper on it.
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