I took this guy for both 20B and 110A. I mean overall he is actually a nice guy and you can tell he cares about his students' sturies. However, he failed to explain concept during the class which sometimes leads the whole class in confusion. But his notes are incredible helpful so make sure you understand them. Also, remember those derivations since he likes to test on them. I managed to get A in both his class. If you study hard, you can also do that

The class is composed of roughly 50% homework/quizzes which is quite generous, and 15/35% midterm and final, also which isn't too bad.

There is weekly homework, graded on accuracy, and weekly quizzes. There are also some small points that come from participating in a discussion forum, etc. All exams and quizzes were open notes, which was not too bad, although the quizzes could be hard on some weeks (I think our TA noticed and made them easier). My advice for the homework would be to form a study group and check your answers before submitting, generally it's easy to do well on these, but it always helps to check answers with someone to avoid losing easy points.

I thought the midterm was not too bad, but I spent too much time looking through notes and ran out of time. It was curved fairly as well. I thought the final was much tougher, and almost the entire class took the entire 3 hours and some still didn't finish. Despite it being open notes, I think you really had to know your stuff to be able to finish all of the problems. I highly recommend keeping up with the material (which the quizzes kind of help with), and utilizing the lecture notes he posts as well.

The prof. and the TAs cared a lot about student learning, but I thought the material was so dry and boring, it was really hard to have the motivation to study for this class. There is a fair bit of math involved, but most of it is just knowing where to plug numbers into equations. To succeed, I think you really have to place an emphasis on the theory behind the equations, not just knowing them. There were times the prof was a little confusing and hard to follow during lecture, but overall it wasn't that bad of a class.

There is a lot of opportunity to succeed in this class, as long as you have the motivation/discipline to learn the material well!

Prof Neuhauser is actually a very sweet man. However, his lectures will leave you lost. The first half of the class was manageable and I was able to teach myself along with my peers and I feel like most in the class were able to do ok on the quizzes and midterm. Average on the midterm was 66%, and then curved up.

The second half of the class was an absolute disaster and I had no clue what was going on after the midterm. The scheduling was absolutely terrible after the midterm. You won’t learn anything from the professor, you’ll learn everything from the TA, especially if you have Barry. Use his tutorial and discussions!

All in all, this wasn’t the worst class but it was still pretty awful teaching wise. Like I said, I had no clue what was going on after the midterm and have no idea how I did on the final, but still scored a B in the class so he’s definitely fair with curving. If you get stuck in this class, do the homework, go to Barry’s office hours and get the useful equations from him, and you’ll get through it.

His person: very unapproachable, he's too damn smart

Lecture: ZERO interaction with students, failed to explain things clearly most of the time

Midterm:
MT1)Avg: 63%
MT2)Avg: 49%
Final)Avg: 63%
My grade: A

MT1 covered the least amount of material so make sure you get good grade for it.

Proofs required!

He loves to put things up that are totally out of the blue, you can't do anything about it :(

Study tip:
1) Read course reader written by him, make sure you understand everything (quite readable)

2) Don't read textbook, only read section 2.9 and 3.4. Everything else in later chapters are pretty much useless & overly complicated

3) Again, concentrate on course reader & lecture notes NOT the text

4)Do extra problems that aren't assigned (esp. chpt 6,7,9,12)

5) Memorize proofs (the important ones). e.g. maxwell relation, derive equation for K & G for ideal gas, phase rule etc

There's a reader for this class. GET IT if you're taking this class with him. It's pretty helpful. The material for this class is very challenging. I think that's why a lot of people complain about him not being clear about thing during lecture. To do well in this class, you need to do more than attend lectures and doing the homework. Office hour is almost a must to do well. I learned a lot of interesting thing in this class and I really enjoyed it although I ended up with a B+ in the class. For the midterm, he gives you almost all the time there is in the world... well 3+ hrs. His final was a big challenging. But he's pretty fair at curving the class and such. Overall, this course was great, and I think Dr.Neuhauser does his best at teaching the subject. I would recommend taking the course with him.