LOVE THIS CLASS. Well, that's just my extremely biased personal opinion as a hardcore planetary science enthusiast :333
So pardon me for heavily skewing this rating. Anyhoooowwwwww......

First thing to talk about is the course content. Since planetary physics is quite a broad field of study, Cao tries his best to cover most of it. He goes quite in depth and covers rather obscure, mathematically-heavy topics like the J2 coefficient, Rayleigh and Nusselt numbers, and hydrodynamic scattering dedicates multiple slides for these during lectures. Reasonably, he does not assign these topics as problems for homework (and perhaps not exams?), but I feel like more could be done into integrating these topics more into the course without leaving them out as "fluff" material. In my experience, it felt like this class spent too long covering orbital mechanics (1 whole week), which left not enough room to introduce the aforementioned obscure topics in a reasonable matter. It didn't help that Cao's scheduled absences reduced the amount of material we could cover. Regardless, the depth of the material was satisfying enough for me.

Cao's presentation of the slides makes this whole class a very chill experience, though due to the long class length, it does drag on and feel monotonous. Thankfully Cao introduces 5 minute breaks in the middle of the class, so I don't end up sleeping or fatiguing in attention. Not sure if 5 minutes is long enough for others, but to me it was fine.

I really liked the final presentation project---though initially intimidating because it was introduced immediately at the beginning of class, the assignment was actually quite lenient with many topics to choose. I appreciate Cao for being very supportive of my ideas for this project, and very helpful via emails and office hours. The amount of help opportunities with Cao's two office hours and email availability is beyond what I would ask for, and that's awesome.

The homework is challenging as it requires some of the more advanced equations and concepts shown in lecture alongside your own critical thinking to connect these together. The homework focuses on exploring specific concepts in depth while also being short, so it doesn't cover most stuff from lecture however. Luckily, the homework is nowhere near as hard as the exams, which offer much more basic questions with the aid of a calculator and equations sheet either brought by you or Cao himself.