I don't love physics, but needed it for my major. I took it in the summer which was a great choice. Bauer was more lenient on homework than previously due to the fast nature of summer quarters. A lot of old study guides were irrelevant since we didn't have time to cover as much material in class. Listening to lectures is super important, and they're available on BruinLearn, which is helpful. Homework on mastering physics was a drag (and I used homework help sites to finish it because it was mostly busy work. Switch discussions and labs as needed to find a TA you like. Some of the TAs are fantastic, others not so much. Go to a few different TA's section and labs in the first week and move around as you see fit; it will make your whole quarter easier.

Dr. Bauer was an incredibly clear and knowledgable physics professor. He did a thorough job in explaining the content during lecture, showing applications of the content through practice problems, and answering student questions when asked. I would say that I highly recommend Dr. Bauer for Physics 5A because he was methodical in his explanations which is useful to have a strong foundation in the first physics course within the Physics 5 series.
In the summer quarter, we had 2 midterms and 1 final exam. The tests were weighted such that they determined the majority of our course grade, and they primarily involved applying the physics concepts we learned in lecture to problem-solving mathematical scenarios. The tests were definitely challenging because they involved new problem types and setups that we had not explicitly seen before in lecture or homework, but they still involved the same concepts and problem-solving strategies. Therefore, the best practice for all the exams were the lecture example problems and the Mastering Physics homework problems. Having a solid conceptual understanding of why we perform each step within a problem is essential in order to apply it into an unknown context during the exam. Dr. Bauer also hosted online review sessions before each exam to work through practice problems and answer other student questions; he also posted the exams that he administered in previous quarters as practice for us to complete.
Overall, Bauer was an incredibly helpful and clear professor who taught this course well. My only grievance about his class philosophy is that he aims for the class average to be a B/B-. For our summer session class, in the first midterm, we well exceeded his expectations (we had a B+/A- average), so he made the second midterm considerably more difficult to compensate. This feels quite unfair as we should not be punished as a class for performing well by having more difficult exams in the future.
Other than that, the exams were nothing crazy. There were definitely challenging problems but all doable if you understand the content well and studied by doing the suggested practice problems. I recommend Bauer! He was a good professor for Physics 5A.

If you are like me who is just checking a box on my DARS, don't bother taking this class. Professor Bauer is a sweet guy and he wants us to really understand what's going on behind the scenes; however, he writes out a formal derivation for every major formula unlike my current professor, professor Hauser, who is happy to let us use formulae to crack physics problems.

TLDR: You'll be fine with Professor Bauer!

After having taken Physics 1A with Professor Frieman, Physics 1B with Professor Bauer was great. Physics is physics and you should expect a certain level of rigor of course, but this class is very doable.
Homework is only Mastering Physics which I recommend doing. It was pretty close to the difficulty of the midterm questions.
In my opinion (as a non-physics master or even enjoyer), both midterms were veryyy straightforward and clear. No confusing stuff or crazy derivations. In fact, if you think about the questions hard enough, you'll see that Professor Bauer is typically giving an easy trick question. For example, you might initially think that you have to do some long calculation, etc., but in reality, the answer might be stated on the question already. Stuff like that. So I highly recommend grasping the concepts and not just doing the homework for a grade.
Attendance is required for the discussions, but you can miss two I think. The discussion worksheets were super hard, but I never encountered them on the exam or anywhere. Good thing they are graded on completion/some work shown.
My only thing is that the final was kinda hard. Like I sat there for the first 30 minutes and I was like damn I don't know what to do. Anyways, it got graded and they were pretty generous with the partial credit so I still ended with a B in the class.

His grade cutoff is very generous. A is 93, A- is 90, B+ is 85, B is 80, B- is 75, C+ is 70, C is 65, C- is 60, D+ is 55, D is 50, D- is 45, and F is <45. No curve, but I think the cutoff is good enough.

Also lol he wore the "Tax the Rich" sweater, one lecture that was funny. If the previous statement is in any way incriminating, for legal reasons, it is a joke and he never wore that.