Dr. Bauer is amazing and extremely helpful. I highly recommend taking any/all physics courses with him!

((taken online during the pandemic))

general class impression:
as someone who's only taken physics through the 5 series at UCLA as opposed to AP Physics in high school, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed 5C, or physics at all for that matter. Hated 5A (damn u newton), tolerated 5B (water's kinda cool ig), and loved how applicable 5C was to daily life. DJ Bauer never disappoints in terms of lecture (had him for the entire series): he always uploaded prerecorded lectures in a consistent manner, and explained each concept and formula very thoroughly; also gave us optional readings (most of my classmates didn't even touch the book, but I found it helpful for the examples since there was not enough lecture time to go through formula applications) and practice problems. we had weekly quizzes starting week 2 (9 total, one dropped) which was kinda stressful but worth it in the long run, because no midterms, and the final was only worth 10% of our course grade.

grade breakdown:
Discussion 10% (weekly worksheets based on completion and attendance, easy points)
Final exam 10% (only 3 problems in 90 minutes)
Homework (Mastering Physics) 10%
Labs 15% (since the majority of the course is on electromagnetism, you'll be working with circuits! you have the option to purchase a physical circuit for ~$80 or just do free online simulations, but I found the simulations to be more straightforward and less of a financial burden)
Quizzes 55% (9 total taken during class time on gradescope, 1 dropped)

Extra credit 0.6% (campuswire posts, meant to help you in case you were close to the next highest letter grade since he does not round grades)

Scale:
A 93%
A- 90%
B+ 87%
B 83%
B- 80%
C+ 75%
C 70%
C- 65%
D+ 60%
D 55%
D- 50%
F <50%
with "A+ awarded at the professor's discretion for extraordinary achievement in the course"

tips:
as the majority of our grade is based on weekly quizzes, do those extra practice problems in the schedule every week and study ahead of time! I found the mastering problems to be too easy compared to the quiz difficulty since his quizzes tend to combine concepts in parts instead of explicitly stating an exact formula you have to use like in mastering; the extra practice problems in the textbook do a better job of having you apply concepts more broadly. quiz difficulty ranges each week, but partial credit is given for using the correct formulas even if your numeral answers are incorrect. this doesn't mean just memorize formulas, though—conceptual understanding is fundamental to doing well in this course (as with any other course, but physics especially imo)! if you don't understand something, tackle it straight away because each week builds upon each other. best of luck, and don't feel intimidated by the name because it was personally the most straightforward of the series! :)

This was my first college physics course since high school and I definitely felt that this class was very time consuming (which it should be) because I had to find extra resources to really understand the material on my own. I will say that there were a lot of Khan Academy Videos and Organic Chemistry Tutor videos that were amazing! I think the professor explained concepts well in lecture; however, the practice problems were sooooo simple in comparison to the weekly quizzes. Even the old practice exams/ quizzes I thought were much easier compared to the quizzes he gave us. Don't get me wrong there were a few quizzes that were definitely easier than others, but overall the quizzes were on the difficult side. Here was the breakdown for the course:

Discussion: 5%
Final Exam: 10%
Homework (Mastering Physics): 10%
Laboratory: 15%
Quizzes: 60%
Extra Credit (Campuswire): 0.1%-0.3%

The Quizzes took place every Wednesday and you only had 50 minutes to complete the quiz and upload to Gradescope, otherwise it was late and not accepted. On the bright side you were able to drop 2 quizzes; however, that meant every quiz was worth about 9% of your grade in the class. What really helped me succeed on the quizzes was going through the book, I found that a lot of the quizzes were reflective of the sample problems in the chapters!!!! I found mastering physics to be the most helpful in terms of practice problems. In office hours the professor was very helpful answering questions. Lab was also time consuming, but my TA graded generously and I got 100 on all those. I found discussion to not be very helpful, we would work on worksheets and no one ever talked in our breakout room. In the end I finished with an 89.5% and wasn't rounded up (very frustrating). I would say just to try to work through as many problems as you can and really understand them, ask questions, and work through the sample problems in the book!

Dr. Bauer was a pretty good professor.
I felt that his lectures and notes were pretty solid overall. Unlike other phyics professors who just scribble jargon down, Dr. Bauer's notes were actually pretty organized and easy to follow, albeit he wrote all of his notes using OneNote which made it a pain to go back to review his notes later.
Class was on a straight scale, but the cutoffs were pretty lenient, 60% for a C- and 75% for a B-
The class had no midterms but instead had a weekly quiz and a final, each timed, 40 minutes for the quizzes, and 3 hours for the final, so as we move back to in person classes, your experience will probably stay relatively the same.

I felt that the quizzes were a bit on the difficult side, but Dr. Bauer seemed to account for this and made the final much easier.
(He did mention that he had to do the opposite in another quarter: where he made the quizzes way too easy and had to adjust by making the final much harder, so if you feel that the quizzes are too hard or too easy, expect the final to be the opposite)

My only gripe with the class was that Dr. Bauer barely gave any example problems in lecture, if at all. This made studying for the quizzes a pain because it truly felt impossible to know exactly what we would be tested on. All it felt like you can do to prepare was do all of the practice and challenge problems he assigned to get the overall idea and hope for the best.

Overall I enjoyed the class and I managed to pull off a better grade than I expected thanks to the easier final. I didn't do very well in 1A and I was nervous moving on to 1B, but Dr. Bauer manages to teach the course in a very clear manner and I actually felt like I understood what was going on for the most part.

This is just my experience, but after taking the MCAT and having to study some of the concepts for that exam, relearning them in class was a bit weird because the difficult topics (or at least ones that were difficult for me) like fluids and optics weren't explained as in-depth as thermodynamics. Maybe this is just the way the course is set up, but I honestly reverted to my MCAT notes to review the concepts because lecture didn't do enough for me.

I would definitely take some time in addition to lecture, lab, and discussion to do practice textbook problems. The main reason why I struggled with the biweekly quizzes is that I just memorized the equations and assumed that the word problems would be straight plug and chug (which was not the case!!). I think this class is doable with Bauer, and he's not a bad professor, around average I'd say.

I really liked how Professor's Bauer's taught and his quizzes and tests were very reasonable.

I literally hated this class with my guts. One time I asked Prof Bauer a question and he said "I feel like you should know how to do this"... very unhelpful. Take w another prof if u can. Also he does Mastering Physics and I HATE THAT SHIT

Yes, Physics 1B is not easy, and no, Professor Bauer does not try to make it seem easy. However, he is an excellent professor who is passionate about teaching his students well and evaluating their learning fairly. His lectures are engaging and thorough, with plenty of well executed demonstrations, and his tests are reasonable though rather difficult.

One IMPORTANT NOTE about the class: when he whips out the binomial expansion for the first time DO NOT assume this is some one-time mathematical magic trick for some derivation. This is Dr. Bauer's absolute favorite party trick and it shows up everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Understanding approximating a solution to the lowest vanishing order is an ESSENTIAL topic to learn in Bauer's class and WILL be tested on the exams. It's quite scary at first but once you get the hang of it it's really not bad at all. Just be sure to learn it and you will enjoy the class.

Bauer is a really cool prof. I've heard horror stories about other physics profs, so if you're looking to avoid that, take Bauer. He doesn't use slides, which is interesting, but writes everything out on the chalkboard. Probably not the most helpful if you're someone who annotates the powerpoint on an Ipad or something, but he writes slow enough that it's very legible and not hard to keep up with him. He is extremely reasonable and accommodating--plenty of extensions on assignments when circumstances arose or he just didn't feel like we had enough time with the material. The tests were pretty comparable in difficulty with the homework and lecture problems, so no surprises there. We also got to use a cheat sheet on the exams which was great because there's lots of formulas. I would definitely take 5A with him again, and wish he taught 5B the quarter I'm taking it.

Pretty standard professor, clear lectures, organized class, exam are usually combining and plugging in multiple equations. Can't go wrong with him.