PHYSICS 1C
Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Electrodynamics, Optics, and Special Relativity
Description: Lecture/demonstration, four hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: course 1A, 1B, Mathematics 32A, 32B. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 33A. Magnetic fields, Ampere's law, Faraday's law, inductance, and alternating current circuits. Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic waves, light, geometrical optics, interference and diffraction. Special relativity. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2022 - Profesor Larkin is VERY smart, but his lectures are structured completely around conceptual ideas, yet his exams are all problem-solving. It makes no sense how we are actually supposed to learn and practice the problem-solving. He maybe walked through a total of 10 problems the entire quarter. The homework also was not helpful and made us work through problems for hours that were not even included in the lectures. He was quite rude over email. The exams are difficult for no reason and include deep analysis and revision on variables we didn't cover in class, and he just expects you to know how to set them up. The TA's reviewed problems that didn't even appear on the exam. This is one of the hardest classes I have ever taken. There are much easier physics professors out there. Save yourself.
Fall 2022 - Profesor Larkin is VERY smart, but his lectures are structured completely around conceptual ideas, yet his exams are all problem-solving. It makes no sense how we are actually supposed to learn and practice the problem-solving. He maybe walked through a total of 10 problems the entire quarter. The homework also was not helpful and made us work through problems for hours that were not even included in the lectures. He was quite rude over email. The exams are difficult for no reason and include deep analysis and revision on variables we didn't cover in class, and he just expects you to know how to set them up. The TA's reviewed problems that didn't even appear on the exam. This is one of the hardest classes I have ever taken. There are much easier physics professors out there. Save yourself.
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Spring 2024 - Personally, I disagree with the reviews below this one. McKeown's an interesting, quirky, and cool guy, but his class is interesting (in a bad way). I normally don't write bruinwalk reviews but felt the need for this one because the professor could make a lot of adjustments to make the class even better. Out of all of the physics classes I've taken, his class was the easiest, yet I managed to do the worst in it, which I think this is due to the way the class is taught and ran. His slides are an absolute mess. Slides are supposed to supplement the textbook, summarize the material, and make learning easier for students. His slides are literally just screenshots of every paragraph in the textbook, and the textbook is relatively mediocre at explaining concepts. Screenshots normally don't bother me but when your powerpoints are over 100 slides long just to explain a concept that can be explained in a few bullet points, I have to reconsider. The lack of effort put into these slides is especially annoying during lecture as he just reads off of them. The textbook will occasionally talk about deriving an equation by "adding equation 32.21 and 32.18" and he will just screenshot that and read it word for word during lecture... How are we supposed to know what equation 32.21 and 32.18 are!? It would really help if he wrote his own notes instead of reading off his screenshots from the textbook as he is not that bad at explaining some things. Now, let's talk discussion. I normally go to every discussion for every, single class I take, but this class managed to discourage me from going to discussion. Discussion does not add anything really to McKeown's class. The TA just retypes homework questions in LaTeX and tells us to work on problems. I could see it as helpful if you're not finished with the homework, but if you are, there is really no point in going. It would be nice if new, original problems were written that were a bit more challenging to students rather than something we could just find by scrolling the homework. That way, we would actually be learning some new applications and skills that could help us in our upper divisions. Lastly, I do not like the tests in this class. Tests seem to just be measuring if we can convert units. Seriously, I think some of his questions are pulled from the textbook as they have so little to do with physics and rely more so on unit conversion and plug and chug (this isn't a high-school chemistry test on dimensional analysis). The exams would be a lot better if they were just in terms of variables. Myself, and a lot of other students, have lost many points due to calculator and unit errors, which is pretty dumb as that doesn't test our ability to understand physics but rather out ability to use a calculator and convert units. Tests are also pretty poorly formatted. I don't know why he writes them the way he does, but everything just looks like its screenshotted from the textbook and pasted into a google doc. For example, sometimes he pastes the figure in the middle of the question and his questions usually either give too much room for work, or not enough. He gives designated space for each question which is nice, but I think it would be easier if he just wrote the question at the top of one page, and gave us space underneath it so that one question takes up one page and we wouldn't have to flip back and forth. It would also really help if he used equation editor (not a joke). McKeown's tests are some of the most poorly formatted/ugly exams I have seen; they hurt to look at. Text is unnecessary big and any values or variables given are not typed into equation editor so they look extremely messy and hard to read (ex. m_electron = 9.109x10^-31kg is something you'll have to get used to dealing with and reading). McKeown often also stresses that the average for the class should be around a B-, and his tests get him there but not in the way they should. Instead of making questions difficult and more physics-oriented, the points you lose seem to come from calculation mistakes and incorrect units. I don't think it makes sense if your class average is reached not because the concepts tested were hard but rather because your students made mistakes because the units given on a test were funky. Advice for future students: take McKeown if you want a fair, easygoing professor, but don't expect to learn the concepts as well as students who take it with other professors. I personally regret taking it with McKeown as I feel as if I learned more on my own from videos and from just doing the homework than from the professor himself. Unless he changes his ways, I would recommend to suffer a little more and take a different professor as you'll learn the concepts better.
Spring 2024 - Personally, I disagree with the reviews below this one. McKeown's an interesting, quirky, and cool guy, but his class is interesting (in a bad way). I normally don't write bruinwalk reviews but felt the need for this one because the professor could make a lot of adjustments to make the class even better. Out of all of the physics classes I've taken, his class was the easiest, yet I managed to do the worst in it, which I think this is due to the way the class is taught and ran. His slides are an absolute mess. Slides are supposed to supplement the textbook, summarize the material, and make learning easier for students. His slides are literally just screenshots of every paragraph in the textbook, and the textbook is relatively mediocre at explaining concepts. Screenshots normally don't bother me but when your powerpoints are over 100 slides long just to explain a concept that can be explained in a few bullet points, I have to reconsider. The lack of effort put into these slides is especially annoying during lecture as he just reads off of them. The textbook will occasionally talk about deriving an equation by "adding equation 32.21 and 32.18" and he will just screenshot that and read it word for word during lecture... How are we supposed to know what equation 32.21 and 32.18 are!? It would really help if he wrote his own notes instead of reading off his screenshots from the textbook as he is not that bad at explaining some things. Now, let's talk discussion. I normally go to every discussion for every, single class I take, but this class managed to discourage me from going to discussion. Discussion does not add anything really to McKeown's class. The TA just retypes homework questions in LaTeX and tells us to work on problems. I could see it as helpful if you're not finished with the homework, but if you are, there is really no point in going. It would be nice if new, original problems were written that were a bit more challenging to students rather than something we could just find by scrolling the homework. That way, we would actually be learning some new applications and skills that could help us in our upper divisions. Lastly, I do not like the tests in this class. Tests seem to just be measuring if we can convert units. Seriously, I think some of his questions are pulled from the textbook as they have so little to do with physics and rely more so on unit conversion and plug and chug (this isn't a high-school chemistry test on dimensional analysis). The exams would be a lot better if they were just in terms of variables. Myself, and a lot of other students, have lost many points due to calculator and unit errors, which is pretty dumb as that doesn't test our ability to understand physics but rather out ability to use a calculator and convert units. Tests are also pretty poorly formatted. I don't know why he writes them the way he does, but everything just looks like its screenshotted from the textbook and pasted into a google doc. For example, sometimes he pastes the figure in the middle of the question and his questions usually either give too much room for work, or not enough. He gives designated space for each question which is nice, but I think it would be easier if he just wrote the question at the top of one page, and gave us space underneath it so that one question takes up one page and we wouldn't have to flip back and forth. It would also really help if he used equation editor (not a joke). McKeown's tests are some of the most poorly formatted/ugly exams I have seen; they hurt to look at. Text is unnecessary big and any values or variables given are not typed into equation editor so they look extremely messy and hard to read (ex. m_electron = 9.109x10^-31kg is something you'll have to get used to dealing with and reading). McKeown often also stresses that the average for the class should be around a B-, and his tests get him there but not in the way they should. Instead of making questions difficult and more physics-oriented, the points you lose seem to come from calculation mistakes and incorrect units. I don't think it makes sense if your class average is reached not because the concepts tested were hard but rather because your students made mistakes because the units given on a test were funky. Advice for future students: take McKeown if you want a fair, easygoing professor, but don't expect to learn the concepts as well as students who take it with other professors. I personally regret taking it with McKeown as I feel as if I learned more on my own from videos and from just doing the homework than from the professor himself. Unless he changes his ways, I would recommend to suffer a little more and take a different professor as you'll learn the concepts better.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2017 - Great class, amazing and helpful teacher. The homework was from the book, and his office hours were very helpful. However, the exams were super hard. The class was time consuming simply because the concepts really had to be ingrained in your brain to do well on exams. Overall great class. 10/10 with rice
Summer 2017 - Great class, amazing and helpful teacher. The homework was from the book, and his office hours were very helpful. However, the exams were super hard. The class was time consuming simply because the concepts really had to be ingrained in your brain to do well on exams. Overall great class. 10/10 with rice
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - REVIEW FOR PHYSICS 1B (no listing for 1B in registrar database): Professor Musumeci is a wonderful teacher who is greatly accomplished in his field but retains the ability to connect with a far less educated audience. He does not rely on slides to teach and instead draws on a digital whiteboard and derives formulas live. Exams are very fair, and even more fairly graded. There are 2 midterms and one final. Homework consists of 8 questions per week of moderate to high difficulty. Overall, I highly recommend choosing Professor Musumeci as your instructor for this course!
Spring 2024 - REVIEW FOR PHYSICS 1B (no listing for 1B in registrar database): Professor Musumeci is a wonderful teacher who is greatly accomplished in his field but retains the ability to connect with a far less educated audience. He does not rely on slides to teach and instead draws on a digital whiteboard and derives formulas live. Exams are very fair, and even more fairly graded. There are 2 midterms and one final. Homework consists of 8 questions per week of moderate to high difficulty. Overall, I highly recommend choosing Professor Musumeci as your instructor for this course!
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2023 - Professor Naranjo is one of those physics professors who doesn't believe in plug-and-chug questions, there is not one number to be found in any of his tests. He definitely is one of those professors who grossly overestimates the class' background knowledge in math and physics, so lecture can be hard to follow. Although he cares about his students' learning and is actually pretty understandable during office hours, lectures are a lost cause - he is sadly not an engaging lecturer and his handwritten notes are impossible to decipher. He is quite lenient on homework - although it is not fully completion, if an earnest attempt at solving each question is made, with some reasoning behind it, you should usually get full points.
Spring 2023 - Professor Naranjo is one of those physics professors who doesn't believe in plug-and-chug questions, there is not one number to be found in any of his tests. He definitely is one of those professors who grossly overestimates the class' background knowledge in math and physics, so lecture can be hard to follow. Although he cares about his students' learning and is actually pretty understandable during office hours, lectures are a lost cause - he is sadly not an engaging lecturer and his handwritten notes are impossible to decipher. He is quite lenient on homework - although it is not fully completion, if an earnest attempt at solving each question is made, with some reasoning behind it, you should usually get full points.
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Most Helpful Review
It’s funny how this professor is rated so highly on bruinwalk. From my experience, and from the classmates I checked with, Peroomian simply doesn’t teach. I learnt absolutely nothing from his class. He regurgitates material directly from the textbook without explaining the key concepts. The examples he goes through in class are alright, but he just copies whatever he worked out beforehand, even the mistakes… meaning to say I have never seen him thinking on his feet or doing an actual analysis of the problem in class. If I were a professor, I would do that only if I’m unfamiliar with my topic and require notes all the time. Asking him questions were a pain; he skirts the question often, and upon being pressed to give a rigorous physics explanation, he simply uses analogies, or resort to the all-encompassing generic answer that things are just the way they are (example, he tried to explain Brewster’s angle in the topic of light, but had to resort to “oh it’s just a behavior of light…”. Peroomian’s grading was weird. It was a 100% Final; as long as you attempted your midterm, your score for final was yours to keep. If you’ve done well for the midterm and screwed up the final, there’s nothing you can do to bump up your grade to an A, even if it’s borderline for final. And his final was not a walk in the park; you had to study hard for it. I had a few friends who didn’t so well for the final, and missed the A grade by just a bit in the final. They were extremely angry about the unfairness of it all. In short Peroomian was disappointing, given his rave reviews on bruinwalk. No doubt he’s a great guy, but maybe he’s just not suited for teaching e&m since he has more of an astronomy than a pure physics background. I speak only of what some of my classmates and I have experienced in Physics 1C. The class was horrible for me, and I’m glad it’s over.
It’s funny how this professor is rated so highly on bruinwalk. From my experience, and from the classmates I checked with, Peroomian simply doesn’t teach. I learnt absolutely nothing from his class. He regurgitates material directly from the textbook without explaining the key concepts. The examples he goes through in class are alright, but he just copies whatever he worked out beforehand, even the mistakes… meaning to say I have never seen him thinking on his feet or doing an actual analysis of the problem in class. If I were a professor, I would do that only if I’m unfamiliar with my topic and require notes all the time. Asking him questions were a pain; he skirts the question often, and upon being pressed to give a rigorous physics explanation, he simply uses analogies, or resort to the all-encompassing generic answer that things are just the way they are (example, he tried to explain Brewster’s angle in the topic of light, but had to resort to “oh it’s just a behavior of light…”. Peroomian’s grading was weird. It was a 100% Final; as long as you attempted your midterm, your score for final was yours to keep. If you’ve done well for the midterm and screwed up the final, there’s nothing you can do to bump up your grade to an A, even if it’s borderline for final. And his final was not a walk in the park; you had to study hard for it. I had a few friends who didn’t so well for the final, and missed the A grade by just a bit in the final. They were extremely angry about the unfairness of it all. In short Peroomian was disappointing, given his rave reviews on bruinwalk. No doubt he’s a great guy, but maybe he’s just not suited for teaching e&m since he has more of an astronomy than a pure physics background. I speak only of what some of my classmates and I have experienced in Physics 1C. The class was horrible for me, and I’m glad it’s over.
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