Samani overall was a great Professor, in that I learned alot from what he taught, and the way he lectured made me interested in physics. However, do not take this class if you want an essay A. He invests alot of time in this class including posting well-made demos simulations and weekly content videos. The videos were a little long but weren't horrible if you watched at double speed. The weekly quizzes were pretty manageable assuming you went to class and watched the content video. However, they were closed notes so that definitely made them more difficult. While the class isn't easy if you put in the time and work you can defiantly succeed. If you actually want to learn physics would definitely take this class.

He made this class hard again

Samani is a great professor. He is passionate about the subject and has thorough explanations. Many of the people writing poor reviews here likely never showed up to class and/or refused to study for the final.
Surprise! Physics is hard... but as somebody who has had actually bad physics professors in the past I can assure you this is the guy to take. If you show up to class and study for just 15 minutes a week outside of class, you will do great on every quiz and the final. Plus, there are no midterms, which means less stress on you when all your other professors are breathing down your neck weeks 4-7. Look at the grade distribution.

I think professor Samani is the greatest physics professor I've ever met. Other than teaching physics concepts, he really cares about students' needs. He changed the quiz duration to be much longer than usual in order to reduce students' anxiety on unsuccessful gradescope submission. The difficulty of quizzes and the final is reasonable as long as you follow the lectures carefully and do most of the practice pracket problems. Also, go to his office hour which is really useful! To be honest, as a math major, I spend 60-70% of my time on this physics course, but I think it's worth it. I really enjoy this course because I can feel Samani's passion when teaching it. I'll definitely enroll in other courses of Samani in the future if I had a chance. Take his class if you really want to learn sth!

BEST PROFESSOR EVER!!! Samani will make you LOVE physics even if you've never loved physics before. He is so engaging and funny and makes every single lecture relatable and applicable to your life. Like I would leave lecture wanting to learn more and I never really liked 5A so Samani completely turned the experience around for me. TAKE PHYSICS WITH SAMANI HE WILL MAKE YOU LOVE SCHOOL!!!

I've never really met Samani in office hours because I heard he wants you to figure it out yourself even if you go to him. I can say without a doubt that you'll probably end up with some sort of A coming out of this class. If you go to every discussion, submit all the problem sets on time (they don't even need to be correct), go to lecture to earn extra credit, score average on his midterms, and 8 points above the average on the final, that's an A. He lets you correct your midterm for 1/3 of the points back, and it's really helpful to go back and see what you messed up on. I came out of the class knowing physics more than I thought I would've.

Samani perhaps the clearest professor you can get. He is very capable of explaining new concepts in simple ways and emphasizes intuition rather than brute-force math in his physics problems. It's been said that Samani's exams are harder than other physics professors, but I've never really had an issue with them. If you managed to get past the AP Physics 1 exam, you should be able to get past his exams just fine. Which is convenient, because Physics 5A is just regurgitating AP Physics 1 material and nothing more. If you've taken AP Physics 1 before, you literally will not learn anything new.

Professor Samani offers extra credit for hard work, so it's very easy to pad your grades even when you perform poorly on homework and exams. He also grades a lot of the homework on effort and completion rather than accuracy, so grades (other than from exams) should not be a big issue.

One thing to watch out for, though, is that he wants you to check a multitude of websites for announcements and homework, so things tend to get lost in the clutter.

Overall, Samani is a fantastic professor and I would highly encourage you to take his class over other physics professors' classes.

Samani is the best! His tests are really hard but with test corrections and the team portion of the midterm and final, you end up getting some points back. Lectures are always really interesting and there are many opportunities for extra credit in the form of practice exams which are super helpful. Be sure to read the textbook if you don't have a background in physics!

THIS WAS ONE OF THE HARDEST CLASSES I HAVE EVER TAKEN! I really hated physics with a passion when I was in this class. I felt like I ended up liking 5B, which is supposedly more dreadful than 5A and 5C was even better. If you have no physics background, you will struggle in this class unless you can figure out how to perform well on his ridiculous exams. My performance on the midterms was average but the final wrecked me. Also, I tried to adopt his strategies for problem solving and even worked with others, however, I still didn't see a "drastic" improvement in my performance. I feel like the amount of work I put into this class is not reflective of my grade and all the frustration I experienced during the process.

Samani's lectures are good for explaining the base concepts of physics, but then on exams and homework he expects us to apply this simple concepts on a much deeper, more complicated level with little to no guidance. Also, the workload for this class is just too much- especially the inclusion of the Mastering which is essentially useless to me. My entire weekends were always physics because of the discussion worksheet, online homework, and exam practice (not to mention extra credit) due EVERY WEEK. We have to use a calculator for these problems, which we can't do in any other aspect of the course, and the problems are never like anything we are asked on an exam. He also always seems apologetic about how hard the class and tests are, but he is the one in control of this and can change it. Overall, Samani is a decent lecturer but the class is much more pain than gain.