I had Dr. McKeown for Physics 5A (for some reason not listed here), and going into the course, I was concerned that we would be learning a lot of irrelevant, technical physics that wasn't related to my career path as a pre-med student. However, this wasn't the case, as Dr. McKeown correctly designed this course to be relevant to pre-med students by including topics and concepts that are actually relevant to biology and medicine. Because of this, I was interested in the topics of this course and found what we had to learn to be intriguing rather than tedious.

Additionally, Dr. McKeown's lectures were helpful, on-task, and weren't boring. He always stopped to take questions from students and clarified everything thoroughly, which not all professors do. I felt that our quizzes and tests were very reasonable and had nothing unexpected/surprising that strayed from the lectures/homework. I also appreciated how he gave us unlimited attempts/graded the homework on completion, rather than correctness, so we could actually use it as a learning source and not an assessment.

Overall, I would highly recommend taking a course with Dr. McKeown as he is passionate about Physics, and teaching his students in an effective and legitimate manner. You definitely won't regret taking a class with him.

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.

The best physics professor I had so far. He’s very caring, supportive, and passionate about learning the material. I didn’t actually consider him a professor because I did consider him as a father to his students. His exams, quizzes, and homework are fair as long as you study well. I def recommend taking it with him.

McKeown is the best professor in the physics department. Super kind, fair, and understanding lecturer, Take it with him no matter what.

Professor McKeown genuinely cares about whether his students are understanding the material. Both midterms were exactly like the homework and his final was basically based off all of the homeworks completed. He is very understanding and listens to his students! I hated 1a and tolerated 1b but this professor made me actually interested in physics. I 100% reccommend anyone who needs to take the 1 series to aim for Professor Mckeown!

McKeown is an amazing guy and a very fair professor. He makes physics accessible to everyone. His quizzes and exams are very fair and similar to both his lecture and the homework. He gives adequate homework to really help you understand the lecture material. I really like the textbook as well, and I find it really helpful for me to tune into his lectures and then read the corresponding section of the textbook after. Considering how I took 1B in Winter 2023 (over a year by now) and how I got a C+ in that class (worst class I've ever taken at UCLA especially as a CS major who will never need physics in my life), take it from me: McKeown makes physics accessible to EVERYONE. I hate physics and I still do, but damn did I really enjoy his class. He's just an overall super nice and chill professor and I really appreciate how fair he tries to be. It's a shame that the UCLA physics department is so stingy with their GPA quotas because physics should not be made as hard as it is at UCLA, but I have faith McKeown is a step in the right direction for the future of UCLA physics.

McKeown is a super passionate professor who wants to spread his love of physics to his students (he almost made me think I could be a physics major for a second until I took one of the midterms lol). His understanding of the topics are unmatched, and he loves to go into details of any questions students ask during lecture. This unfortunately led to us getting off schedule, and skipping over the optics unit entirely. There is a few homework assignments due every ~2 weeks, but at the end of the quarter we had 3 assignments all due on the same day after the final? Which was odd but great preparation for the final. I read from the textbook for every single unit we had, and this combined with McKeown's helped a lot (I just am a bad test taker). Overall he is a great professor, semi-great lecturer, but I heard his office hours were super helpful too.

Wow, just the sweetest professor ive ever had in my whole two years at UCLA. He cares so much about students and this is the first class I've taken here in the physics department that just seems actually fair. he really really cares about his students and physics. amazing professor

This class is relatively easy. The weekly homework can sometimes be excessive (longer than 40 questions, in some cases). Exams were super fair and very similar to the homework. If you took time to do the homework, you should be able to do very well. McKeown's lectures leave a lot to be desired since they are mostly just screenshots from the textbook, so I never showed up to lecture and instead just learned from the textbook. He is a very nice guy who genuinely cares about his students.

Mr. McKeown, I can say with confidence that you are by far my favorite professor. Day by day, you proved and demonstrated that you care about the learning of the students. I never was one to contest midterm scores in fear of total shutdown, and overall shame from professors that I have seen other students experience at the hands of other professors. I could say that you couldn't be further from the case, and fostered a comfortable learning environment free from shame. As a first gen Latino, this is incredibly valuable to me. And as a cherry on top, you were one of the most understanding professors when it came to the difficulties brought by our current political climate. As a student who personally participated in the encampment protest the night the police raided in, I was brought such comfort in all the peril that you were going to take the class pace slower as a result. You didn't have to, but the fact that you did demonstrates true care in the student body. Thank you, Mr. McKeown for your time as my professor. I hope to be your student once again.