Honestly the reviews for this professor were good and the subject material seemed cool so I was excited. I should NOT have been. He did not care at all about the situations at hand and made homework assignments really hard so that you had to literally learn MATLAB to be able to do them?? which did not help me understand any of the material?? His tests were kinda ridiculous, not even because they were hard just because I couldn't understand what he was asking at all for the conceptual ones and thought my answer was really good but then he graded horribly and was not understanding of regrade requests at all. His office hours were terrifying because he would just imply you were stupid. Overall do not recommend.

Also taken during the quarantine quarter. The lectures weren't super useful for most of the homework problems, which were directly from the book, and I didn't pay much attention to most of them, especially since for most of the class the material isn't that bad and just builds off of physics concepts you should already know. The most complicated part of the class is the very last chapter and a half or so. The lectures were kind of useful for answering the conceptual questions he asked on tests and other test problems that he wrote himself, but most if not all lectures were recorded and his notes uploaded to CCLE so you could go back and check if you wanted to. The test and homework questions he wrote himself (or had the TAs write I'm not sure) were often unclear in what they were asking and required several follow-ups to try and clarify what they're asking (a lot of the time these weren't super helpful either and a lot of the class was still confused). The final was kinda weird and someone else already mentioned what it was, but he did solve a somewhat similar problem in lecture so that helped in answering the question.

The MATLAB portions of the homework weren't bad but could be unclear and time-consuming if you've never used MATLAB before (which I hadn't). Thankfully there were only a few of these.

He made all the tests week-long take-home assignments, so they were essentially like homework assignments and weren't much more difficult if at all. I don't know why people are complaining about him being unaccommodating considering you literally had to spend zero time studying for this class since you could just run lectures in the background to get an idea of the material for the week then use the book, internet, and slader to solve the homework and tests as you're doing them.

DO NOT take this professor if you want to learn about Dynamics. Christ this person gave me an aneurysm. No idea how I even passed this class. Lectures are structured where he just derives formulas in the most convoluted way possible, and does the simplest of examples, meanwhile the final was a complete disaster, it wasn't at all structured like the homework assignments. For this quarter, we only had three quizzes and one final, no midterms; three quizzes were fair but the final was complete bull.

Week seven was when I realized that reading the textbook straight up would be easier than watching his lectures, and it was too late to get back the missing six weeks of lecture that I did not understand anything.

Disclaimer: Taken online during pandemic
I wanted to write this review because I was surprised by the negative reviews. I thought the early homework assignments were challenging because the professor wanted us to think through the problems and write out our own thoughts. I think people were mad because they couldn't find anything to directly copy off of the internet or out of the book. So, yes, many questions were open ended and required thinking and writing. I thought that they were very fairly graded considering how hard it would be to think of every single possibility in your answer. I also enjoyed the videos he had us watch as homework-- this class truly made me research topics I was interested in on my own time. As for the final, yes, it was open ended and a little tricky, but he provided a very clear example in lecture that made it a lot easier to understand. His lectures could be a little dry and I think a part of that was because of the online format, but when I had trouble on the homework I could usually re-watch the lecture and figure it out. Overall I thought this class was good for the pandemic-- we had at least a week to do everything, we didn't really have to watch lecture, and the grading scheme allowed for a lot of errors to still get a good grade. If you have a really hard time putting your thoughts in sentences and prefer straight computations, then maybe not the class for you. Personally, I really enjoyed the structure and thought the professor was good. He's not going to be your best friend, and he acts like he has more important things to do, but still overall a fair class where I learned a lot.

Professor Davoyan was a very strong professor. This class was taken online during COVID-19 so the class formatting may have been slightly different. He was very forgiving to us when it came to the midterms and the final. He took into consideration our time and our online situation and gave us a little over a week to do each exam. His exams were very fair, there was nothing that we couldn't answer and nothing that was a shock on the exam. He was a very strong lecturer, even on the online format, and although I read the textbook to gain a deeper understanding, even if you didn't read the textbook at all his lectures were engaging and gave you all the information you needed. He helped us to understand things conceptually on top of mathematically. The course itself is VERY DIFFICULT if you're not comfortable with rotational motion already, but he helped to alleviate some of the load. Some people are complaining about needing to know MATLAB and needing to teach yourself MATLAB, while it is true that we needed it for a few homeworks in the beginning of the quarter, it wasn't anything that took a crazy amount of time to learn, and was only basic things like graphing and writing and solving equations. I had no prior MATLAB experience and these homeworks were not that much. His grading scheme was very fair (it was split evenly across homework, the midterms, and the final). If the midterms were hard, you had the final to help, if the final was hard, your homework balanced it. I was never worried about grades in this class because I was doing well enough on the homeworks and did well enough on the midterms (which he offered extra credit on) thanks to how fair they were.

One of the most straightforward classes I've ever taken. The textbook is available for free on ScienceDirect, though paying attention in lecture and taking good notes was enough to complete the HW and quizzes and do well on the final, and the TAs even went over the specific HW problems in discussion (textbook is good for understanding some of the qualitative stuff in better detail than he covers in class, but you can do fine without looking at it or googling specific questions you have). Class comprised of a weekly HW assignment (usually only a few simple problems), three take-home quizzes (basically also HW assignments; he likes to give a few days to work on these then solve it in about 10 minutes in class), and the final. The material is very formula-heavy and the professor really cares about the students understanding the material, so he rarely tests on simple computation and focuses more on qualitative understanding (i.e., pay attention when he defines and explains things in class). He made the class pretty low-stress by giving A LOT of extra credit opportunities over the quarter and making the final (the only in-person test the whole quarter) completely open note.

In summary: not the most complicated class material, and a very considerate and fair professor. Put in the time to solve HW and pay attention and take good notes in class, and take advantage of extra credit opportunities. If you have a question in class, definitely ask it and he'll make sure you understand. 10/10 would highly recommend this class and professor, and would gladly take this class again.

This is probably the single least interesting class I have ever taken at UCLA. The entire content is just pathetically surface level versions of classes that you take in the MAE department (namely 102, 103, 105a, 105d, and C150R), and the professor's lectures are mundane.
He also refuses to post slides before class starts, and with a ton of diagrams, it is nearly impossible to get all the necessary info in order to succeed without spending an additional few hours afterwards compiling the notes on your own. It makes the lectures themselves completely obsolete.
If you're an aerospace engineering student and you haven't invested too much time into the space track, I highly suggest doing the aeronautics track instead. This is coming from someone who loves space. This is a waste of your tuition and you are much better served getting your education with the people doing the aeronautics track. The whole of the 161 series is a joke, but this class is especially stupid. It made me feel like I was in high school physics again. I honestly cannot believe that the UCLA aerospace program allows this class to not only be offered, but be a core requirement of the most popular aerospace track. Complete waste of time, tuition, and effort.

Looking at the previous reviews, I can say Davoyan definitely took these complaints to heart. He literally said at the beginning of the quarter that some students had complained about the derivations before so I'm sure he's heard and addressed everything else past reviews have mentioned. The lectures were pretty engaging with plenty of real world examples. He even brought in his son's toy robot arm a few times, which was pretty funny. Tests were... almost too easy to be completely honest. Given the reputation this topic has at other schools, I definitely feel like I did not struggle enough in this class, which does sound a bit weird to type. I still do think I learned something useful though.

This class was great! Davoyan is a great professor who gives engaging lectures and clearly cares about the material. He also cares about learning more than grades. His class was fun and the assignments were easy: homework assignments that you would get extra credit for completing, a take home midterm, and a take home final. We were given several days for the take home tests. Would take again!

*** Disclaimer: This review is for 161B with Davoyan ***

This class was very helpful for me personally because I have a spacecraft systems engineering internship this summer, and it helped me to gain some breadth on the roles of different subsystems in a space mission. I also have an interest in space exploration and astronomy, which made the subject matter very interesting for me. Lectures were very well done, and they taught me a lot. Previously someone informed me that Davoyan is a bad lecturer but I found that to be absolutely not the case. We also had two guest lectures that gave us valuable insight into how space mission principles are applied to actual missions (like the JWST). If you've ever taken a class with Davoyan, you know he tries to make his classes as stress-free as possible. For 161B this consisted of three take-home, week-long quizzes (though four were planned) and a take-home, two-day final. While these contributed to the entire course grade (60% for the quizzes and 40% for the final), he also assigned optional homework assignments graded on effort/completion that were worth up to 15% extra credit. Although it may be tempting just to skip all of the homework, they provide good practice representative of quiz questions - in some cases they're the exact same problem just with different numbers. Additionally, there was a plethora of extra credit opportunities via multiple surveys. It's definitely the most relaxed upper-division class I've taken, and I'm glad I did so in a quarter where I had to take 19 units. I highly recommend you take this class with Davoyan.