Not sure what changed, but this professor is actually one of the worst I've ever had at UCLA. From the previous reviews, I was expecting an easy, educational quarter in physics 5B and was even pretty excited for the material. However, this quarter the professor must have changed his way of teaching, and not in a good way. The class is asynchronous, but his lecture videos are basically just reading off the textbook and the concepts are not explained well. Each week, I had to go to office hours to re-learn the material because it was so poorly explained in the videos. He is also not active on Campuswire, and he changed his time for office hours midway through the quarter to a time that many students couldn't attend due to time conflicts. Oh, and his exams are only 35 minutes. So yea, if you are not comfortable learning physics completely on your own with minimal help, don't take this professor for 5B.

I've never written a review but just for this, I will. Don't take 5a with Lancaster. I also thought it would be a breeze from the other reviews of this class but he decided to buttfuck us all with the way he set up this class. How the fuck is this guy gonna expect us to take a midterm in less than 50 minutes when we have to come up with our own values, own assumptions and make us make the problems more difficult so we can get more points. Then he justifies it by saying the vice chancellor said the exams are supposed to be 35 + 15 minutes even tho the other professors gave 24 hour exams with unlimited attempts for mastering. This class made me so tilted and I didn't learn shit. His lectures and mastering physics don't match up with the midterms at all and I have to fucking take 5b with him as my professor again cause this school is too fucking massive. Sweet man but he will fuck you over with this class.

Taking Physics 5A with Lancaster during Covid has been one of the most unnecessarily stressful experiences I've had at ucla. First of all, the weekly homework assignments barely match up with what is on the test with lab existing almost like its own class. The first test was about as open-ended as you could get, we had to make our own assumptions, values, and decide what "difficulty" we wanted to take the test on. The harder the difficulty (aka the more complex you make your test question), the closer you could (possibly) get to 100% which is only even attainable if you were to absolutely ace every single one of the extra complex steps since one slip up with something like the sign of a value or sig figs would result in points being taken off. I guess he's not the worst professor out there, but instead of making things less stressful/difficult because of Covid, he made his test super vague and the overall grading of the class harsher, but at least he offers 0.3 points of extra credit.

Please do not take this class. The numbers for Spring 2020 DO NOT correlate to the reality of this course. As someone who has consistently done well in other classes of the same caliber, I am telling you to skip this professor and take any one else.

Even if you get 100% on HW, Discussion and Lab sections, you will be left in the dust. The tests are ridiculous as they are only 35 mins with a number of questions with sections a,b,c,d. Midterm 2 was absolutely out of the ballpark with little to no material that actually covered 5B. The rubrics for grading take off 10 points on each question if you make a single error.

Getting one question wrong on any test will decrease your overall grade by PERCENTAGE points.

Please take it with another professor or put it off a quarter in order to save your GPA.

Do not take this class. Whatever you do, avoid taking this class at all costs. If people try to trick you to switch to this class because it's easy, they're liars and horrible people. This class really screwed me over. Lancaster gave us THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES PLUS A FIFTEEN SUBMISSION PERIOD for both the midterms. Labs can be harshly graded depending on your TA and honestly have jack all to do with the actual material and will not help you on the test. Homework is basically busy work and it's all on Chegg if you want to use that to check your work or clarify concepts. For midterms and the final, he gives a practice test that's close-ish to the actual tests, but are not the exact copy, so you do have to conceptualize. Lancaster seems like a sweet guy, but he was a horrible professor. Not everyone has the internet speed or environment to take high-stress level tests in such a short amount of time. He will literally take of seven points for a goddamn error in negative or positive signs. Students repeatedly asked for fairer test policies throughout the entire quarter, but he shot us down at every single turn. This class was an utter joke. I honest to god would rather chew on broken glass than take this class ever again.

While I think I did well in this class, it was just unnecessarily stressful. Weekly homework on mastering physics does help you learn the material, but it takes a very long time, with a huge penalty for every time you answer a question wrong. But despite the amount of time spent doing it, it is not representative of the tests whatsoever and only counts for a very small percentage of your grade. There is also a weekly problem that is more representative of your test and graded mostly for effort, but honestly I could never figure these out on my own without going to my TA's office hours. I am SO grateful that these lectures were asynchronous so I could watch them on double speed (Professor talks very slowly), but his replacement for a live class was his office hours 3x a week... and these were a disaster in my opinion. The only helpful ones were the ones leading up to the test, as he would work out a practice exam that is almost identical to the actual one. They always seemed insanely rushed, and because of that he would make several errors and change the problem along the way because he realized in that moment the problem didn't work for him. Also, while the asynchronous lectures and discussion would help someone in a different time zone, he is very unaccommodating when it comes to tests and will make you take it at the exact time he wants. Overall, an extremely frustrating class- the only reason I did well is by actually working out the mastering problems myself and basically memorizing the steps to the sample problem.

Do you enjoy listening to someone read off of slides? Do you like having basic and easy to teach concepts shown to you in complex and confusing ways? Do you like when your professor assigns homework so difficult, not even your TA knows how to solve it? Do you like difficult assessments with only a half an hour to finish, during a pandemic? Or needing to use a regrade request on each and every assessment in order to hold the graders accountable for arbitrarily subtracting points whenever they feel like it? Look no further! The class content is simple, the way he teaches and assesses is not. This class will suck up an abhorrent amount of your time, and you will get little out of it except for a headache and a permanent resentment of physics. My underfunded public high school teacher was better; pick a different professor or even a different quarter. Or don't, and find out why I loved this class so much.

Professor Lancaster is generally a good professor. There is no doubt he was caught in the midst of COVID trying to return to some form of normal while many people were still in difficult situations. From one perspective, his small window for taking the midterms and heavy homework loads were oppressive and unnecessary, while from another he is trying to push his students to a deeper understanding of the concepts. It would have been beneficial to students to have more leniency, but judging by his caring and patient nature when dealing with constant interruptions during his office hours, I would assume Prof. Lancaster will make sensible accommodations in the future.

For the class overall, if you did well in AP Physics C: Mechanics, there are really only two new concepts you learn in the class. One concept is Young's Modulus, an extension on springs, and the other is thermal energy which is just an extension of work. I cannot speak for people who are newly approaching physics, but I can state that if you have a prior understanding of the topics, there is nothing to fear.

This teacher is the worst professor I have ever had at UCLA. At first, the first midterm was alright because his practice tests were pretty much exactly like the midterm and he held office hours. The second midterm was a complete and utterly unfair action done by him. He changes his office hours last minute (from 4PM (which isn’t even our lecture time, which I think is really dumb because our lectures are asynchronous, so you would expect him to hold office hours at the lectures time?), to 11AM, to 10AM). He tries to avoid interactions with students and uses pre recorded lectures from last year to “teach” us (basically reading off slides). His practice tests were no where near similar to the midterm and everyone completely bombed it and he proceeded to email us saying “I expect a lot of As and Bs”. We voiced our concerns such as having so little time for the tests (35 minutes) and about the second midterm being unfair, but this teacher ignores all of our requests. He is a terrible teacher. I beg you, do not take this class with this professor if you are expecting a good grade. This class should not be hard, but his ways of teaching make it the most unfair class ever. Just don’t take his class.

Ok DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS!!! there were concepts from 5a without telling us. Midterm 2 was actually hell. If i didn't study I would have done better on the midterm. Had to take pass no pass just to save my GPA. Love that. When asked how to study for the final the professor just said "study everything :)". The only review given to us was him doing a practice final..... which he already did so literally not helpful. DO NOT TAKE FOR YOUR OWN SANITY