Gave great engaging lectures with many interesting applications of the material we were learning. Probably will prepare you worse for ochem, but you'll have a nicer time in this course. I agree with one of the reviews that he does have a little bit of a tendency to talk down to you if you are not understanding it at his level. Very knowledgeable!

The best professors I had in UCSB. His lectures inspire you to think. Compared to other professors of general chemistry he does not focus on teaching calculations. The exams are easy.

He's a hilarious guy and really passionate about chemistry. He does go on tangents, and it slowed us down, but it was worth it because lectures were so much fun. Reading the book will give you a good backbone. The tests were easy, barely had to study. You might be less prepared by this than the regular lecture but just self-study and enjoy it :)

Ram is super enthusiastic about teaching, and it makes the class fun. He goes off topic fairly often, but the digressions are usually pretty interesting, and he still manages to cover the material you need for tests. Tests were also very easy. Homework was written by the TAs, so it was often quite difficult.

This class was basically a loosely structured flow of topics he finds interesting about materials (most notably his strange obsession with perovskites), without ever going into much detail. It's without a doubt the easiest block of credits I took for the materials PhD program. Expect lectures in a stream of consciousness style.

He is an amazing lecturer who has a lot of passion about the subject. He is funny and ridiculously knowledgable. The only drawbacks are his tendency to speak down to students when they don't understand something . Also, the homework is graded very harshly, but that may have been our TA.