I've seen a lot of mixed reviews for Dr. Bauer, but I absolutely loved having him as my first physics professor at UCLA. I haven't taken physics since high school and was really nervous coming in, but he made it very digestible and easy to understand. Some call him passive aggressive, but I'd call him blunt more than anything, which I appreciated a lot. I'd go to his office hours every week to ask questions and get clarification and he'd straight up tell me "No, that's not correct" which I appreciated, so I wouldn't make the same mistakes on exams. We had three midterms ... which was a lot (exam basically every 2 weeks), but I also appreciated that I had more time to practice concepts before the final. Office hours are so important to go to if you're feeling nervous about physics because you'll find likeminded students (which I found to be the most helpful because we studied outside of class/office hours together). Another thing about Dr. Bauer is that he's VERYYYYYY lenient with partial credit. You can do all the right steps and get an atrociously wrong answer and yet somehow you only get half a point docked. He cares much more about your conceptual understanding than a numerical answer. Overall, would totally take him again!!

I was very scared to take this class because I have never taken any prior physics and I am very bad at math. This class is very difficult, but somehow I managed to scrape by with a B- and I am very thankful for that. Some pros and cons about professor Bauer. Pros: The homework/labs are very manageable and graded primarily on completeness (33% of overall grade and usually consists of a short weekly discussion post and about 15-25 practice questions + prelab/lab), he provides his own formula sheet on exams, there are 3 exams (33% of overall grade aka 11% per exam) + 1 final (34% of overall grade) so you have a chance to redeem yourself if you fail an exam, he offers practice questions from exams of previous years, he offers lecture on zoom and records/posts them, he offers some extra credit here and there, and the CURVE IS LIFE-SAVING. Cons: the exams are MUCH harder than the homework (the homework is essentially solidifying your basic knowledge but one exam question is the entire homework combined into 3-4 harder questions), you dont know your overall grade for the entire quarter because he posts scores through Gradescope (it was very stressful not knowing what I had for the entire class and they took forever to grade each exam), he is not very helpful during office hours, and although he clearly is a brilliant physicist, he's not a very good teacher. He "teaches" by reading directly off slides that have close to no similarity (difficulty wise) to the exams/homework, so I rarely went to class and just watched the lectures on my own time because I mostly self taught through Youtube and tutors. For context, the slides are VERY easy, the homework is harder than the slides, and the exams are harder than the homework. Needless to say, I never felt prepared in this class. Most of us are just taking this class for the MCAT or major requirement and never look back, but he expected A LOT out of us. However, he is so incredibly generous with the curve that it lowkey makes up for how hard the class is. I shouldn't have even passed let alone got a B- so I was thoroughly impressed and grateful for that. Overall, he is not the worst but definitely not the best, so if you're taking him it's not the end of the world but if you could find someone better I would opt for that. My advice: ace the homeworks/labs since that is a third of your grade and do as well as possible on the exams (write out literally anything even if you don't know what to do because they give partial credit). Good luck!

I took Physics 5A with Bauer this summer and he was a really great professor! He is an incredibly clear lecturer and his tests are challenging but manageable if you complete all of the posted practice exams and problem banks. The practice problems he give you are really cool and make you think, and his class made physics feel super interesting. I know a lot of people say he is passive aggressive but honestly i have only seen him be mildly passive aggressive when people ask him questions that indicate that they haven't gone to lecture or tried to learn concepts independently before coming to office hours. In my experience he was always very kind and helpful when I came to office hours. The lab component of this class is very easy, the discussion portion is graded on completion and is super helpful to go to since the problems on discussion worksheets are often kind of similar to those on exams.

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!

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

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.