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.

I felt very mislead by the other bruinwalk reviews for his other courses. Samani's class was the most difficult and unclear class I have ever taken. There is a lot of homework every week, his lectures seem to barely cover any content and the practice exams that he gives are 10x harder than problems covered in lecture. He says he gives a lot of extra credit but the class is not curved and the total amount of extra credit adds up to about 4%. He is a very nice guy but I did not enjoy this class at all.

If you can take 5A with Samani, do it. He works hard to make lectures engaging and he goes through the concepts pretty slowly and thoroughly. That said, he teaches the class in a pretty conceptual way, so its important to do problems outside of class in order to do well on the tests, which were pretty difficult. But even if the tests don't go well for you, you can get points back by doing a reflection and he offers a TON of extra credit (about 4 - 5% added to your final grade). The class is also curved, so you have a very good chance of finishing the class with an A. The class is hard, but Samani wants you to succeed and if you take advantage of the resources you'll do great.

This class was hard AF so hard I had to retake it. Samani is a very conceptual professor and does not understand that there are people who have never taken Physics before. His exams are unlike anything Ive seen and the class averages are always very low like 40% so he curves upward. I honestly do not know how 70% of the class got A's . If you have never taken physics before your better off going with another professor who uses formula sheets and calculators cus this class aint it chief.

I didn't get a good grade on this class but I have no regrets taking Samani. Other physics lecturer pale in comparison to his lectures and I wish he taught other Physics 5 series. This is a class where you genuinely LEARN instead of being spoon fed concepts in their most concise form. I actually enjoyed tremendously the questions he wrote because it really makes you revisit the fundamentals of the concepts and understand how to apply them. I took physics in high school and hated it because of how dry it was. Samani really cares about your growth and learning and I really appreciate that even though I am annoyed by the difficulty of his exam questions.

Oh and did I mention how amazing he is at answering your questions? Seriously, always go to him with your questions. He figures out exactly the source of your conceptual confusion and also understands well common misconceptions. This class has been a blast.

Honestly, everyone hyped samani to be amazing. I think he is an amazing lecturer. But this quarter people got wrecked so hard. Everyone I talked to was really upset and angry. We spend one whole lecture for one small formula. Test practices are not close to what comes out on the test. There is a ton of homework. You will be spending hours. Exam was so hard that the TA's got different answers for it.

This is the professor to take 5A with. I had not taken physics before and I was really scared as to whether I would succeed. The main thing to do is to do the pre-lecture readings and that will help you succeed in the class.

I loved the class and thought Samani was an excellent professor.

Lab is a joke- just attend it and put in decent effort and you'll get through it

Ok so I don't know if this is still the case, but when I took the class Winter 2019, the tests were really hard and he gave extra credit, but I heard that might have changed.

Overall, I actually really enjoyed Samani's class. I was really intimidated by Physics as a subject before (I had taken it as a freshman in high school and did not do amazingly then and then had been intimidated since). He is a really good lecturer and a nice person. I used to go to office hours when I could and he would go through examples and answer any questions students had.

I'm going to break down the class as best I can:

Lecture: He lectures basically the whole time and pauses for times for students to do clickers and discuss their thoughts, but writes down important things to remember like definitions and equations. He has slides but he mainly uses them for clickers (participation). The content of lectures tend to be conceptual and he does examples.

Discussion: Required, you are assigned a team of two other people in your discussion and you work with them in some discussions and can do extra credit practice exams with them. You also work with them on the two midterms for the team portion, which is the same as the individual portion and if you do better on the team portion he counts it, if you don't, he will replace it with your individual section score so it can only help you.

Exams: Difficult and conceptual, but fair. To prepare for the exams I would do practice and I was consistent about doing all of the practice exam problems from the homework every week. You do have to memorize equations, but there aren't that many for the whole course and he writes them down in lecture on the board.

Homework: A lot of homework. MasteringPhysics online were the only ones you actually needed to get correct. The discussion worksheet usually was whatever you didn't finish in class and was graded on completion and effort. The individual practice exams were also basically just old practice exam problems that were hard but were graded on completion and effort. I found it worth it to try as best I could on the individual practice exams so that I knew what to expect for the actual exams (very similar in type of problems). Doing it all is a huge time commitment though, I will say.

Office Hours: Helpful if you have questions on concepts, will go through problems with you like if you're stuck on a MasteringPhysics he'll go through the concepts with you.

Lab: Physics 5AL is basically entirely separate from 5A so honestly you just show up and do the labs and do some easy pre-labs and my group would always finish the post-lab during lab section.

I know people who hated his class / physics but they also never went to lecture or office hours and I think that because I went to office hours and his lecture style works really well for me and I took notes by hand it just helped me a lot. I know this class is really intimidating, but I genuinely learned a lot and think that his grading scheme was really fair because it's so easy to get high scores on all sections aside from his test that he doesn't even need to curve.

I hope this was helpful!

Physics 5A with Samani was fantastic. Students who had taken him previous quarters said it was a very stressful class because of all of the "extra credit" work they had to do since his test were so hard, but he has changed most of that now. His exams are very fair and there is less feeling of needing to do extra work.

Samani is a brilliant lecturer. He is very calculated in what he says, so he is always extremely clear. My only negative thing I could say would be that he occasionally can lecture at too slow of a pace for sake of clarity when it is not helpful/needed, but other students might disagree with me on that.

Regardless of if you have taken physics in high school, you will do well in this course - you do not need the textbook even.

Samani 5A Grade Breakdown (kind of):

2 Midterms, each worth 20% -- the first midterm was very easy, most everyone got well in the A range. Thus, the second midterm was definately more difficult. Had I studied, it would have been not too bad.

Final = 30%: Final was very fair. Nothing crazy. Study all the practice exams he gives out.

Other 30%: Mastering physics, Lab, Discussion, iClickers. These are gimme points. If you do them, you get 100% practically.