I was originally very scared to take this class as I had no prior physics background (high school did not offer AP Physics, etc.) and Bauer's previous reviews weren't the greatest, but I surprisingly enjoyed the class and thought it was very well-structured. Bauer records his lectures and also streams them on Zoom in real time, so you do not have to attend class in-person if you do not want to. He is very straight to the point and does not spend much time on theory, which is nice. Most of the formulas/information you need should be written directly on the lecture slides. For exams, I thought they were very fair and were relatively similar in difficulty to the practice exams/problem bank. I highly recommend working through the problems in the problem bank and attending his office hours if you have questions about solving them, as some similar concepts came up on the exams. I also reviewed the homework problems and the problems covered in class to prepare for exams. He also provided an option to submit corrections for one problem on each midterm to earn back 3% of the exam grade, which is great, and he is also is pretty generous in providing partial credit on exams. He may come off as awkward at first but he is generally helpful in his office hours and is pretty understanding through email if you have any problems (ex. I forgot to submit a discussion worksheet one time but he gave me the points after contacting him and explaining my situation). Overall, I really enjoyed having him for my first physics class and will be taking him again for 5C next quarter!

Honestly, I really liked Bauer this quarter. Prior to entering this class, I had heard a lot of people say that he was historically a pretty difficult physics professor and that it is difficult to get an A, but I think he may have toned down the difficulty of our class just a bit.

The first midterm for 5A is regarded to be pretty easy, but this quarter even the 2nd midterm for this class was pretty fair and doable. The final was also a reasonable difficulty, and touched on all of the different topics we had learned in the class.

Lectures were recorded, and honestly were very good and Bauer did a great job at breaking down novel concepts/ideas into more comprehensible pieces for us to learn. Well structured class and professor.

Professor Bauer is very passionate about physics and this helped the lectures feel engaging and easy to follow. While the material can be tricky if you’re new to physics, it’s manageable as long as you stay on top of weekly homework and lectures. Would take again