His class is a joke. Take it for amusement (seeing him cooking and eating hotdogs in class, breathing some depressured gas and speaking in a hilarious pitch, etc), and study on your own. :D

I only have one thing to say- I would NOT take him ever again.

WORST PROFESSOR EVER!!! He's at UCLA for research PERIOD. If you absolutely have to take him, don't attend lecture because he'll confuse you. He doesn't know the material but puts ridiculous questions on exams. Don't take him

I got an A+, but I never listen to class~~~~~~

I get the vibe that Professor Malkan is a very good astronomer; because he is literally the worst teacher I've ever had. Bad bad bad bad bad. Terrible. Truly the worst class I've ever taken at UCLA. I really tried to pay attention but found myself in a state of perpetual confusion. I would come to class understanding a little bit of the physics and leave completely confused. Part of the problem is Professor Malkan has the urge to insert useless quips between explanations. Then after going off on a tangent he will return the problem but spend some time trying to remember where he was. To make things worse he makes like a bajillion mistakes so I find it hard to believe my notes because I'm always wondering "did he correct that later...?"

Also, if he finds out you haven't been going to lecture he gets all butt-hurt and annoyed (Ironically 70% of the people who go to lecture are asleep or on their computers anyway so it's not like being there really means you learn something...)

His exams are basically him pulling material off a bunch of his old material. He posts it all online but it's kind of hard to navigate (because he posts solutions to questions individually and has an inconsistent system of labeling) and pretty hard to do everything.

Basically all I learned from this class is how to write equations on a 4x6 notecard and figure out which numbers to plug into which equations on the exams. I would strongly recommend that you do not take this class.

Overall, he's a bad professor. He's not effective in the least. Be warned though, by the end of the quarter when nobody still goes to class he gets angry and starts only giving information out to people who actually attend his lectures.

There is only one solution to his class, and that is to not go. I pulled off an A, and I would try the same thing unless you somehow get something out of class.

if you read bruinwalk and see that he is a bad professor but end up having to take him anyway... dont worry he's not that bad. i believed that he was a bad professor so i went to the lectures but didnt pay attention until AFTER i got my grade back on the first midterm and realized that one of the problems on the test had been in the lecture. if you attend every lecture and study all the problems that he does in class or what he tells you to study in class you will get a very good grade. he basically gives you the answers to the test but you have to be paying attention. his exam reviews are worthless. he basically tells you what concepts could be on the test (which is everything that you've learned) and how to take a test which is all self explanitory. so go into this class with an open mind and you will get the grade you want with minimal work. he makes lame jokes and is always a happy camper. kind of annoying sometimes

I didn't really have much choice but to take his class, and all I can say is I'm glad it's over. It wasn't too horribly bad because I had Covel tutoring, but Malkan can't teach to save his life. Luckily his exams were reasonable and the curve was fairly good. Somehow I ended up with a B in the class but I still don't feel as if I learned anything. His sarcastic voice drove me crazy and I couldn't wait for each lecture to end. He skipped over stuff saying "This is boring! You already know this. Let's do something more exciting" and then went onto other things when in fact I didn't know what he was talking about...

Not exactly sure why they have an astronomer teaching Physics 1B. Doesn't make sense to me. He missed lectures a few times for "important" astronomy things (Not that I really minded - except for the one time when he had some other professor come in and teach us Gauss's law. That was kind of crucial to the course and everyone was falling asleep because that other guy was so boring).

The best part of the class? Well there were certainly a lot of "that's what she said" moments. The best one was one day when he did a demonstration where he rubbed a rod (and yes he said that), and then used it to play with two balls. I know I wasn't the only one who couldn't stop laughing at that. He also liked to say that things were "suggestive" (meaning they suggested something important relating to physics, but that wasn't what it sounded like).

Basically if you know how to do the problems in the book and the ones he "suggests" you do before the exams, you should be fine, but take someone else if you can.

In case you haven't inquired from the picture posted on this site, Dr. Malkan is to professors as Australia is to world powers. The lectures are borderline useless, and by borderline useless I mean bordering on useless and holy-shit-wtf-is-going-on. Quite honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten less out of a lecture than I had until Dr. Malkan's class. He was the first truly incompetent professor I've had in my college experience. All he does in lecture is go through example after example with absolutely no structure or building of a foundation of the course material. I think I learned more about physics by hitting myself in the balls with the physics book, the only partially useful part of the course, repeatedly.

My advice to all those unfortunate enough to have this fool as a professor:
Read all the chapters, learn from the book, and do the problems from the book. He gets all his exam questions from it anyways.
Get the solutions manual to the book. Most of his Mastering Physics problems are straight from the book with some numbers changed around. You can look at how the book did the problem and substitute your own numbers. If it isn't in the book, you can probably Google it and find the question there.
Get a good TA.
Get Covel Tutoring.
Get a very benevolent God. You're going to need one.