Overall, Professor Corbin is a fantastic professor. He is a clear and engaging lecturer and you can tell that he is truly passionate about the material. He explains the material in intuitive ways that help give students a fundamental understanding of physics. At times, the material may be dense, however, so I found it helpful to have read the relevant sections in the textbook before the lecture, even though they were never assigned.

His tests and quizzes are very very difficult, and completing each question within the alotted time is a major challenge. You cannot simply memorize formulas to do well on his tests; rather, you need to have a solid understanding of the underlying physics, which can take a lot of work. He did curve the class generously (in part due to the challenges posed by COVID) which did counter some of these issues.

Lastly, there was quite a bit of online homework for this class, but done over the course of the quarter, it was fairly manageable. DO NOT save it for the last minute, you will hate yourself for it. Furthermore, many of the homework problems were helpful in preparing for the exams. Corbin tends to not like if you ask for help on too many of these during office hours (attend these!!!), so save those for the TA discussions/office hours.

Let me just start off by saying: I am not a physics "person", I didn't take AP physics in high school, and I'm not ahead in math. I didn't do 200 MIT physics problems. What I did do was listen, and I mean really listen, to every word this guy said. I went to every lecture and every office hour for the entire quarter. I did the assigned homework without looking up the answers online. I did a reasonable number of interesting outside problems I found (but definitely not 200), and read through some of the feynman lectures on the topics we were learning. I think because of it being online the curve was a little more lenient so take my grade with a grain of salt. That being said, I highly, highly, recommend Corbin. He is one of the rare professors that is actually intelligible and gives you a clear path to success. He talks about problem solving strategies (for example, when we did doppler effect he gave us a very clear surefire way to set up every problem which made them trivial), fun examples, gives great explanations, and takes doubts meticulously. Even though it was online, this class was a great experience and I feel like I really gained a lot from it. I am not a great test taker and his tests were very, very difficult for me but everything else made it worth it.

Corbin is hard. Corbin is a god.

Absolutely loved this class. I never thought physics would be this interesting or engaging, but Corbin proved me wrong. It was difficult at times, which was to be expected, but I learned so much. Would 100% recommend.

There’s never a boring day in Professor Corbin’s class. Despite my uneasiness coming into this course after so many of my peers advised me that he is the worst, I realize now it was not Professor Corbin with the issues. He is a compassionate man with a great sense of humor. Ask for the help you need and you shall receive. He has a way of explaining things in lecture that make the material easy to understand if you are keeping up with it at home that is, but that goes for any course.

Corbin's difficulty in exams are over-exaggerated. But they are harder than usual exams for sure. The exams are math heavy, and you want to memorize all trig identities and review multi-variable calculus. If your major is math-heavy, I'd say that taking Corbin isn't too bad. If not, (like CS), taking Corbin isn't worth your time unless you love calculus. Don't expect a generous curve though.

Corbin is an amazing lecturer. His lectures are articulate and engaging. Don't fall asleep in the lecture though, since you'll miss out quite a bit.

Corbin's "homeworks" are optional. I personally didn't do any myself and don't feel like I missed out too much. Work on the discussion problems instead, since TAs also write the exam. (the exam is similar to discussion problems). The textbook is really useless.

And physics 1B material is surprising... crammable! All the concepts are based off calculus, so it's not too bad for cramming. Corbin doesn't allow any formula sheets so you have to memorize some formulas though. Understand what the differentials mean and practice integration.

But about grading... you really gotta hope you do better than others in the class. Practice taking integrals. (if you hate math, you shouldn't take 1B with Corbin). People did well this quarter so it kinda sucked. (Somebody got a perfect score on the final according to Corbin).
Seems like that I'd have pulled some form of A if I took this a quarter earlier :(

Corbin is a really good professor and I gained a strong understanding of the subject. I took him in the summer so the class comprised of 5 or so quizzes and weekly hw. hw wasn't collected but doing it really helps do well on the quizzes. Quizzes were one question and were difficult but understanding the homework will help you do well. The final was pretty hard but as long as you are able to solidly answer a handful of the questions you have a good chance of doing well in the class. Only problem is that it really feels like he heavily favors the kids who always go to his office hours which normally doesn't matter but in a small summer setting gets a little annoying. Otherwise good professor and teaches well (which is all that really matters).

Other reviews have highlighted Corbin's extensive knowledge of physics, both theoretical and in real-world applications; while this is certainly the case, it is also true that Corbin is an extremely bitter man, and this unfortunately makes its way into his interactions with students.

Corbin has an unfortunate tendency to interject irrelevant remarks into his lectures; whether these involve stereotypes, political commentary, or other non-class-related topics, these instances detract from the overall quality of the course, and leave something to be desired in terms of professorial engagement. He is extremely abrasive in person, and will refuse to accommodate students in any way, even going so far as to refuse to hand back midterms during office hours.

His grading scheme is fundamentally flawed, as it presupposes that (almost) every single student will fail the course without a massive curve. Students will routinely obtain grades of 40-50% (on average) on exams, resulting in a curve being necessary to avoid repercussions from the department.

I received a passing grade in this course, but would definitely not take it again with this professor. While he may be competent at teaching the material, his personality, overall teaching style, and level of engagement leave much to be desired, making the overall experience highly negative.

I have mixed feelings about this professor. He definitely teaches, unlike a lot of the physics teachers here, and I learned an insane amount from him, but his tests are complete trash. An example of a question was (paraphrased): you hang a harp from a ceiling and make a string vibrate at fundamental frequency. You push a drum on a cart directly underneath it. Based on the frequency of the drum on the way to the harp and away from the harp, what is the tension in the string?
The takeaway here is that if you're in it to learn, this is the class to take. If you're in it for the GPA, do not take this class.

I took Corbin's 1B and had him for 4 weeks in 1CH, and he teaches the Mathematica part in 105A/B series.
He definitely has his own explanations on some physics concepts, and that really helps when you are learning because you could think differently. Take his lectures and read the textbook, two different pathways will always be better than one.
He is a bit stubborn and always insists that he's right. I couldn't run his example code in Physics 105A on my computer, then I asked 4 of my classmates and they couldn't run it as well. But he insisted that there's something wrong about our computers. That's weird.
In his lectures, he is quite engaged and will talk lots of his personal experiences related to some physical phenomena. I could feel that he loves physics a lot.
Homeworks are neither collected nor graded. They will be assigned at the beginning of the quarter and are not so related to the tests. Doing them would definitely help you know the materials, though might not save you on the exams.
Midterms are hard and I have to say that actually there's no way to prepare for it. Just do as many as you can and try to know the basic concepts better.
Final is fair, we had some problems that are similar to the examples we've discussed on the lectures so I think people did good on it.