David Bauer
Department of Physics
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3.7
Overall Rating
Based on 15 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 4.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.4 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.9 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

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GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
21.3%
17.8%
14.2%
10.7%
7.1%
3.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

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Reviews (14)

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Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: C
Aug. 25, 2022

Dr. Bauer is possibly one of the most passive-aggressive, rude, uncaring professors at UCLA. When I first came into contact with him, I thought he was accommodating and chill because I had a complicated circumstance and he allowed me to take one of the exams online to make up for it. After finishing the quarter I realized how he is completely unwilling to help his students genuinely learn, and if you do not understand a topic the first time then he thinks you are simply incompetent. I had failed the first midterm (due to having a horribly strict TA who graded me unfairly) but scored above the average on all subsequent exams. I had discussed this with him and my worries about not succeeding in the class because I did so poorly on the first midterm and he offered no guidance or reassurance. He essentially told me, "I don't know if you pass. You should just study better." I found this outraging as someone who spent almost ALL OF MY TIME studying for this course singlehandedly. The class average was 60-75% on all exams with *no* curves. Also, the extra credit is worth a measly 0.3% of your grade at the most... so it's practically pointless. He once even said in his final review session "I don't know how this will help any of you at all." which goes to show how much effort he puts into preparing students for his finals. His 2-hour zoom session, indeed, did not help at all. Don't be fooled by all the good ratings. If you are not already well-rounded in physics and you are taking this class in person, it is NOT EASY.

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Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
June 24, 2021

Pros: Clear lectures, light workload, gives extra credit, decent amount of practice problems, and organized system on CCLE in general.

Cons: However, he watered down the lectures too much to the point where the quizzes were much harder. What is the point if you are not explaining the complicated things? You can earn up to 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 percent of extra credit in your total grade based on your status on Campuswire. He really thought he did something with 0.1% 🙃🙃. You have a weekly quiz starting from Week 2 to 10 during Wednesday's lecture time, which is 7 quizzes in total after dropping the lowest 2, which means you cannot slack off or you will be in trouble. Furthermore, he was extremely strict with the deadline as the submission box closed right after and you couldn't submit. He is the only professor I've had who will straight up give you a 0 for being late. Luckily, I didn't experience that problem.

To be fair, I never attended office hours and that might have slightly affected my grade. However, he sometimes posted office hour questions on CCLE.

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Quarter: Summer 2020
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Sept. 1, 2020

I’ve never taken physics before, but Bauer definitely made the class as manageable as possible. He is very clear during lecture and gives many examples to solidify topics. He is also pretty active on campus wire to answer questions if you have any. We had weekly quizzes, and the difficulty varied tbh. Some were easy and some were hard, it just depends on the week, but he does give partial credit so its not all bad. He also posts practice exams that are pretty representative of the quizzes. There are no midterms, only 5 quizzes and a final exam, and he drops the lowest quiz. We had FRQs, but he removed them for 5B during session C because they took too long to grade, so I don’t think he’ll add those again. The only extra credit is through campuswire.

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Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 2, 2024

Overall a fair and decent professor. Midterm averages were high Cs, maybe even a low B. I liked that the Mastering homework was not due until the end of the course, but pacing deadlines were still given. Working through Mastering problems prior to exams and writing them down on my formula sheet helped me study. I think with any physics course (including this one), problems covered during lecture will never be entirely comprehensive of every possible physics problem out there, so it's definitely helpful to utilize other sources (like the internet, I used an AP Physics prep book I found online) to find more practice problems. From my interactions with Bauer, he seems to be a nice guy who is always willing to help if you actively seek it. No complaints really.

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Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A-
Dec. 25, 2023

I have never taken a physics class before Bauer, so that's just a preface to my review. I think Professor Bauer himself is very sweet and kind. However, his teaching feels tailored towards people with past experience. I worked super hard to try and do well in the class and it honestly didn't pay off until the final. I think his tests are pretty fair, but you need to do a lot of outside work to be prepared because any of his practice problems during lecture or even the homework is not even close to sufficient enough to be prepared.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Summer 2023
Grade: B
Nov. 3, 2023

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Summer 2023
Grade: A
Sept. 16, 2023

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.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: B+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
June 19, 2022

This class felt like 2-3 classes in one: the combination between the lecture, discussion, and lab, all with their own homework, was kind of overwhelming. Prof Bauer is great, but he's only like 1/3 of the class experience haha

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Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 14, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
July 13, 2021

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!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: C
Aug. 25, 2022

Dr. Bauer is possibly one of the most passive-aggressive, rude, uncaring professors at UCLA. When I first came into contact with him, I thought he was accommodating and chill because I had a complicated circumstance and he allowed me to take one of the exams online to make up for it. After finishing the quarter I realized how he is completely unwilling to help his students genuinely learn, and if you do not understand a topic the first time then he thinks you are simply incompetent. I had failed the first midterm (due to having a horribly strict TA who graded me unfairly) but scored above the average on all subsequent exams. I had discussed this with him and my worries about not succeeding in the class because I did so poorly on the first midterm and he offered no guidance or reassurance. He essentially told me, "I don't know if you pass. You should just study better." I found this outraging as someone who spent almost ALL OF MY TIME studying for this course singlehandedly. The class average was 60-75% on all exams with *no* curves. Also, the extra credit is worth a measly 0.3% of your grade at the most... so it's practically pointless. He once even said in his final review session "I don't know how this will help any of you at all." which goes to show how much effort he puts into preparing students for his finals. His 2-hour zoom session, indeed, did not help at all. Don't be fooled by all the good ratings. If you are not already well-rounded in physics and you are taking this class in person, it is NOT EASY.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B+
June 24, 2021

Pros: Clear lectures, light workload, gives extra credit, decent amount of practice problems, and organized system on CCLE in general.

Cons: However, he watered down the lectures too much to the point where the quizzes were much harder. What is the point if you are not explaining the complicated things? You can earn up to 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 percent of extra credit in your total grade based on your status on Campuswire. He really thought he did something with 0.1% 🙃🙃. You have a weekly quiz starting from Week 2 to 10 during Wednesday's lecture time, which is 7 quizzes in total after dropping the lowest 2, which means you cannot slack off or you will be in trouble. Furthermore, he was extremely strict with the deadline as the submission box closed right after and you couldn't submit. He is the only professor I've had who will straight up give you a 0 for being late. Luckily, I didn't experience that problem.

To be fair, I never attended office hours and that might have slightly affected my grade. However, he sometimes posted office hour questions on CCLE.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Summer 2020
Grade: A
Sept. 1, 2020

I’ve never taken physics before, but Bauer definitely made the class as manageable as possible. He is very clear during lecture and gives many examples to solidify topics. He is also pretty active on campus wire to answer questions if you have any. We had weekly quizzes, and the difficulty varied tbh. Some were easy and some were hard, it just depends on the week, but he does give partial credit so its not all bad. He also posts practice exams that are pretty representative of the quizzes. There are no midterms, only 5 quizzes and a final exam, and he drops the lowest quiz. We had FRQs, but he removed them for 5B during session C because they took too long to grade, so I don’t think he’ll add those again. The only extra credit is through campuswire.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Jan. 2, 2024

Overall a fair and decent professor. Midterm averages were high Cs, maybe even a low B. I liked that the Mastering homework was not due until the end of the course, but pacing deadlines were still given. Working through Mastering problems prior to exams and writing them down on my formula sheet helped me study. I think with any physics course (including this one), problems covered during lecture will never be entirely comprehensive of every possible physics problem out there, so it's definitely helpful to utilize other sources (like the internet, I used an AP Physics prep book I found online) to find more practice problems. From my interactions with Bauer, he seems to be a nice guy who is always willing to help if you actively seek it. No complaints really.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A-
Dec. 25, 2023

I have never taken a physics class before Bauer, so that's just a preface to my review. I think Professor Bauer himself is very sweet and kind. However, his teaching feels tailored towards people with past experience. I worked super hard to try and do well in the class and it honestly didn't pay off until the final. I think his tests are pretty fair, but you need to do a lot of outside work to be prepared because any of his practice problems during lecture or even the homework is not even close to sufficient enough to be prepared.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Summer 2023
Grade: B
Nov. 3, 2023

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Summer 2023
Grade: A
Sept. 16, 2023

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: B+
June 19, 2022

This class felt like 2-3 classes in one: the combination between the lecture, discussion, and lab, all with their own homework, was kind of overwhelming. Prof Bauer is great, but he's only like 1/3 of the class experience haha

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2022
Grade: A-
April 14, 2022

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Spring 2021
Grade: B+
July 13, 2021

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!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
1 of 2
3.7
Overall Rating
Based on 15 Users
Easiness 2.7 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 4.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.4 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.9 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.

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