Great all around

Great prof. not so great test maker:(

really cool prof, i enjoyed the teaching style...tests were pretty challenging though

This guy is awesome, best teacher i've encountered at Berkeley. Has awesome demos (blows stuff up a MINIMUM of one time per lecture) and explains the actual material fairly well also.

Best professor I've had so far in UCB

Great! Interesting and care about students

Very animated professor, fun to watch in lecture. His abundance of personality and charm make morning lectures remarkably easy to sit through, even exciting. APPROACHABLE; makes it a point to learn students' names that attend his office hours. Really cares about his students. Challenging tests.

saykally rocks! loves exploding things almost as much as you enjoy watching things explode. between the explosions, the brightly colored hawiian shirts, and the animated teaching style, saykally's class is definitely entertaning.tests are on the hard side but he makes the material fun.

Fun, enjoyable and clear lectures. Very cool guy. Tests are fair.

He is interesting and entertaining. He also goes a little crazy with the demos and usually has an explosive substance ready for the class to enjoy.

AWESOME-ness. His love and enthusiasm for teaching is apparent and almost contagious. I truly enjoyed attending his lectures. (The many demos didn't hurt either!)

LOVED him and his wardrobe

Awesome prof. Lectures are intense/interesting experiences - he ties real world into chem. Even w/ class size 1k+ he's totally approachable in office hours. He took entire class out to lunch in grps of 25+ to get to know us!!!

He was a really good teacher... i enjoyed his lectures and he explained things well. you have to read and make sure you kno the key ideas of each chapter. keep up with the reading and hw and you'll be fine. oh yea and he has really cool demo's...just be

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Saykally is awesome. Gotta love the chili pepper shirt.

Really cool guy, easy to listen to but to many examples and not enough teaching of concepts.

IT is a always an exciting lecture, careful in the front.

he tries very hard to make his lectures interesting with demonstrations and obnoxiously bad clothes. as for the content itself, most of the material you have to learn on your own and the lecture is basically ancillary material because he only goes over the basics in class.

Really fun class! Saykally explains fundamentals well and does a lot of example problems that are indicative of what will be on the midterms. Great personality, exciting explosions, applies chemistry to the real world, makes for an enjoyable class.

Great Professor; he knows how to keep us entertained

An entertaining professor who keeps the attention of the class while demonstrating some important concepts. Excellent overall. To get a good grade, just do your work--the reason people have trouble is because they slack off in the transition to college.

Funny guy with good demonstrations. His examples are helpful for the homework and stuff so use that to your advantage.

Chem 1A is a hard course, but Saykally is a great prof. He is fun, funny, interesting, and does great demonstrations (ie singing, blowing things up with regularity) which all serve to make the class period fly by. The tests, though, are HARD, as is the work load, and lab can be extremely boring. But Saykally is awesome! Such a cute older man!

Saykally is a really good professor. He's funny and likes to put music on. Great demonstrations, unfortunately some got banned by the dean. The class is requires you to study and know the material. Exams are moderately hard. He is a good choice for a professor.

this guy is the best professor in the worldd!! such a funny guy and gives fair tests. great teacher!

Saykally is more personal than Kubinec. Avail for office hours, very nice, and really cares, he really does. tests are all the same for chem 1a, they are hard, this class is hard, arguably the most difficult class at cal, arguably the most difficult chemistry class in the USA. consider that, it is a very tough class. Saykally is great.

very good teacher and very clear...only bad thing was that he had to go on like a 3 wk lecture tour during classes

Although the class is extremely difficult, Saykally made up for it. Lecture was always very entertaining, and he really cares about each student.

Saykally is an amusing lecturer, but lectures usually consisted of too many demos. The tests covered different material from the lectures so a lot of individual work and reading was required for the class. He's a good prof however & cares about his students and he likes to write on the blackboard.

very good professor. his explanations made sense and he had cool demos too! exams are hard and really tests knowledge of chem concepts.

Saykally is awesome! His lectures were helpful and explained things in a different way then the text. The tests were based off the lecture, but reading was also helpful. His tests were not very difficult, especially if you have a strong background in chemistry.

nice guy, entertaining. lectures were very interesting and engaging. tests are somewhat difficult (second midterm especially). just make sure to understand how to do everything in the homework and you'll do fine. it's also helpful to go to the SLC and office hours.

he was such a fun professor-- loved his demos, one of those professors who makes you realize it's not really about the grades, but really about learning the material

Great professor, very fun and entertaining. Demos are exciting and fun to watch. Occasionally mentions terms that are unrelated to lecture and unexplained. Exams are easy, final was extremely easy. Overall a good experience, try to get him for 1A!

He probably ranks as my second favorite professor at Berkeley (#1 is Alex Filippenko). He's a fun guy and always has cool demos. He also explains things well and writes everything out on the board. However, I found that towards the end of the class (quantam mechanics), his lectures became obtuse, so I watched Kubinec's lectures instead.

He's got a sense of humor, does great demos, and obviously enjoys teaching. He made me want to come to learn and come to lectures. Tests and assignments are about average difficulty. Overall, he's best professor I've had so far at Berkeley.

Weird class. He tried to get us interested in studying crystals by saying that they would improve our sex life. The material is very simple, but he likes to add random tangents. Textbook is awful! Office hours are useless because he just talks about his kids. Overall, he is a really good guy, though.

Fun guy, fun class. Saykally gives interesting lectures and tries to incorporate recent advances in chemistry into the course material. As lower division science courses go, this one isn't too hard. Tests are usually fair.

Grades very fairly, midterms are easy, final is hard. Interesting lectures, likes to blow stuff up

Good, interesting lecturer. Included lots of information about modern scientific applications. He also blew things up a lot. First 3 mid-terms weren't hard and followed his practice tests closely. However, his final was very difficult. Tip: facts in lecture that don't seem important (e.g. the entire C-N-O cycle, energy use statistics) will show up!

The best teacher out of three for the Fall 07 semester of Chem 4A. He knew his stuff, explained everything clearly, and made the class fun and engaging. I actually looked forward to going to this class everyday. Oh, and he likes to do fun demos.

Best professor for fall 07 4A. Engaging lectures with good presentation, at least one demo per class on average, manageable workload and a positive attitude. He has a lot of personality (although at times it can get a little irritating) and makes extra sure we get the core concepts.

I thought everybody was joking when they said he blows something up everyday but he quite literally does blow something up every day. Lecture is like a show for him and they're always entertaining and informative. He even plays music, pokes fun at other profs and is just generally awesome. I would recommend him to anyone; take one of his classes!

I failed this class, but I still liked it. This professor is a great person, and his lectures are clear, but he has a tendency to like to blow things up. Literally. He's great fun though, so you'll definitely be on your toes in his class.

His lectures cover only the bare basics of what you really need to know, but he's more helpful in office hours. Also, explosions are lovely.

Wonderful teacher. Lectures are interesting because he keeps the class involved and blows stuff up a lot. Easy to predict what will be on tests. Easier class than expected.

Competent, interesting, and had a good sense of humor. However, he placed too much of an emphasis on blowing things up which was interesting but not helpful. He was also too heavy on example problems, and did not discuss concepts enough. But ok overall. 7/10

Saykally's an enthusiastic professor who made class really interesting, not to mention his explosive demos at every lecture. His midterms were tough and he was a harsh grader, but good professor

Overall I enjoyed my time in Professor Saykally's class. He expected that you do the reading prior to lecture, overall making lecture and enjoyable experience. My only complaint was that he didn't do a very good explaining hybridization in the quantum section, something that was a large portion of our final. Manageable class if you put in the time.

Awesome lectures. Must read prior to class - he doesn't regurgitate text material. Brings examples from life around you into the lectures - makes what otherwise is dry material actually interesting.

I know people say that he is a harsh grader, but his lectures are really fun and interesting. He does a lot of problems on the blackboard in class-make sure you understand how to work out those problems. And do all the homework. The midterms are all based on those problems. Study and you'll be fine.

Saykally would spend most of the lectures going over slides and performing explosions. Reading the book is a must! He was helpful in office hours and also told us about his personal life. Saykally expects you to work hard. He chooses questions from his lecture and homework for the tests. Overall, an interesting Professor and class.

Saykally makes lectures lively and is a hilarious dude. I've actually never fallen asleep in his lectures (sometimes because of the explosions) but mainly because he doesn't just drone on and on in monotone with his presentations. Although I admit he doesn't go really in-depth into concepts and calculations, the GSIs make up for it.

Saykally is one of the best professors I have ever had. He makes you feel excited about Chemistry, his exuberance and easy-going style made me want to come to class. His asides, chemistry-related or not, were always interesting and relevant. He's a shining light to all teachers and I have the utmost respect for him.

A really good professor makes the usual harsh teaching styles of Berkeley so much livelier and happier :)

A really fun professor, I learned a lot:)

Such a great professor learned so much and prepared me so well for exams. Especially midterm 2. I hope he can be my professor for the rest of my life!

I had the honor of taking two courses taught by Richard J Saykally (4A, 4B). He is a wonderful lecturer. Every explosion was a masterpiece that kept the students on their toes. His lectures on quantum physics for Molecular Orbital Theory were literally the best lectures I have ever had. It made the second midterm of Chem 4A extraordinarily easy.