EGMT 1520

I would recommend this course to people who are genuinely interested in the Big Bang and who don't already know much about it. I had already taken some astronomy courses when I took this course, so I knew a lot of the material already, and as a result I sometimes got bored during the lectures. The class itself is not too hard: it was divided into seven topics, and for each topic we had to do a worksheet (which we worked on in groups) and a journal entry. There were some cool activities, like mapping galaxy distributions using excel. Professor Whittle clearly has put a lot of effort into designing the course, and he is very enthusiastic about it (to the point where lectures consistently ran over by five minutes). Basically, take this course if you're interested in the Big Bang; otherwise, take a different course.

This may come off as mean but is brutally honest. This course is an engagements course. Is it an introductory half semester course that is supposed to give you a brief overview of the topic. However, Professor Whittle dives right into the deep end. He does not teach you anything during the first two lectures and then gives you a complicated worksheet for of physics that you are "supposed to know how to do." Very few people know how to do it. Then comes the 6 other worksheets you have to do. Thankfully, I knew how to use excel, but literally only 5 people in the class knew how to use it and he never taught us a single lecture related to excel. This is a class where everything is expected to be prior knowledge, not what the engagements should be. Do not take this class, it is a ridiculous about of work for ONLY 2 CREDITS and will drop your gpa as well.