Overall, Professor Gelmini made Physics 1A MUCH harder than it really had to be. Her notes were often incredibly confusing and difficult to follow and she didn't add enough to them in person to make sense. The only way I was able to learn in this class was through the homework KUDUs which were difficult, but helpful. However, the participation KUDU in class were beyond a waste of time. She would spend at least 30 minutes of a 2 hour lecture fiddling with KUDU and begging us to select the right answer. Answering these KUDUs also contributed to your participation grade, and I don't know how she did it because I answered every one and still got a poor participation grade.
The worst part of this class are her tests. Beyond the usual difficult style of physics test, hers were just incomprehensible. The entire class would spend half the test asking clarifying questions because we had no idea what she was asking. The time crunch is also very real.
It is unfortunate that Gelmini is teaching this class because she is incredible passionate about physics, she is just not able to communicate the information to an unknowing audience.

I hate to say it, but this was genuinely the worst class that I have taken at UCLA so far. And to make it worse, Gelmini has to be the worst professor that I have had. She talks way too fast, and isn't able to clearly communicate the ideas that she is trying to teach. On top of that, the material she covers is so convoluted and confusing that not a single kid knows what is going on. I scored well above average on the midterms and even I don't comprehend a word she says. One of the biggest problems is her electronic notes, which she scrolls through rather than writing down. It allows her to go way faster, and loose us way easier in the mess that they are. Her pacing for the overall course is also not great. All of the other classes were way behind the stuff we were doing, but Gelmini chose to rush ahead. We didn't even use the time for anything worthwhile. There was a good 5 lectures where we learned no new content, when we could have gone through some of the other material slower. And its not like I am bad at math or physics. I go to lecture every single time, and I come out of it wondering why I even bothered. I learned nothing from this course, and the only thing saving me is the knowledge I have from AP Physics. you have no have no idea how you are even doing in this class, because for whatever reason Gelmini doesn't believe in grade books. This is a whole other issue in my opinion. On top of that, her tests are some of the most psychopathic things that I have ever seen. The material on the tests isn't even close to the examples that we are provided during class, and there are way too many questions for the little time we have. No matter how much time you put into preparation, you will still be struggling on the test. Then the entire class does bad, and she proceeds to yell at us the class after grading the midterms about how we didn't study enough. Like I am sorry, but I probably studied for that test more than any other test here at UCLA. I think that at that point she has to look herself in the mirror and realize where to place the blame, because it certainly should not be on the students. Not to mention the fact that not only can she not teach, but that we don't even have a textbook to teach ourselves from. The TAs had to go dig one up from the depths of the internet to help us. Similarly she doesn't release the solutions to our tests, so we have no idea on how to improve upon the mistakes we made. It honestly just makes me sad that this is a teacher representing the number one public university in the world. I think it is just a problem with the physics department as a whole, because it seems like they consistently have professors who are notorious for being horrible. This stuff is not rocket science, and it is really not that hard to teach.
Give me a wage and I could 100% do a better job than Gelmini. I understand that she is really smart, and her research on dark matter seems really interesting, but she is not someone that should be teaching an intro physics course. If you are reading this professor, I am sorry for being so harsh but it is the truth.

The tests are way harder than anything taught in class or given in homework. The class is very disorganized, and the site we used to complete assignments, Kudu, constantly had technical difficulties. The assignments we had to do covered things beyond what was in the lecture yet still didn't prepare us for the tests. She races through the actual content and spends the majority of lectures on Kudu.

Gelmini is not a good lecturer. This class is unnecessarily difficult for what is supposed to be an introduction to physics. Lectures are long and unengaging as she just reads off her notes which are very disorganized and hard to follow. The difficulty gap between homework and tests is laughable, tests are way too hard. She also uses Kudu which is a pain to use. Often the software fails to record answers and scores quizzes incorrectly. Physics is a hard class, but Professor Gelmini makes it especially difficult.

Nothing I can say that people haven't already. Hard to understand in class, has kinda confusing notes, doesn't really know how to use the Kudu platform, and the questions she posts don't match the tests in difficulty. I think she's a sweet person, but the way she teaches makes it unnecessarily harder to understand the content. I thought the mandatory participation was nice just because it keeps you from blowing off what is otherwise a decently hard class, but if you take this class with her just know you're going to be sinking a lot of additional time outside of class trying to teach yourself the content.

This is going to get long, but I'll address all the main issues I had with Professor Gelmini in a detailed manner. But long story short, do NOT take her class; she is an awful lecturer and you won't learn anything despite the midterm/final being impossible to solve within the time limit.
Professor Gelmini posts handwritten notes before the lecture and basically just reads off of them during lecture. Her notes aren't helpful though — they're unorganized, and has a bunch of calculus/derived equations that are never tested on. I'm personally strong in math/calculus so I kinda understood but they never really helped me understand physics/the material/content better plus she rushes over them so quickly I'm lost half of the time. Besides deriving a bunch of equations, she doesn't really TEACH us conceptually physics or even run through practice problems. I stopped going to lecture after like week 2 because I always left the classroom feeling more confused than when I entered and she genuinely made me so mentally stressed I couldn't bare being in that classroom.
She uses a website called Kudu for homework and everything is graded on correctness. Even the pre-lecture questions. Kudu is also a entirely underdeveloped website in general so it's so useless and the "textbook" reading material in there is so vague you won't learn anything from it. The questions on Kudu are not helpful at all for the exams and half of the questions are on content that Gelmini didn't teach or are purely calculus which, again, is not tested on the exams (even though this is technically a calculus based physics class). I'm not exaggerating when I say this but she spends about an hour (of a 1hr 50min lecture period) on practice problems during lecture from Kudu. She also reads off the statistics as every 10 seconds ("50% of the class is selecting the wrong answer," "13% of you guys still have it wrong") which stressed me out so much that I was just trying to somehow find the answer online rather than actually solve it. Not to mention the Kudu website incorrectly calculated our grades on the homework assignments, in class assignments, etc that we had to PERSONALLY email Kudu support to fix the issue. Likely the student who got a bad grade on participation didn't email Kudu support to get the proper credit.
Midterms and finals problems will be NOTHING like the Kudu homework problems. They're pretty difficult, and we're only given 50 minutes LOL. I personally think if we had the full 1 hour 50 minutes (of lecture period) for the same number of questions, it wouldn't have been that bad. But because we're only given 50 minutes I was rushing, didn't have time to actually think through the problems, and had NO time to double check any of my answers.
TLDR; Basically if you HAVE to take her for physics, don't bother going to lecture. Just answer the in-class Kudu classes during lecture time but self teach yourself by reading a textbook. ATP I think I could teach Physics 1A better than Gelmini LOL

I took AP Physics C: Mechanics prior to this course. Because of that the class was not too difficult, but my friend had not taken Mechanics previously and he struggled quite a bit.
From what I can tell, the class is curved pretty generously with about 30% of the class getting an A and 30% in the B range. The grading is fair though the tests were harder than the in class problems. If you work quickly it's not difficult to achieve at least partial credit on most problems.
Other than tests we were graded on our homework for correctness as well as in class questions that are graded for either completion or correctness. (though they are not location sensitive).
I believe she recorded her lectures though I never attempted to watch the recordings.
The professor herself is fine at explaining concepts (though I had learned most of them previously so I could be biased) but is not great at answering questions. Sometimes she misunderstands what students are asking and explains something completely different that confuses them further. If you can ask your question clearly and concisely she can be helpful.
Also she did yell at us a couple of times when we didn't understand the concepts. Gonna say it was out of passion but I'm not sure the class took it that way.

Professor Gelmini is a terrible lecturer. She just reads off of her notes for the whole two hours of class and it seems like a waste of time to go since it takes less time if I just read them. She uses a website called kudu for homework assignments which is also extremely disorganized and due dates are never clear and/or change frequently. Don't even get me started on the tests. I did 60 pages worth of practice problems and spent on average 6 hours a day studying (so much that I had to sacrifice time for my other classes) and I still did awful on both midterms. The problems are extremely difficult (more than anything on the homework or in discussion) and the amount of time allotted is not enough to do them. 10/10 would not recommend.

Professor Gelmini is kind of like the Professor Kavner (chem) of physics: incredibly kind person, but has a teaching style that lacks clarity. I'm not naturally gifted in physics, but I've never felt this confused (took some physics in high school). It genuinely felt like I was unlearning the material I had learned in high school at some points. Her grading style is also pretty difficult to deal with, since she has incredibly hard tests that she then curves, but that doesn't let you know at all if you're doing well in her class or not.
One great thing about the class is that she posts notes, and she posts them in advance to the lectures, but they are pretty difficult to understand. The fact that she requires participation is also really annoying since you don't come out of the lectures feeling like it was a good use of your time.
If you're good at physics, you'll probably do well, but unfortunately that probably isn't thanks to her lectures, but rather your own work. Would not recommend.

Dr Gelmini is friendly, but her tests leave me in tears for how confusing it is, especially the finals (and I mean unbelievably confusing). Her grading is very lenient however. Make sure you participate so she can remember you (it helps when she determines whether to give you a B or B+ for example if your grade is in the borderline like my case)