I'm a little surprised at the high reviews for this class. I thought Hopkins was a decent lecturer, but the use of recorded videos with so little interaction just didn't work for me. If I wanted to watch videos on YouTube, I could do that on my own, so personally I struggled to get motivated. Which was a shame because I really liked the subject matter and material. I thought that the exams were fairly challenging. I felt like since the tests were open book he wanted to give us things that he hadn't gone over in lecture. But overall the tests were pretty do-able, and I lost most of my points on stupid things like math errors or naming conventions. It was super important to pay attention to his specific conventions and our grader was pretty picky. I'd take this class with Hopkins again, but I'd probably spend a lot more time watching Hopkins work through various practice problems to get a better understanding of what the grader was looking for on the tests. The final project took a lot of time if you wanted to do it "right", but could probably be rushed through if you take some shortcuts.

Professor Hopkins is one of the best lecturers in the MAE department...which made me disappointed when even though the class was in-person, all of the lectures were pre-recorded on YouTube and we only met once a week to turn in homework and go over practice problems. (The YT lectures were still high quality although it was difficult to keep the motivation to watch them as the quarter wore on.)

Exams and homework were challenging but fair, the lectures give you a pretty good idea of the type of content you'll see.

The group project was a little weird--the groups were 10 people for what probably could have been a 3-4 person project which made it difficult to split up the work evenly. I guess rather have that than the other way around.

Professor Hopkins is genuinely one of the best professors I've ever had at UCLA. He is clearly so passionate about the topic that it makes everyone engaged. Not only that he is actually so good at explaining, I genuinely learned from him and his lectures and not from outside sources. The format is reverse style classroom which isn't my favorite and then during scheduled lecture time there is a supplementary lecture that I highly recommend going to because he solves past exam problems which is extremely helpful. The grade breakdown is as follows:
30% midterm 1
30% midterm 2
40% final project
The midterms for my class he moved to be online which was awesome because they require a LOT of time (it is easy to make a sign convention error which follows through multiple steps of the problem). He also themed the midterms the first one was Return of the Joints star wars theme and the second was Indiana Joints. I've never met a teacher who puts so much effort into creating exams. Final project is long but doable. Overall if you take this class take it with Hopkins he is the goat.

Lectures are prerecorded. There were also in person lectures for extra practice problems, and in person project meetings with the prof. Weekly HWs, 2 exams, and 1 project. Exam 1 was okay and exam 2 was difficult but curved. Going over all the practice problems he gives is probably enough to get an A. The project this year was a bit crazy - 20+ person groups. Hopkins himself said it's unideal but he can only handle 7 or so projects for the entire class. Projects were pretty interesting, but a lot of the group ended up doing very little. Overall workload is not too bad in comparison to other mechE classes.

The class material is pretty interesting. Professor Hopkins actually created much of the stuff he's teaching, so he lectures on it well. I would def recommend this class as an elective, very interesting and not too hard.

this man is so swag. take this class with him RIGHT NOW. you won't regret it

Pre-recorded lecture, no homework due. All the points are from the exams and the project. For the homework, it is good practice genuinely to get it down. Get your matrices and your differentiation and integration of sines and cosines down (there is a pattern you will see). First half of the class is lowk chill like it goes up to acceleration which is like 102 repeat for the most part. He says acceleration is difficult, but I think the second part is way worse cuz its done a little fast and he has less examples on it. The exams were RIDICULOUS. They took forever. You gotta be careful with it. But they are pretty nice with the grading. The project is like honestly pretty simple, and he gives you a surprising amount of freedom. It is hella tedious, but if you have a good group (at least 5 people usually), shouldn't be the worst in the world. And you have all quarter to figure out the timing to do it.