Fall 2026

Biophysical Spectroscopy

CHEM 668 teaches principles and applications of spectroscopic and microscopy methods for biological problems at the atomic and molecular level.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Fall 2026 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 5

Historical reviews of Silvia Cavagnero: The course demands substantial evening and weekend study to keep up with the volume of material. Workload includes frequent homework that some students find unrelated to lectures, alongside reading papers and notes.

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Graduate/professional standing

  • Graduate/professional standing
CHEM 668

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Graduate/professional standing

Professors

Fall 2026

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Historical reviews of Silvia Cavagnero: Silvia Cavagnero teaches CHEM 668, a spectroscopy survey course. Reviewers praise her responsiveness, patience, and willingness to facilitate learning, noting that lectures often align with homework and office hours are useful. Conversely, some students find the material superficial, the math incomplete, and the teaching style confusing or reliant on reading slides.

SILVIA CAVAGNERO is recorded teaching in Fall 2013, Fall 2015, Fall 2017, Fall 2019, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Fall 2026

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SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records

No records available.

Student experience

the class

Historical reviews of Silvia Cavagnero: Silvia Cavagnero teaches a useful spectroscopy survey where students report learning significant material despite the course's breadth. Reviewers highlight her patience, helpfulness, and emphasis on facilitating student success.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.67 GPA, 76.7% A/AB (n=30 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.87 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=31 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.74 GPA, 90.3% A/AB (n=31 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Historical reviews of Silvia Cavagnero: The course demands substantial evening and weekend study to keep up with the volume of material. Workload includes frequent homework that some students find unrelated to lectures, alongside reading papers and notes.

Historical reviews of Silvia Cavagnero: Some students find the lectures confusing, citing incomplete math, unclear slides, and disjointed resources. One review describes the course as confusing, while another criticizes the use of PowerPoint and reading from slides.

Topics

  • Electronic absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy
  • Circular dichroism
  • Light scattering
  • Fluorescence microscopy
  • Multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance
  • Electron spin resonance

Skills

  • Applying spectroscopic and microscopy methods to biological problems
  • Solving biological problems at the atomic and molecular level

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Fall 2026.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1320 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
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Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

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Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-09-07

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
nvidia/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "nvidia/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4",
  "model_revision": "1355db6a052410cfd62085d94b58866fd0f2c3c5",
  "task_version": "14",
  "output_id": "14fa32859b1226a8946b7be740f7f2a5151422b98c04f744f056304763c57954",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "e243353dcb7d79b7247ced91d69443ef4c2a6349",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-07 15:55:43.033547+00:00"
}