PHYSICS 6A
Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Mechanics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour; laboratory, two hours. Enforced requisites: Mathematics 3A, 3B. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 3C. Not open for credit to students with credit for course 6AH. Motion, Newton laws, energy, linear and angular momentum, rotation, equilibrium, gravity, biological applications. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
5 of 5
Most Helpful Review
This was the most enjoyable science class I have taken at UCLA. Coming into physics without any background, this class was far less intimidating than I ever thought. Wallny was such a nice guy, not to mention funny and kinda adorable with his accent. His lectures were slow at times, and sometimes hard to understand, but just go to all the office hours and you'll be fine. Rouzbeh Gerami, was an excellent excellent TA, and I think his office hours helped me more than the lectures. The class itself has 2 midterms, reading quizzes and homework each week. Plus, it has a very generous curve with 25% of the class getting at least an A-. Take this class, and you'll kinda learn to like physics...well, at least for me.
This was the most enjoyable science class I have taken at UCLA. Coming into physics without any background, this class was far less intimidating than I ever thought. Wallny was such a nice guy, not to mention funny and kinda adorable with his accent. His lectures were slow at times, and sometimes hard to understand, but just go to all the office hours and you'll be fine. Rouzbeh Gerami, was an excellent excellent TA, and I think his office hours helped me more than the lectures. The class itself has 2 midterms, reading quizzes and homework each week. Plus, it has a very generous curve with 25% of the class getting at least an A-. Take this class, and you'll kinda learn to like physics...well, at least for me.
Most Helpful Review
Waung teaches equations... and that's about it. He DOES NOT TEACH concepts, which unfortunately are what his exam test. I agree with the last reviewer who said his homework problems and class examples ARE NOTHING like what he gives on exams. In addition, the lecture examples even ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH to do the homework!!! Waung definitely got tougher this year, because I had many of his older exams, and let's just say those were a cakewalk compared to what he gave to us. I tested myself with those exams in the 50 minutes that you are alloted during tests, and I breezed by those rather easily... couldn't say the same for the actual tests Fall '01 quarter. Lastly... the final was killer. Multiple concepts in one problem X 8 problems! We had a couple concepts that were not even given in class or homework problems of. In fact, there was one problem during the final in which I asked the TA proctoring the exam to clarify for me. His answer was to the like of "Don't bother with that one, just try do it if you have time". If you want to go to his office hours, that's fine... that is if you are already in the top 5% of the class. When I went to one of his office hours to try and understand a concept on which I was completely lost, Waung made me look completely dumb in front of other people when he kept staring at me for an answer when I told him that I don't know the answer and that is why I came to him for help. Nice job... He used to give lots of A's and may have gotten a bad rap for doing that, but giving less A's is fine as long as you still do a decent job of preparing students for your exams... which obviously Waung failed to do so last quarter. I could have done better had it not been for the 2nd Midterm in which the class average was 57/100 with a Standard Deviation of 22! I've never seen a test where the SD is 20% of the points on the test! All that shows was a bad job of making a test. I guess if you want to do well in his class, you just have to deal with all this and study very hard every little concept because anything is game for his tests. I did and I got a B+.
Waung teaches equations... and that's about it. He DOES NOT TEACH concepts, which unfortunately are what his exam test. I agree with the last reviewer who said his homework problems and class examples ARE NOTHING like what he gives on exams. In addition, the lecture examples even ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH to do the homework!!! Waung definitely got tougher this year, because I had many of his older exams, and let's just say those were a cakewalk compared to what he gave to us. I tested myself with those exams in the 50 minutes that you are alloted during tests, and I breezed by those rather easily... couldn't say the same for the actual tests Fall '01 quarter. Lastly... the final was killer. Multiple concepts in one problem X 8 problems! We had a couple concepts that were not even given in class or homework problems of. In fact, there was one problem during the final in which I asked the TA proctoring the exam to clarify for me. His answer was to the like of "Don't bother with that one, just try do it if you have time". If you want to go to his office hours, that's fine... that is if you are already in the top 5% of the class. When I went to one of his office hours to try and understand a concept on which I was completely lost, Waung made me look completely dumb in front of other people when he kept staring at me for an answer when I told him that I don't know the answer and that is why I came to him for help. Nice job... He used to give lots of A's and may have gotten a bad rap for doing that, but giving less A's is fine as long as you still do a decent job of preparing students for your exams... which obviously Waung failed to do so last quarter. I could have done better had it not been for the 2nd Midterm in which the class average was 57/100 with a Standard Deviation of 22! I've never seen a test where the SD is 20% of the points on the test! All that shows was a bad job of making a test. I guess if you want to do well in his class, you just have to deal with all this and study very hard every little concept because anything is game for his tests. I did and I got a B+.
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Most Helpful Review
Took her last Spring (2014) and it was one of the easier classes I have taken at UCLA. I lot of work is done during class with clickers, demonstrations, and whatnot. The nature of the material is pretty easy and basic (from high school physics classes), so I didn't have to do too much learning to begin with, which made the class easier. For people who have never taken physics before, there is a lot of emphasis on conceptual understanding before applying any equations or math to it. She is also very generous with partial credit. Usually you could get partial credit by drawing diagrams and explaining what is happening in the problem conceptually.
Took her last Spring (2014) and it was one of the easier classes I have taken at UCLA. I lot of work is done during class with clickers, demonstrations, and whatnot. The nature of the material is pretty easy and basic (from high school physics classes), so I didn't have to do too much learning to begin with, which made the class easier. For people who have never taken physics before, there is a lot of emphasis on conceptual understanding before applying any equations or math to it. She is also very generous with partial credit. Usually you could get partial credit by drawing diagrams and explaining what is happening in the problem conceptually.
5 of 5
