Professor Gelmini is really passionate about physics but the exams are way harder than the homework assignments. You use an online program called Mastering Physics for the homework. She sets it up so you get like 5 attempts per problem but deducts credit for each attempt you use. The midterm exams both have ridiculously hard questions worth almost half of the exam by themselves. The averages were near the 50-60% range. There was definitely a huge disconnect between the difficulty of the homework/clicker questions and the exam questions.

Where to begin with Gelmini....she's nice, passionate, helpful, friendly and all of that good stuff but her exams...oh man....her exams are killers. I don't see why she obsesses over trivial mathematics, as she is completely in love with unnecessary geometry and trigonometry. From her lectures, appreciating physics is quite difficult, because all she does is prove formulas (and some demonstrations). For an introductory mechanics class, her exams should not be as hard as they are; seriously, the time crunch and the ridiculous amount of geometry were grade killers. As for homework, Mastering Physics is one of the worst programs out there. She doesn't grade homework for completion (she puts in your mastering physics scores into the grade book), so good luck with that. Tips: do a lot of practice problems, fully understand the concepts, and if you think something won't be on the exam, trust me, it will be. If this is your first physics class, I really do feel badly for you. Please, head on over to Flipping Physics (YouTube), Khan Academy and any other sources you can get your hands on. Good luck....you're probably gonna need it.

While Professor Gelmini is compassionate and wants the best for her students, her intentions did not line up with our experience. Here's some more information on what to expect:

–In lecture, we typically start with a series of clicker questions. While some of these questions are well put together and thought provoking, none of them help with the exams at all. These questions take up a significant amount of time from 30-50min. While clicker questions do not affect your grade directly, she says if you are on the border, she will round you up/down depending on participation.
–Afterwards she lectures and does some demos. There's just a lot of dead time of her messing around with demos, or trying to get student participation at 8am, etc. As a result, she moves very quickly through lecture material in an unclear, ineffective manner. She handwrites pdfs before lecture of her notes, which can be helpful in review/absences, however they are hard to follow as she scrolls up and down around them in class.
–The discussion sections are more helpful, and the problems picked do help with student understanding. I would highly advise going to them. While my TA, Nick, was pretty good, he was disconnected from Gelmini. It seems as if they never talked.
–The exams. Questions are often poorly written, and do not reflect student understanding. During the midterms, there is never enough time, and whenever Gelmini realizes her mistakes and corrects them she speaks very softly. As far as studying goes, practice a lot and understand the concepts, but don't expect to see much familiar. It's a game of failing but failing less than others.

Overall, while Gemini means well, and I respect her for showing up to teach four 8ams, I would not recommend taking this class. Especially if this is your first mechanics class.

Gelmini definitely is very knowledgable and cares about student learning, but in my opinion doesn't have a very engaging or helpful teaching style. In lectures she will teach off her summarized notes and also work through extra math on the whiteboard. For the most part, I think her notes were helpful, but in lecture she tends to focus too much on the complex mathematical proofs and derivations of formulas in comparison to the actual problem solving process and conceptual understanding that we need to understand to actually do well on the exams. Which are, for the record, very difficult with averages in the 50s/60s. There is massive time pressure on both midterms, and while you have more time on the final, there are extremely confusing questions on there as well. Also mastering physics is a pain in the ass, but you need to do it because its worth just enough of your grade to make a difference. All in all, I wouldn't really recommend taking her class unless you have no choice. Lots of unnecessary stress and frustration.

Professor Gelmini is a responsible professor and all, and I believe she's quite talented at this field, it's just the exams are unnecessarily hard. I mean, this is 1A, the first course of lower division physics, why are you making it so hard? Plus, if the true final is this hard, at least release a practice final with similar difficulty level, but no, not even this. So you review and review, pay attention to classes, do homework carefully, but the tests are still gonna ruin you.

Gelmini is a very good professor. She will explain in every way possible until you understand the material. Aside from her jokes, she is very entertaining during class. You won't be bored.

Her HWs are 10%, and take some time to complete. Her mid terms are quite the challenge but very very doable, with normally 1 really hard question; you'd be quite brain dead after her mid terms.

Her final is very challenging but if you do all the questions including the "Challenge" questions in the Mastering Physics text book, you should find it easier than others.

There is a problem though. She does not give error carried forward points. For example, if a question has parts a,b,c, and d, and everything relies on the answer if part a, if you get part a wrong, parts b,c and d will probably only give you a total of 1 mark.
This happened in my final for a 30 point question. I made a calculation error and got the answer wrong. I ended up getting 5/30 points and a B+ because of this :/

Overall, I'll definitely recommend her, but just becareful of your exam calculation and answers.

I took 1A with Gelmini last spring quarter. I really like her since she is really funny during class with her accent(but you can understand what she is talking about). But her homework can be a pain in the ass since it takes you a lot of time but almost worth nothing (10%), both of her midterms are ridiculously easy and the curve is really high. That is to say, her final is quite challenging so make sure you really understand the materials. Overall, I would recommen this professor.

I hate to say anything negative about Gelmini because she really seems to care about student learning and seems like a very nice person, however, I feel as if I got little to nothing out of this class other than a hatred for physics. I feel that an average score of an F on a final exam indicates that the teaching skills of the professor are severely lacking. Several other commenters have mentioned her accent, I don't believe that this is the reason I found her so difficult to understand. My inability to understand her wasn't a failure to understand the words, but a failure to understand what the words had to do with the equations she wrote on the board.
The homework was pure torture, and usually took at least twice as long as the program said it would. The book was only somewhat helpful.
If you have to take this class I would highly recommend trying harder than I did: make sure you actually understand the homework when you do it, join the "lab" (a course where you get more practice problems, and extra help), go to all discussion sections (my TA made everything make sense, I wish he had taught the class), and maybe even go to office hours.

I thought Gelmini was a great professor. She is so difficult to dislike because she is clearly so dedicated to teaching: 3 office hours a week and totally willing to spare extra time if you ask. She clearly loves being the lecture hall and practically begs the class to ask her questions. She has a pretty thick accent but after a little while you can pick up on what she's talking about. Class is mostly proving the theories, and to be honest she only asked us to prove one or two things the entire quarter during an exam, but if you understand where the concepts come from you'll be in a very strong position for the exam.

Homework is worth almost nothing (10%), and it took me like 4 hours a week to do. Just try to start it early so that you don't end up completely screwed the night it's due.

Her midterms are set up so that you should get almost everything right. Usually she also puts almost all easy questions and one pretty difficult question that you can miss and still be OK in the class. So if you end up missing some points on the midterms it's really not a big deal.

It's also important to note that her final (which is also 50% of the class) is a killer. The average on her exams were C+/B-, but on the final the average was a flat 80/160 (which is an F). Only 3 people in the entire class got A's. Keep this in mind if you try to weight the final as 70% of your grade (I think she gave people this option if they failed one of the midterms).

Overall a great professor. I would recommend her to anyone.

I thought that Gelmini was a solid professor and I would recommend taking her.

She makes most of the concepts understandable in class, and the exams seem to be fair enough if you study (i.e. no over-the-top tricky questions). Online homework assignments are easy. Grading is also pretty fair. For the amount of effort I put in I probably did not deserve an A, but I still got it. Note, that if you HAVEN'T TAKEN PHYSICS BEFORE, you will probably have to put in a lot of effort to do well. However, if you did AP Physics in high school (I did), the material in this class is almost all review and seems ridiculously easy for awhile. I only studied right before the exams, and like I said, still received an A. Physics 1B will probably be a different story, but if you have take high school physics this class is definitely a review of old material.