CHEM 3410

I cannot say enough good things about this class!! YES, it is INSANELY challenging, but if you work hard you will get a good grade. Professor Gahlmann is WONDERFUL -- by far my favorite professor at UVA. He is a literal freaking genius and it's amazing.

We got to drop 1 midterm out of 3 (midterms made up 45% of the grade), which was great because the first exam was INSANELY hard because we were just a few weeks into the semester, still learning about what quantum mechanics even was, and we had no idea the test format. I am a slow test taker, and every exam Gahlmann let me use more time than the technical allotted time. Before every exam he gave us a couple of exam hints -- eg. "study the Frank Condon principle" or "know the hydrogen atom derivation very well."

The homework is worth 30%. Grades on this were generally between 80-90. If you spend a lot of time on it, you can get a 100s though. VERY time consuming homework. A few tips --> work with classmates (you are allowed to do this), ask for help in office hours, START EARLY. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE DEADLINE TO START WORKING -- the homework can take up to a dozen hours.

The class is curved, so as long as you are above average you are totally fine. This is by far the hardest class I've ever taken and I got a way better grade than I got in orgo, orgo lab, etc.

Professor Gahlmann is super nice and helpful. I love him as a professor. If you want to know something, don't be afraid to ask -- ask how many questions are on the exam, ask what you need to know for the exam, etc -- he will tell you. If a lot of people in the class have an exam in another class on the same day the homework is due, just mention it to Gahlmann in class and he will move the homework date for the entire class back by a couple days. It's great!!

We watched pre-recorded lectures every day before class, and then we came to class to work problems, ask questions, and go more in-depth. This format was awesome, and enabled students to better understand the material.

Textbook....DO NOT BUY THE TEXTBOOK. It is insanely expensive, and it is free as a pdf online. There is also a free solutions manual pdf online. The textbook is dense and confusing, so I wouldn't read it until after you have learned the material in class. (I didn't read it at all, and I did just fine). DEFINITELY DO THE PRACTICE PROBLEMS IN THE TEXTBOOK. They are helpful, even if just to familiarize you with when to do integrals, etc for quantum mechanics.

Overall, this class is super cool, you learn a ton of fascinating stuff (like how and why the chemical bond is stable -- they never taught us that in gen chem). Professor Gahlmann is great!!

Overall, don't know how to feel about this class. I walked in knowing nothing about quantum theory, walked away with an A-, still feeling that I didn't know much about quantum theory, but appreciate the effort made by Prof Gahlmann. Gahlmann is a clear lecturer, really cares about his students, and is very willing to help out if you reach out outside of class- use his office hours!!

Since COVID, Gahlmann has made some changes in the structure of the course. Despite having in-person lectures, he kept the recorded lectures from the previous year and had us watch those prior to coming to class. He used in-person class as an open discussion/ Q&A session. While the in-person sessions were rarely helpful (by the end, less than half the class was showing up), I liked having the lectures online as you could learn the material at your own pace.

There were problem sets due every few weeks that were usually pretty time-consuming, but you can work in groups so they were never too unreasonable, with average grades around an A. We had 3 in-person exams throughout the course in addition to a cumulative final, and he let us drop our lowest exam grade. In the moment I hated the exams (~65% avg), but looking back, they actually weren't too bad, I just didn't know how to study. It's pretty hard to do well based on just the lecture information alone and he doesn't test on the HW material (which makes no sense, I know). In lectures, he never goes through practice problems/ application of the content, so I would definitely recommend doing the practice problems at the end of the textbook chapters, and if you have time, reading the textbook. A lot of the time, he would pull exam/ homework questions directly from the textbook, so definitely worth the read.

My main issue with the course was the organization. We didn't have set dates for any of the exams/HW sets, and he would often forget to post the weekly schedules with assignments/post the wrong dates. That being said, Gahlmann was super nice, understanding, and clearly wanted to structure the course around what worked best for us. I think he did the best he could considering the difficulty of the topic, and he made clear efforts throughout the semester to mold the course to best fit us. Despite most people having not-so-great grades during the semester, he generously curved the class average up to a B+ at the end.

He relies on the TAs to create the biweekly problem sets and exams, so the difficulty of the class really depends on them. The final grade is curved though, so as long you're about average in the class you should be fine. One in-class exam and one take-home (which is significantly harder), then an in-class final. Gahlmann is very nice and very good at answering questions, and I found office hours very helpful. He teaches straight out of the textbook by McQuarrie and Simon. The textbook is useful when studying for exams and working on problem sets, so definitely buy it or find it online. You're also allowed to work on the problem sets with others which is a literal lifesaver, don't try and do them alone

Terrible class. Where to even start...
Galmann seemed to know pchem really well, but this did not translate into good lectures. They were very uninformative theory derivation sessions pretty much copied from the optional text book (the main textbook was completely ignored for the most part??). Not a single example all semester on how to actually apply the theory to do some problems that would be on the problem sets or exams.
Problem sets were utterly stupid. Some questions were things you learned how to do in gen chem, other things required an understanding of classes you haven't taken. Very few dealt with things actually taught in class. The only way to get a good grade on these is to go to TA office hours and goad the answers out of them. Exams were much the same way, except you couldn't ask TAs.
Galmann also gave the impression of being a very lazy professor. The problem sets AND EXAMS were written by TAs... Discussions were a waste of time and it was evident that Galmann did not coordinate with his TAs at all.

Prof. Gahlmann is very knowledgeable and friendly, and is an interesting lecturer, but the majority of the lectures are irrelevant to the class. Most lectures are spent doing long derivations, which you will not need to know at any point. That being said, I would still recommend going to the lectures. This class was strange, in that the actual exams weren't incredibly difficult (if you were familiar with the material, there wasn't a whole lot of extrapolation), but the problem sets were totally ridiculous. I ended up with an A- in the class, and I regret not milking the problem sets for every point that I could get. There will be 3 tests (one is a takehome which takes 25-30+ hours), and 5 problem sets, which take at least 20-30 hours of straight work, not counting the time spent collaborating with others. You are allowed to work with a group on the problem sets, which helps a lot, but they are still really really tough. The TAs write and grade all of the psets and exams, but are incredibly helpful if you go to them. Alex and Supraja may have been the most knowledgeable and useful TAs I've ever had, although Sydney was by far the most clueless TA I've ever had. Overall, this class is a lot of work, both for the homework and the huge quantity of time you'll need to spend studying for each exam, but is fairly enjoyable. I heard that Egorov's class was easier, but that he is harder to understand, so I suppose that should be considered. None of the material in this class will ever be applicable again to any other class or situation, but was interesting at times. The entire class is basically just solving Schrodinger's equation in different scenarios. A gripe that many had with this class is that it states that only up to Calc 2 is required, but you'll end up having to use spherical coordinates and matrices and other higher-level math on occasion. I don't want the tone of this review to be negative, as the class was overall pretty good, but make sure that you are aware of what you're in for.

I had Gahlmann his first semester teaching and while there were some slip-ups, overall he did an excellent job of explaining the material in an accessible manner. The problem sets aren't too bad since you can work in groups. The tests are really difficult and the averages tend to be very low but everyone else is struggling too so the curve will probably help you. Gahlmann was MUCH better than Metcalf second semester.