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.

Loved this class. Samani is an excellent professor and I wish he taught the rest of my physics courses. He will answer all questions to the best of his ability and will never make you feel dumb for asking a question. He really values his students' learning. His class is bruincast but has clickers. Lecture notes are extremely useful and he uses examples in his class that are always useful when I study for his exams. I studied hard and did decently on all the exams. His practice tests are very good to use as study material before exams. If you took physics in high school, you should have a pretty solid foundation (even if you failed the AP like I did haha). Overall, this professor is amazing and the class is set up so that it is very engaging.

Before taking this class, I was so scared of physics. I took AP Physics in high school but I did not learn anything from it and ended up not taking the AP test. I put off physics for a while when I got to UCLA, and ended up taking it spring quarter of my sophomore year. Samani is BY FAR my favorite professor of all time, and will probably remain my favorite professor. I learned a lot every lecture, and he was very clear with his teaching. I HIGHLY recommend taking Samani for 5a, and actually any class he may teach.

He is very approachable and super helpful at office hours. Class attendance is mandatory (there are clickers). The tests aren't easy, but they also aren't hard if you study. I got a 98% on the first midterm, 94% on the second, and an 86% on the final and ended up with an A+ in the class. Discussion sections are very helpful and VERY similar to the test questions/concepts, so I recommend going to all of them (you can miss one). Also, make sure to stay on top of the online homework (Mastering Physics). I usually waited until the last minute to complete them, but I would recommend doing a few problems each day rather than all of them the night before.

Anyways, Samani is an amazing professor, he young and funny, and a great teacher. If you have the option to take his class, just do it. You won't regret it.

I can't deny the exams were pretty rough even with the ample practice he gave us (and graded...) Really consider how much you value the learning experience over the grade before you take Samani as getting a solid A can be hard even with the extra credit opportunities.
That being said, he is still a great professor and lecturer, probably one of the best ones you'll ever run into. You can tell he genuinely cares about teaching you how to learn and reason through problems, something you'll still need to do out of physics. That's enough for me to recommend him, but again it depends on how much you're willing to stake your grade.

This class was SO hard. It is one of the hardest classes I have ever taken and it will probably be very challenging. That being said, Josh does everything in his power for you to succeed. There is enough extra credit to raise you grade 5% and there are midterm redos. Office hours are also really helpful.
I think my only advice for this class is even if you completely bomb the 2 midterms, talk to Josh and see where you are at in the class before dropping because the class is kinda curved in a way

Here’s the thing about 5A with Samani: He’s a genius, a super nice guy, an engaging lecturer, and he really cares about student learning. He challenges his students to obtain a deep conceptual understanding of Physics, he requires you to memorize equations, and he doesn’t let you use a calculator, making exams inherently more stressful.

If you’re like me, and you have absolutely NO prior Physics (or calculus) experience, this class will be incredibly tough. Trying to memorize equations on top of working hard to even understand the content (and the basic mathematical principles behind it, lol) was really difficult. Samani’s tests are really, really challenging— to the point where I developed insane test anxiety and would panic heavily for his exams. I know people generally do fine in this class, but I really wanted to let those without a strong Physics background know what they’re getting into.

All that being said: it’s worth it. While struggling in this class, I literally completely changed the way I approach learning. I changed my study habits entirely, moving towards heavy practice testing and keeping an error catalog (as Samani suggested). The skills that class, and Samani’s teaching, have imparted have been immeasurable. I’m saying this as someone who got a C+ in the class and I have absolutely nothing to gain from writing this, so take it seriously lmao the man is a legend

I think (if you couldn't already tell from other reviews) that Samani is very polarizing! if he's not for you hes NOT for you and if he is for you then he REALLY is!

things that made him not for me:
1. idgaf about physics, and I'm not an MCAT warrior. This class is a requirement for my major, and that's literally it. I was hoping to thug it out and not have my GPA become abysmal (goal failed) + I hate math, always been bad at it
2. Three pages of equations and conversions (such as temperature and diopters to meters) that we were expected to have memorized for the final! sorry what!??? to be fair: he was VERY clear about this right from the get go but I had no choice but to pick him since I work 24hrs a week and was in need of a specific schedule
3. (Pretty much) Mandatory attendance, unless you want to lose 2% of your grade
4. In order to create memory reinforcement, lots of practice materials, such as his textbook with questions and all sorts of stuff, and they were worth like 2% of your grade but at times felt like weird busy work, it was not my favorite
5. final worth 35% :0 after having everything worth 15% or less, the final is so daunting

Things that make him cool:
1. really engaging lecturer! super chill personality, friendly and approachable!!
2. actually made ts applicaple, again idgaf about physics but every now and again i was like okay this is kinda cool!
3. is not as unflexible as people say he is- he gave my class some additional extra credit randomly which is apprecaited
4. 4 tests instead of midterms, they were each worth like 7% which made it less stressful to fumble a topic and you were getting more frequent feedback!
5. good music taste
6. he gave ec
7. i had a 55% quiz/midterm average pretty much and a 60 on the final and I passed so he's VERY kind