I initially signed up for Niemann’s lecture section because I thought it would be an easy and straightforward class, judging from the reviews by the students who took 1B in winter. Let me tell you that I was completely wrong and that he 100% made the class harder for spring.

Lectures: They were mostly predictable - we would go over some concepts and do a couple of example problems (both conceptual and computational ones). Like the other user said, they were full of extraneous information. I have to admit that some of the applications of the 1B material were very interesting, but I wish that he went over more complex problems rather than doing the surface level ones (seriously they were about as difficult as using C = Q/V to solve for charge given capacitance and voltage). After listening to him talk about the applications for a couple of lectures, I decided to fast-forward all of those parts. Luckily that information did not really come up on exams, so I was able to get away with it.

Quizzes: It was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get. Some quizzes were ridiculously easy with information that is ripped word-for-word from his lecture slides. Other times you’ll have absolutely no idea and have to just guess something. And still other times the question is extremely ambiguous and you end up second-guessing yourself. There were two types of quizzes - free response ones on Gradescope and multiple choice ones on Kudu. The Kudu ones were very unforgiving and if you made a unit conversion error you would lose an entire point out of 15. Also there were quite a few errors in them but if you emailed Niemann he would always remove them for all students to make the quiz fair. The Gradescope quizzes were always more complicated and required you to think outside the box. It would have been fair if we were tasked with doing this type of thinking on a lower-stakes homework assignment, but sadly that wasn’t the case in the course structure. The TAs also weren’t as lenient as I had hoped when it came to partial credit.

Homework: Probably the easiest part of the class. Questions were straight from MasteringPhysics. These were really easy problems for the most part - they were only the one dot and two dot questions from University Physics. I wish he picked some of the harder ones for us though, since I always felt underprepared for the quizzes after having done the homework. He also gave us a bonus problem set at the end of the quarter to make up for points we missed from previous assignments.

Discussion: This was probably the worst part of the class. Every week, the TAs draft up a worksheet for us which we needed to turn in by Friday evening. These were unbelievably difficult, and I have no idea how they came up with the questions. You would think the TAs would guide us through them, but they didn’t! We had to struggle through all of them on our own. Eventually I stopped going to discussion so I could just work on the worksheet whenever I had time. I also realised that as long as you write enough that lets them know you have some idea of what you’re doing, you can get full-credit (since it’s graded on completion). If you just care about the points, it’s not too bad. But personally, I wished they were toned down a bit since I wanted to solidify my understanding of the material with (doable) challenge questions. And because they were so difficult, these weren’t great practice for the quizzes either.

Final: Niemann told us that it would be the length of about two quizzes but it was really about the length of 3.5, which I guess is fair since it was a 24-hour testing window. About 40% of the questions came from material that we never had homework for (circuit theory) which was disappointing. I think I was only able to do these ones since I learned the concepts in high school AP Physics. The difficulty was about the same as the hardest quiz, so thankfully there weren’t too many surprises.

Overall: Niemann was a dry lecturer and gave us very simple examples, but he explained concepts decently. Homework questions are harder than lecture problems, but are fairly easy. Quizzes range from piece-of-cake to impossibly difficult, and small mistakes can kill your grade. Discussions and discussion worksheets were an absolute dumpster fire. Final exam had material that we never fully learned, but was not terrible. I don’t know how Niemann will be when we’re back in person, but if there’s a different professor (that’s not Corbin or doesn’t have complete trash reviews) take 1B with them instead. But if he’s the only good option left, I would still recommend you take it with him instead of delaying a quarter!

This class taught by Professor Niemann was so ridiculous. I have literally taken all of Physics 2 before, which is essentially this entire class, and I still ended up with a B. Niemann's lectures consist of way too much unnecessary information compared to what he tests on. Some quizzes of his are easy or the appropriate difficulty length. But some of his test problems were RIDICULOUS. Like stuff he mentioned maybe for a minute in lecture made to be half your midterm grade it was so obnoxious and he doesn't curve or aid your grade whatsoever. The TA's were trash, which I know isn't his fault but it certainly didn't help the class value. And the Discussion Sheets. Were purgatory. Seriously when I die and go to my own personal hell it will be filling out those stupid discussion sheets. He would assign each discussion a couple problems that were impossible. I had to stop going to discussion too because my TA would just sit there and not give any aid on how to solve these ridiculous problems. 7 clueless students are no better than 1 is what I have learned. Overall this class was seemingly easy and may have been if not online but it turned out to be a good amount of work, effort, and mental energy.

*Online version*

I am not a physics major student, and only taking this class to meet the lower division requirement for my major.

The lectures are pre-recorded and the lecture notes are posted. The homework is completed with Pearson, on which you answer multiple-choice questions and filling the blanks. The homework usually takes me 1-2 hours per week to finish.

There are 5-6 quizzes (I don't remember the exact number) and they count a lot toward the final grade. The quizzes are not hard, but not easy either. There are two types of quizzes: multiple choices and filling the blanks or short answers (submitted to gradescope).

There are participation scores for submitting discussion worksheets, which usually consist of 2 short answer questions.

The final is 24h format. Not hard, but also not easy to get all of them correct.

I took this class when it was asynchronous.
I really liked the class because of how predictable and straightforward it was. There are no curveballs, a very consistent schedule, and doesn't really ramp up like other classes. The grading is also pretty reasonable. It was just a nice, solid class. You won't walk away feeling amazed, but you won't walk away confused or angry either. Niemann also seems like a cool dude, but never really interacted with him cause we only watched recordings.

Niemann is pretty chill:

Pros:
there are 4 quizzes, 2 hours timed, but only take 40 min to complete. these are digital and have enough questions that making a dumb mistake wont kill your grade.
no midterms
generous HW policy: its on mastering physics and he gives EC to boost your HW grade
discussion sheets are a free grade: graded on completion and TAs go over the answers during discussion

Cons:
sometimes some hw wouldn't be on his slides so you gotta read the book
the textbook is required and you need to pay for it (for digital access)
kinda more computational than theoritical: its easy enough but felt like physics 5B instead of physics 1B.

this class took me around 2-3 hrs a week outside of lecture so workload is light

also pls leave ur bruinwalk reviews- this hopefully helped u so pls leave some reviews to help me :)

Overall, it's a great class. Workloads are light and tests are pretty easy. Prof. Niemann teaches it pretty well too.

A big chunk of the asynchronous recorded lectures consisted mainly of him going over applications of physics, which was cool but felt like a waste of time cz we never got tested on them. The quizzes were unfair. Some questions on the weekly quizzes were about things that we have either not covered yet or from physics 1C. He expects us to know the material extremely well, and seems to expect us to read ahead so we could pass the quiz. The discussion worksheets were graded on effort and the questions that was solved was the toughest things I have ever seen. The relevance of the discussion worksheets to the quizzes were low. He is a nice professor, answers emails, and is willing to have office hours whenever you need. A bit messy when explaining so make sure you take good notes. Overall, it was a really hard class.

Lectures: Consistent pacing. Never felt like we're rushing through material or going too slow. Brings in a lot of examples of his own research and real-life examples into the lectures, which is cool to hear. Made some boring things interesting. Although sometimes it feels like it's his first time going through his lecture slides and there would be mistakes on the slides once in a while, which he sometimes catch, but causes confusion.

Office Hours: Very helpful during office hours. Willing to go through anything and often help tie different concepts together. Worth the time and effort.

Homework: Not too bad. I spend 2-3 hours a week on the homework for this class usually. Occasionally have to spend a couple more. They are pretty closely related to lecture material, but sometimes can be quite conceptual and symbolic.

Quizzes: Fairly good measurement of class understanding. Sometimes includes questions that we haven't exactly learned yet but can be deduced from what we learned. To excel in quizzes, probably need to read the textbook a little bit ahead.

Overall: Pretty good professor with really fair grading. Can tell he cares about student experience. There will be frustrating moments, but he tries his best to make the course as understandable for the students as possible. Would recommend as a solid professor.

I took this class during COVID, so the lectures were asynchronous. The schedule was very consistent: we would have a discussion worksheet and homework due every week. Instead of midterms, we had timed 2-hour quizzes which made the bulk of our grade, which you could take at either 8am or 8pm. I did not enjoy this format mainly due to the lack of flexibility and having to wake up at 8am, but it did help me stay on track in the class. We did still have a 24-hr final, which was about three times as long as quiz.

I think the professor did a good job of covering all the necessary things in lecture, and I enjoyed the efficiency of the asynchronous videos. It was easy to watch the material quickly without any interruptions from questions. The professor explains things pretty clearly with lots of examples, but his voice is kinda monotone so I wouldn't recommend binging lectures because you're gonna fall asleep. One big downside is that because of the asynchronous format, I felt very disconnected from the actual class, since I basically felt I was just watching a bunch of YouTube videos without really getting engaged in the class. Another really annoying thing is that we had to use a lot of different online platforms (CCLE, Kudu, Gradescope, Campuswire, MasteringPhysics), and there sometimes seemed to be a disconnect between what we did in the quizzes vs. what we did in the homework vs. what we did in the discussion worksheets vs. what we did in lecture. NOTE: You must buy the MasteringPhysics ONLINE textbook to do the homework! (it only costs $33 though)

I really think this professor teaches better in person, since I felt like he wanted to demonstrate a lot of cool labs but instead had to show crappy low-res videos instead. Overall, Prof. Niemann is definitely not a bad professor, but I feel like the online format made the class less enjoyable than it would've been.