PHYSICS 131
Mathematical Methods of Physics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisites: courses 1A, 1B, and 1C (or 1AH, 1BH, and 1CH), Mathematics 32B, 33A, 33B. Vectors and fields in space, linear transformations, matrices, and operators; Fourier series and integrals. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2023 - This class is definitely a tough class. Putterman is a pretty engaging lecture and often fun; he really cares about his students understanding of the material. Despite this, there are times where he does cover topics pretty fast in lecture and it often goes above other students' head, mine included. This class had pretty tough material to cover, ranging from the wave equation in multiple dimension + separation of variables, Fourier series and transforms, bessel series, PDEs, and complex analysis. The hws and exams are pretty difficult as well, but Putterman generously curves the class. One thing to note though is that his lectures are not recorded and notes are usually not posted (with the exceptions of pictures of the whiteboard). I do recommend that you attend lecture as I found that more helpful than just looking at pictures of the whiteboard.
Spring 2023 - This class is definitely a tough class. Putterman is a pretty engaging lecture and often fun; he really cares about his students understanding of the material. Despite this, there are times where he does cover topics pretty fast in lecture and it often goes above other students' head, mine included. This class had pretty tough material to cover, ranging from the wave equation in multiple dimension + separation of variables, Fourier series and transforms, bessel series, PDEs, and complex analysis. The hws and exams are pretty difficult as well, but Putterman generously curves the class. One thing to note though is that his lectures are not recorded and notes are usually not posted (with the exceptions of pictures of the whiteboard). I do recommend that you attend lecture as I found that more helpful than just looking at pictures of the whiteboard.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2016 - Samani is a really good lecturer and teacher. His lectures are interesting and he stays on topic in class. He also wrote his own lecture notes for this class which replaced the need for a textbook. His notes are actually pretty short, but very concise and basically everything you need to know for the tests. With that said, his tests are still pretty hard. Great professor overall.
Fall 2016 - Samani is a really good lecturer and teacher. His lectures are interesting and he stays on topic in class. He also wrote his own lecture notes for this class which replaced the need for a textbook. His notes are actually pretty short, but very concise and basically everything you need to know for the tests. With that said, his tests are still pretty hard. Great professor overall.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2020 - Here's my advice for this class: don't take this class. Prof Wang could NOT care less about her students and I learned nothing from her. She reads her lecture notes to us by scrolling through a pdf of her scanned notes from years ago, which is just a harder to read version of the textbook. If you care about your education at all, don't do it, I don't even know what else to say because this quarter had me speechless. I'll summarize: -she's almost always late to class, record being 20 minutes or something -class just cuts out sometimes because of her internet issues, and she will tell you she's going to upload a recording for you to watch, but she won't -doesn't show up to her OH sometimes -cancelled class two(?) times for unknown reasons even though we ended up being so behind that she dropped the whole unit of tensor analysis -spent half a quarter on math 32 stuff which everyone already learned, rushed through Fourier/Laplace which is new, dropped everything else (tensors, PDEs, etc.) Basically all you have to do in this class is skim the textbook before exams and do the HW since most of the quarter is review. I can't think of a single reason why you would take this class with her unless this is the last class you need to graduate and you just want an easy A.
Fall 2020 - Here's my advice for this class: don't take this class. Prof Wang could NOT care less about her students and I learned nothing from her. She reads her lecture notes to us by scrolling through a pdf of her scanned notes from years ago, which is just a harder to read version of the textbook. If you care about your education at all, don't do it, I don't even know what else to say because this quarter had me speechless. I'll summarize: -she's almost always late to class, record being 20 minutes or something -class just cuts out sometimes because of her internet issues, and she will tell you she's going to upload a recording for you to watch, but she won't -doesn't show up to her OH sometimes -cancelled class two(?) times for unknown reasons even though we ended up being so behind that she dropped the whole unit of tensor analysis -spent half a quarter on math 32 stuff which everyone already learned, rushed through Fourier/Laplace which is new, dropped everything else (tensors, PDEs, etc.) Basically all you have to do in this class is skim the textbook before exams and do the HW since most of the quarter is review. I can't think of a single reason why you would take this class with her unless this is the last class you need to graduate and you just want an easy A.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Professor Zocchi wasn’t necessarily the best, but the course is pretty manageable if you have access to solutions from previous quarters (which I didn’t have personally). The HW is not straight from a textbook, so you can’t look up the solutions apart from possibly incorrect answers off Chegg. If you know the HW in detail, then the midterm is not so bad. It helps tremendously having old exams since some elements may be unchanged. The final exam was fairly similar to the provided practice problems, so make sure to know them by heart as well as all the homework if you have sufficient time. Selling a collection of past exams with full midterm solutions and the practice final, homework solutions, and highly organized course materials including lecture notes and grade distributions. *************
Winter 2019 - Professor Zocchi wasn’t necessarily the best, but the course is pretty manageable if you have access to solutions from previous quarters (which I didn’t have personally). The HW is not straight from a textbook, so you can’t look up the solutions apart from possibly incorrect answers off Chegg. If you know the HW in detail, then the midterm is not so bad. It helps tremendously having old exams since some elements may be unchanged. The final exam was fairly similar to the provided practice problems, so make sure to know them by heart as well as all the homework if you have sufficient time. Selling a collection of past exams with full midterm solutions and the practice final, homework solutions, and highly organized course materials including lecture notes and grade distributions. *************
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