Prof Pang is such a great professor. This class was completely online so naturally we couldn't do the experiments. He showed us videos of each experiment (which all looked really fun to do in person) which were made by different students in the past. They were funny in a weird way because the music varied from monotoned voice overs to an anime medley but overall the class was really straightforward.
We had a prelab and post lab each week with one midterm, a final, and a writing assignment. Everything was pretty easy since everything was just on the slides that he gave. Definitely take this class during remote learning if you don't want to think/stress out but the experiments looks pretty fun to do in person if you can take it then.

This class had a fairly easy workload. The midterm and final only accounted for about 20% of the total grade so completing the pre and post labs is the main part of this course. Some concepts are recycled from 20L and there is very little organic synthesis. Like most labs your experience depends on the TA.

Professor Pang is very clear and helpful, and the class is very straightforward. However, if the concepts in this class will be critical to your major, I would wait to take it in person. Taking it online is mostly just learning the analysis/concepts, but its impossible to gain any lab experience, though this is not Pang's fault and theres really nothing he can do about it. For the circumstances, he is doing a good job and if you want to just get it over with go ahead and take it.

I took this class spring 2020 when all classes were online. Pang and the TA's try hard to make good lecture material and videos of the experiments, however I learned next to nothing. I only skimmed slides for the worksheet answers and didn't listen to him talk or watch all of the videos. The grade was almost all worksheet based so the class was merely busy work finding the answers in the slides. I also took Pang for 20L and he is a great guy, but lab classes online are impossible to do correctly and I didn't learn much. The class is an easy A so if you don't what to spend 3 hours in lab take it online right now.

Although the pandemic has consumed Spring Quarter 2020, Professor Pang has done an amazing job in helping his students navigate past this. Lectures were based on PowerPoint slides with no live lecture and he also had you complete weekly labs which included both pre-lab and post-lab material. CHEM 30AL also had two quizzes (which I believe was used to compensate for the midterm and final) and a paper to write. Lectures, lab homework, and quizzes were fairly do-able despite the huge amount of stress. As the quarter progressed, some problems arose in the world which included but not limited to the protests and the pandemic. Professor Pang did as much as he could throughout the quarter to ensure his students were relieved of stress and the last two assignments (the final quiz and last lab homework) he decided to remove quiz two from the course and have the last homework as optional extra credit. From a student that has been working full-time during the pandemic, Pang really cared about our well-being and I am eternally grateful for him. He posted three ways he would grade the course and out of the three the highest will be your final grade, he said himself "I understand that the COVID-19 and the current social and political climate has adversely affected many of you academically and emotionally during the quarter. Unlike many other classes, I believe there are more than enough graded work (18 worksheets, 1 quiz and 1 writing assignment) in this course to provide an adequate evaluation of a student work." Thank you, Professor Pang for everything you've done to ensure your students mental well-being throughout Spring 2020.

Pang isn't as godly as everyone here makes him to be. He's still pretty damn good, and knows how to do his job well and teach. If you took Chem 20L with him, expect the same thing, but double. There's 2 labs per week, almost all of them with a pre-lab report and post-lab report. There's lecture once per week as well, with Pang handing out PowerPoints to follow along.

Pang is still, as always, organized as ever on CCLE, giving you everything you need. I would highly recommend buying a lab report off someone else because they can come in handy when it comes to some of the calculations on the pre-lab/post-lab. Pang also uploads a practice final and midterm a week before the examination. The midterm was pretty chill, but the final was almost impossible to do due to it's difficulty. Definitely study the PowerPoints, because those can be a huge help. I would highly recommend taking this class alongside Chem 30B, because of the content overlap, making this class easier.

The first 8 weeks are pretty much the same thing, but the lab soil project is where things get incredibly difficult. You are paired with 3 other people, and have 2 weeks to separate and identify the inorganic/organic compounds in a soil mixture, using the techniques you learned in during the first 8 weeks of the course. Much of the final has questions that relate to the soil lab, so do yourself a favor and TRULY understand the chemistry behind the lab, and you should be fine.

Johnny Pang is the man. Take him, you will not regret it. He is probably one of the most empathetic teachers to exist on South Campus. I really liked that unlike 20L. the 30AL exams are more concept-based rather than math heavy. He is very approachable and friendly. The soil project can be stressful depending on how prepared you are for each day. My group kind of wasted our first two days because we weren't prepared. You get four lab periods to do the soil lab. My advice is not to waste time and prepare a detailed procedure for the first day of lab in case you have mistakes down the road that causes you to have to redo things. But overall, I would say this class was not too difficult, but you certainly can't sleep through this class.

My biggest recommendation to someone taking this class is that you MUST take it concurrently with Chem 30B or do Chem 30B during the summer beforehand. Why? Because Chem 30B will spend 1/3 of the quarter/session covering IR, NMR, and Mass Spec in depth. In Chem 30AL, you will slowly encounter it, and by the midterm you will be required to do IR problems. By the final you will need to know Carbon 13, Mass Spec, and IR. If you take Chem 30B, all of this stuff is absolutely trivial, making the last half of the quarter extremely easy because you'll need to do less work, granted you tried to learn it during Chem 30B.

If you don't heed my advice, you'll spend more time trying to master the material, even though Pang gives you less practice and in depth info due to lack of time in the quarter. This did not stop him from dropping the hardest spectroscopy question I've seen, harder than Merlic's exam's and practice problems. It was hard due to limited info provided, since you do not have time to learn proton NMR (the molecule was Maltol for reference).

The Soil Project was honestly not that bad as previous reviewers were saying. I was under the impression that it was this ominous beast at the end of the quarter. The lab itself is just a shitton of extractions and then measurements. The lab report admittedly took a long time. This year we had the Skirball fire near Bel Air, so school was cancelled giving us extra time to spread out our work and finish, but even still most of the work to do on the lab report is formatting and typing out calculations. There is little to no brainpower involved in writing of the lab report. The tricky part imo is the presentation since that one depends more on group members.

An additional note on the soil project, and all the labs in general, Pang cares more about the fact that you know what you're doing more than if you were successful or not. I believe very few labs care about yield and yes the Soil Project demands that you correctly identify your compounds, but worry more about getting it done and learning it.

On the final, and he did this for 20L, make sure to go over your labs. Understand everything you did and why, because he has an entire "question" with a bunch of little questions asking technical info about why you do certain things (i.e. which solvent do you select for UV/VIS etc.)

Hopefully you took Pang for 20L, if you didn't then get prepared for one of the best and kindest professors on campus. This dude is awesome and he's always willing to help. This is the last gen chem class you should be taking, so the material by now should be super easy, just beware his tests as usual, they are tricky fuckers.

Pang is definitely a great professor! If you had him for 20L, then you’ll probably want to take him again for this course. He is extremely caring and extremely organized. You know exactly what you’re supposed to do and he provides plenty of resources for your success. Pang is beloved by many for his engaging lectures and doing something that gets a laugh or an “Awwww.” You feel a lot more emotion in Johnny Pang’s class than a typical class. He gave out little mole stuffed balls for students who scored high on exams, he gave us chocolates for Halloween, he gave us lucky light sticks for good luck, the list goes on and on. I don’t know the exact wording, but he always say something that makes you go “Awww Johnny Pang…” with a wide smile. As for the actual labs, they were much more fun than Chem 20L. Sure you have to come into lab twice a week, but the labs are more advanced and much less “teach you fundamental lab skills about pipetting” type labs, and thus are much more fun. The pre-labs and post-labs are a piece of cake like usual. Workload really isn’t that bad. I definitely recommend taking Chem 30B with this class concurrently because it makes so many topics on the midterm and final so much easier. As for the midterm, the averages were in the mid 70s which wasn’t too bad, but it was conceptually focused with little math involved. As for the final, it was similar to the midterm in the sense that there were very few math problems, but many theory questions, such as what was the purpose of doing each step in the labs we did earlier in the quarter. The very last question was a super weird “identify the compound” type problem that no one could get. It was pretty easy to figure out the actual compound, but it just had the weirdest fragmentation pattern that left so much doubt in people. Other than the last problem, the exam was standard and similar to 20L exams. Very fair exams. However, it all comes back to the soil project. I did not have a fun time with the soil project, and it was a struggle working with my group. Things will vanish on you (quite literally, watch out for the boiling point of your organic compound!), and you will spend many nights complaining about your groupmates. You will stay up late working on your 20 or so page lab report that you work on essentially by yourself, and worry about being ripped to shreds by Pang during the presentation. He was actually pretty nice and understanding with the presentation though. For him, it wasn't about identifying the compounds, but going through the research experience mindset. And I agree! It was a good learning experience in terms of working with others, comparing experimental results to theoretical results, and combining all of the knowledge from the quarter. I think that it was a fair examination type, but groups definitely performed differently depending on who was in each group and how many members each group had. However, this isn’t Pang’s fault. He tried to pair people based on skill level and midterm score, but it can be deceptive, as anyone can follow the lab manual pretty easily. Although I did not enjoy the experience of the soil project, I know that I will look back on the project and appreciate having to think very critically and analytically about why my theoretically sound procedures were not working and having to balance very different types of group members with different levels of commitment to the project and skill level. It was a tough end project. I definitely stressed out a lot, but I’ll come back to it again as it was a good learning experience. I would definitely take the course with Pang and would recommend Pang to others. As for grading, around 56% of students ended up with some form of an A with the class average being an 87%. The final average was around a 70ish, and the class is straight scale, but he made the writing assignment extra credit this year, so everyone had the chance for 20 or so points to boost their grade, which really helped a lot of people jump into the A range. That was very generous of him, and I'm sure that many students really appreciated it. Strong professor, very capable lecturer, and very clear and organized. Would take again. Don’t underestimate the soil project!

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