Take Zocchi for 1A if you can; he is the easiest south campus teacher I've had yet at UCLA. I went to about half the lectures, and of the ones I went to, I usually left halfway through. The first midterm was an absolute joke, the second one was difficult, and the final was hard but less so than the second midterm. However, the graders give unbelievable amounts of partial credit, so even though I felt like I knew close to nothing on the second midterm, I still beat the average substantially. Tests have very little to do with the homework and he loves to use variables instead of actual numbers in his problems. However, if you have an understanding of the concepts from the homework, you should be fine on tests. I ended up with an A after studying for about 5 hours for the final - not bad.

Also his accent is amusing.

Professor Zocchi is a great and funny guy, but his lectures are just average, or certainly not the best. Though I guess the easy tests offsets the ineffective lectures. First midterm was a complete joke (almost everyone got 100%) and the 2nd midterm was relatively harder, but overall very easy. The final was harder than both midterms, but still do-able. I literally crammed the night before, especially on rotational mechanics, but I ended up with an A in the class. Although I took physics in high school, I still went to 85% of his lectures, but I found them quite unorganized and felt the book does better teaching the material step by step. If you already have a background in physics prior to taking this class, this is definitely one of those classes where you can skip all the lectures.

Easy A. I went to the first lecture and decided that his accent was too hard to understand so i only showed up for the exams. I just did the hw and i got 100% on the first test 95% on the second and 100% on the final. i dont know if he was a good teacher or not but the exams were really really easy

First midterm really easy, 2nd midterm crazy hard. Didn't give much partial credit for the first midterm but he had to for the 2nd or everyone would have failed. The final was between the two in terms of difficulty, but probably closer to the 2nd midterm than the first. I got 2 points above average on both midterms, and 58/80 on the final (which he didn't give an average for) and somehow ended up with an A. Must have been a generous curve. His lectures are pretty useless, but I still went to every one. I found myself playing games on my ipod, as was over the class (those who went, at least). He has a thing for picking ridiculously hard Mastering Physics problems, so good luck with those. Overall, not the worst but definitely not the best.

I suppose he's very easy; there's a complete solution's manual floating around, so unless the homework glitches on you, you should get at least 9.5% on the homework.

His lectures focus a lot on the math behind the formulas; however the book just gives you the formula and tells you to go solve some problems. That's kinda hard if the professor doesn't really dwell too much in the concepts and such. The book's style is along the lines of giving you easy examples followed by very hard problems.

The first midterm was very easy, I might've gotten full score if I didn't make a stupid mistake that only put me 2 points ahead of the average.

The second midterm was very hard; I guess if I didn't screw up the first problem I would've gotten at least average instead of 6 points under it.

The final seemed fair; there were questions on force as a function of time, which I had no clue about since the textbook only throws F=ma at you so I guess I may have royally screwed it up.

Anyways, somehow I ended up with a B instead of a C, so I'm thankful for it. I guess he has a pretty lenient curve.

If you know your physics and you know you won't screw up like I did, take him. If you seriously want to understand the concepts and such, you might want to consider another professor. HOWEVER, this quarter the 3 1A professors were Zocchi, Musomeci, and Gekelman. I heard Musomeci was pretty cool.

He seems to know a lot... but he doesn't lecture very well. He uses complex examples without explaining any of the concepts behind the material. Perhaps if you read the book before lecture you'll be able to follow him better, but normally I found that I would stop paying attention rather quickly (maybe this has something to do with his accent), and after the second midterm I stopped going to class entirely. Lecture is not necessary in this class - only doing the Mastering Physics homework is required.

His first midterm is easy, and second one significantly harder. The final is somewhere in between. If you want a relatively easy physics class, take this one. If you want to learn, perhaps look elsewhere.

His first midterm was really easy, second midterm significantly more difficult, and a fair final.
when it comes to grading the exams, he tries to give you as much points as possible. If you were kind of getting there, he'll give you a lot of points for it.
Homework was from masteringphysics and really did help for the exams.
He's a funny professor, but had generally useless lectures.
He had a generous curve and I ended up with an A.

Take him if he's teaching 1A.

I hardly went to class and managed an A with minimal studying. Zocchi has a very heavy accent and his courses tended to be all over the place and often covered topics which weren't necessary (I remember him going over oscillations the first day of class, a topic that you won't learn about until late in the quarter). He's very passionate and enthusiastic about physics and funny at times. His first midterm was way to easy, second was ridiculously hard, and the final seemed about right.

He's seems to like the calculus portion of physics which is different from most of the homework he assigns, so it was quite a shock to see these things. Overall not a bad professor especially if you've taken a physics course before. If you haven't, I'd recommend going to another professors lecture to learn the material.

Okay, so first things first
Professor Zocchi is an extremely nice man
I went to his office hours once and he talked to me for over forty minutes
about things kinda unrelated to the course, so he obviously cares about his students

As far as teaching goes, he is a little erratic but he does go over all the material is good detail
the only thing is that he tends to let the math do the explaining for him and doesn't spend too much time
on explaining the actual physical concepts behind everything

That being said that class was not too difficult.
Two midterms worth 25% each, one 40% final, and several online assignments that count for 10% of your grade

The first midterm was extremely easy and the second was pretty easy as well with the exception of one ridiculously hard
problem that actually turned out to be unsolvable through the methods we learned about

The final was also not to bad, no major curveballs just straightforward physics with a few tricky parts

Overall, I recommend taking Zocchi for 1A if you want a relatively easy class where you can learn quite a bit

If you really want to learn the concepts very well, i might consider someone else

Professor Zocchi is a nice guy, but his lectures were pretty much useless. After the first midterm (which was pretty easy even though I screwed it up) I went to Corbin's lectures for the rest of the quarter. The second midterm was a lot more difficult than the first one but somehow I got above average. The final was pretty difficult too but somehow I ended up with an A- in the class and most people I know either got As or Bs. Take his class if you want an easier physics professor than Corbin, but expect to have to learn it on your own.