Professor
Pei-Yu Chiou
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Unlike what others said, I didn't find this class to be super easy but I did find it to be okay, just your typical upper div. It was composed of 3 quizzes (36%) with the lowest being dropped, a lab report(4%), lab attendance (10%), and a final (50%). The quizzes were almost identical to the sample problems he posted, with one or two questions being different. They were for the most part pretty straightforward and fair. Lab was also straightforward and fun; there were only 6 labs so you finish by week 6 and only the last two labs took up the full 4 hours, as well as the lab report. It was around 8-10 pages max and really easy since you had 3 other people work on it. As for the final, pay attention to what the professor says will be on it, for us, he said it would be composed of Quizzes 1-3 and questions from the last couple of lectures and thats exactly what it was on. I ended up doing pretty good on it. Now, to save you some time and to save others some time, I made this list of what you should focus on studying: 1. Focus on the practice problems first and foremost. If you understand all of these then you'll get at least a B on the quizzes / final 2. Understand the concepts on the lecture notes, there is NO NEED to memorize EVERYTHING. I spent the whole quarter memorizing most of the lectures and tbh it never really paid off. But DO memorize important things from the lectures. For example, in the wet etching lecture memorize what chemical etches what (Ex: HF Acid etches SiO2 and glass and is isotropic, KOH etches Single Crystal Silicon and is Anisotropic). 3. Completely okay to miss some lectures, he posts recordings. But if you can try not to miss them, he sometimes does work on the whiteboard that is not showcased on the recording and saves a lot of time when going through problems. And lectures are only roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes anyway I would recommend taking this class as an elective or a class instead of 183A ! Good luck :)
Fall 2023 - Unlike what others said, I didn't find this class to be super easy but I did find it to be okay, just your typical upper div. It was composed of 3 quizzes (36%) with the lowest being dropped, a lab report(4%), lab attendance (10%), and a final (50%). The quizzes were almost identical to the sample problems he posted, with one or two questions being different. They were for the most part pretty straightforward and fair. Lab was also straightforward and fun; there were only 6 labs so you finish by week 6 and only the last two labs took up the full 4 hours, as well as the lab report. It was around 8-10 pages max and really easy since you had 3 other people work on it. As for the final, pay attention to what the professor says will be on it, for us, he said it would be composed of Quizzes 1-3 and questions from the last couple of lectures and thats exactly what it was on. I ended up doing pretty good on it. Now, to save you some time and to save others some time, I made this list of what you should focus on studying: 1. Focus on the practice problems first and foremost. If you understand all of these then you'll get at least a B on the quizzes / final 2. Understand the concepts on the lecture notes, there is NO NEED to memorize EVERYTHING. I spent the whole quarter memorizing most of the lectures and tbh it never really paid off. But DO memorize important things from the lectures. For example, in the wet etching lecture memorize what chemical etches what (Ex: HF Acid etches SiO2 and glass and is isotropic, KOH etches Single Crystal Silicon and is Anisotropic). 3. Completely okay to miss some lectures, he posts recordings. But if you can try not to miss them, he sometimes does work on the whiteboard that is not showcased on the recording and saves a lot of time when going through problems. And lectures are only roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes anyway I would recommend taking this class as an elective or a class instead of 183A ! Good luck :)
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Professor Chiou doesn't teach you much about Optics. At times it's not even enough to do the homework or exams, and the information you need isn't included in the slides, lectures, or even textbook. You have to piece everything together from past homework solutions, past exam solutions (which have little or no information), or random physics forums, while the professor claims everything is in the slides. At least the grading curve is good (undergrads & grads are curved separately, average for both is an A-).
Spring 2024 - Professor Chiou doesn't teach you much about Optics. At times it's not even enough to do the homework or exams, and the information you need isn't included in the slides, lectures, or even textbook. You have to piece everything together from past homework solutions, past exam solutions (which have little or no information), or random physics forums, while the professor claims everything is in the slides. At least the grading curve is good (undergrads & grads are curved separately, average for both is an A-).
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