Professor

Nathan Tung

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3.8
Overall Ratings
Based on 165 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Workload 3.5 / 5 How light the workload is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Clarity 3.8 / 5 How clear the professor is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Helpfulness 3.7 / 5 How helpful the professor is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

Reviews (165)

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Jan. 9, 2025
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-

I took the equivalent of this class in highschool and knew about 85% of the content already, I just kept making really dumb mistakes on the exams which led me to finish with an A- rather than an A. So the class overall is not too bad, the midterm and final are pretty easy and fair. His lectures are pretty boring and slow, except when he does a demonstration which is a nice change of pace. When he pulls up the onenote blackboard everyone just mentally checks out. He is great at explaining the theoretical side of the physics but in terms of actual practice, I think he lacks in that area. If someone who had no exposure to physics previously, I could definitely see someone getting confused and a bit lost when he explains the concepts. The labs are fine, a bit tedious but if your lab group doesn't do anything its pretty annoying. If you have a good/fine lab group its fine. Just take it with Tung.

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Dec. 27, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-

I'm not sure what happened, but Tung doesn't curve that much anymore. He didn't give out that 3% extra credit a lot of other older reviews talked about. His curve is based on cosine, so the better you do on the midterms (which were so much easier than the final), you won't get any extra credit. None of the exam questions reflected the homework, though the TAs provided pretty good p sets. I didn't spend that much time studying to be very honest, but there was never good preparation for the exam questions; you will be left in the dark.

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Dec. 25, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-

Started studying for this class a few weeks before it began due to the reviews I read (the non-COVID ones) and was worried about how his exams would go and boy was I right. Reading the COVID reviews here is very infuriating because it’s so obvious that there were other “tactics” at play when they were taking his class. I used mainly outside sources to study for this class, his in class notes were otherwise useless. It such a slap in the face that I didn’t get an A and stained my 4.0 GPA all because I missed a few multiple choice questions (where there’s no partial points given) its ridiculous to have your exam scores in the hands of knowing the detailed mechanics of circular motion even though those concepts were never discussed. I also rewrote and read his own notes in DETAIL which ended up being mostly useful but somewhat redundant. I also want to mention I had never taken physics before in my life and so he was my first introduction to it. I didn’t rly good on the first midterm and good on the second but the final was ridiculous. I wish I choose a different professor but whatever an A- is still an A (unless your a university which that’s another issue) but overall, take him if you want to have utter fear of your midterms and avoid him if you choose peace and happiness. He is extremely overrated its insane the amount of bootlicking people do here.

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Dec. 25, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: C-

I’m a straight A student who puts in a lot of effort, but this class was an absolute nightmare. Professor Tung is, hands down, the worst professor I’ve ever had. He doesn’t teach he just derives formulas and shows slides that are completely useless. Over the entire semester, he only showed THREE practice problems during lectures. How are we supposed to prepare for midterms or finals with that?

The homework is on Kudu, which is no help at all, and the questions there are nothing like the exams. The exams are brutal: multiple choice and free response, but the free response questions are basically your entire grade. Make one mistake on those, and you're done, since each one is worth a third of the test.

Professor Tung mentioned he can curve grades, but even though tons of people failed, he didn’t curve at all. For the final, he brought in material that wasn’t even taught and rushed through everything else. He skipped many important concepts altogether because he didn’t have enough time to cover them. On top of that, the physics lab was completely out of sync with the lectures. The lectures were so far behind that when you went to lab, you had no idea what was happening.

To make things worse, the recordings of his lectures often took weeks to be uploaded on Bruin Learn, and sometimes they weren’t even posted before exam dates. When I asked him if he could upload them earlier, he basically said there was nothing he could do and ignored everyone.

Also, don’t be fooled by the good reviews online most of them are from students who took his class during COVID and cheated their way through. It’s insane that UCLA pays this guy when YouTube is free and does a much better job of teaching. If you’re thinking of taking his class, don’t. Save yourself the headache and find someone who actually teaches.

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Dec. 24, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B+

The guy stinks. Let me break it down, I'm a 4.0 physiology major and Ive taken MANY harder classes than physics 5A. In this entire course, Ive gotten 3 questions wrong, and ended up with a B-, from only 3 questions. His first exam was easy, not because the material was easy, but because he's so slow he couldn't reach any new material by week three. The way his exams are set up, usually around 10-12 multiple choice questions, and 1-2 show your work questions. If you get EVERY single multiple choice question correct (your work doesn't matter here btw, so if you get it wrong you get 0), but if you get every single multiple choice question correct, but miss the last question, you get a 50! YOU FAILED :) for missing 1 question out of the entire subject he taught:) Lets break down his teaching style, you show up to class, he plays his stupid intro and then you watch a grown man do 1 problem the entire class using letters and not even one number. God forbid he explains what the thing he's doing is, no no no, he just plugs in letters and Jesus Christ takes the rest. Over the entire fall quarter, I swear to god, he did 3 or 4 problems in class, and he never used 1 number solving those problems. Dont believe me? Take him and find out. Since he's so amazing at teaching (sarcasm), and since he uses only letters and barely explains what he's doing, I decided re-watching his lectures would probably help, but unfortunately his lectures were not uploaded on Bruinlearn for the first 3 weeks. My friends and I asked him, probably 5 times if there's anything he could do to help, he leaned over and said word for word "Sorry, can't do anything about it". So, all his online videos were uploaded 2 days before his first exam, and he was completely aware of it and did nothing about it. Now let's talk about the second exam, he got sick for a week and cancelled class. During that week, he uploaded random YouTube lectures from a previous class that were NOT in synch with our class, they were 40 minutes behind. Then exam 2 rolls around and guess what, the problem that's worth 30% of your grade on exam 2 was the section he never taught properly in class. I tried to go irl to ask, but coincidentally he cancelled his office hours. Final rolls around, the guy is 2 weeks behind and 1 week out, so what doe he do? There no time to teach anymore, he just goes over 2 more problems using all letters during class time and sends you off. His entire homework is AI generated, not even written by a human being. The kudus homework is not helpful, because it's not representative of his problems on his exams, AT ALL. Look, take it from me, this guy ruined my gpa, and yeah it's not a big deal but this was out of my control. There was genuinely nothing I could've done. So, moral of the story, if you take him your grade is like 60% in your hands, and the other 40% more in his, even if you study all day. He's just garbage. Not a good teacher, always behind to the point everyone showed up to lab with zero understanding of the subject, and never used a single number in an example, all letters. His class is talking, he just talks a lot, not much work being done. Only 3 or 4 problems were solved in class the whole semester. But his exams are not talking, they're all work. So he's no help. If it wasn't for YouTube, I think I wouldve gotten a C. Trust me, Im not some idiot who need physics to pass something. Ima 4.0 physio major, your grade is NOT all in your control. He STINKS!

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Nov. 15, 2024
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: N/A

Prof Tung's lectures are very conceptual. They're fun because of his demonstrations, but they won't prepare you for the exams at all. You either get it or you don't. He's also not very nice in office hours. I would take Bauer over Tung.

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Oct. 18, 2024
Quarter: Summer 2024
Grade: A

Honestly a completely manageable summer course. Tung's lectures were super engaging and I personally loved in-depth explanations on why things work. He did rearrange our class scheduling a bit as he started teaching at another institution midway through our course, but since lectures were recorded it wasn't a big deal. He did cut into office hours a lot, which is disappointing. Homework was generally easy (8-15 questions) and had unlimited attempts. The weekly quizzes were pretty decent although hard to predict exactly what types of questions we'd see. The averages were in the 60s and 70s. The extra credit was kind of irrelevant but do it anyways. Tung was pretty forthright when it came to what topics would be on the final, but there was definitely a lack of practice material given. Overall solid class if you're decent at physics because although interesting, you're pretty much on your own.

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Sept. 26, 2024
Quarter: Summer 2024
Grade: A-

I specifically took this class to avoid taking Simpson during A sesh, and all I can say is that it was probably not worth it. I'm not sure whether he's different during the summer, but this class was very strange. First of all, Tung decided to cancel one of our classes and just tack on an extra 25 minutes to other classes because he was teaching at a CC. I'm like 90% sure this is not in fact legal, as class should occur at the designated time on the syllabus as well as on myucla.

In addition, lecture was almost completely useless. He spent maybe a week on complex numbers, which was interesting but not on the exam, which sucks during a summer class when you only have 6 weeks to learn material that is difficult to master in 10 weeks. He rarely went over problems, and when he did, they were usually very rudimentary. The textbook he uses sucks, and it barely explains anything. I taught myself almost entirely from the University Physics textbook.

Apparently, during the regular school year, if you complete over 65% of the homework you get extra credit. This was not the case for us as extra credit was extra work and graded on completion. I had better exam scores than extra credit scores, so it did not help me at all. Also, he completely did not understand the questions that I asked about the homework. Sometimes I had a conceptual question, and he would just solve the problem. The one time I genuinely needed help solving the problem, he didn't solve it, despite saying it wasn't a topic he was putting on the exam.

He randomly decided not to put AC circuits on the final, which I didn't really find fair for students who were the best at that specific topic. As far as the exams, multiple choice exams do not belong in math/physics, in my opinion, as it allows for rampant cheating since there is no proctoring in online classes. I get that it's easier to grade, but it meant getting zero credit for small mistakes.

Lastly, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but a lot of people complained about the way he curved grades. I think he ended up curving more at the end because too many people complained. He also deleted the canvas site almost immediately after the end of class.

Overall, I would not recommend taking this class over the summer with Tung.

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June 26, 2024
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: A

Professor Tung's physics class stressed more theoretical physics over quantitative. The first midterm was mostly conceptual, which led to a very low grade distribution, but the second midterm was much easier as a result. The class itself is interesting, as he often does demos and is a good lecturer. The material is interesting as well, but sometimes the conceptual nature of the class became too much. The final however was more quantitative which probably helped many students. Lectures are not mandatory, but if you attend and do the Kudu's, they count towards extra credit. All of the extra credit totals to around 3% which is very generous.

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June 4, 2024
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: A

Nothing against the TA, but how Dr. Tung handled class with the on going events was disappointing and disrespectful. he never addressed any campus events other than saying that "things were happening" and after my peers had been victim to police brutality, he made us take a midterm without even addressing it or making it a low stakes exam. It was upsetting because I have heard so many good things about this professor, but honestly not ok with the campus events going on, and he is honestly very inconsiderate. He really only cares about physics and thats it. nothing else, not physical well being of students and not the mental well being of students. It was hard to go through physics like this. something that is already hard made even harder through inconsiderate professors with no lack of empathy or compassion. The class itself was honestly pretty straight forward content wise, but be wear of the midterms (two questions each worth 45 points & 5 multiple choice each worth 2 points). If you don't know how to do the problems ur screwed but you can also write down every equation known to man and still get at least a 50 percent lol. I just don't understand how this is a good way of assesing learning if you give students two problems worth 45 points each....

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Jan. 9, 2025

I took the equivalent of this class in highschool and knew about 85% of the content already, I just kept making really dumb mistakes on the exams which led me to finish with an A- rather than an A. So the class overall is not too bad, the midterm and final are pretty easy and fair. His lectures are pretty boring and slow, except when he does a demonstration which is a nice change of pace. When he pulls up the onenote blackboard everyone just mentally checks out. He is great at explaining the theoretical side of the physics but in terms of actual practice, I think he lacks in that area. If someone who had no exposure to physics previously, I could definitely see someone getting confused and a bit lost when he explains the concepts. The labs are fine, a bit tedious but if your lab group doesn't do anything its pretty annoying. If you have a good/fine lab group its fine. Just take it with Tung.

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Dec. 27, 2024

I'm not sure what happened, but Tung doesn't curve that much anymore. He didn't give out that 3% extra credit a lot of other older reviews talked about. His curve is based on cosine, so the better you do on the midterms (which were so much easier than the final), you won't get any extra credit. None of the exam questions reflected the homework, though the TAs provided pretty good p sets. I didn't spend that much time studying to be very honest, but there was never good preparation for the exam questions; you will be left in the dark.

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Dec. 25, 2024

Started studying for this class a few weeks before it began due to the reviews I read (the non-COVID ones) and was worried about how his exams would go and boy was I right. Reading the COVID reviews here is very infuriating because it’s so obvious that there were other “tactics” at play when they were taking his class. I used mainly outside sources to study for this class, his in class notes were otherwise useless. It such a slap in the face that I didn’t get an A and stained my 4.0 GPA all because I missed a few multiple choice questions (where there’s no partial points given) its ridiculous to have your exam scores in the hands of knowing the detailed mechanics of circular motion even though those concepts were never discussed. I also rewrote and read his own notes in DETAIL which ended up being mostly useful but somewhat redundant. I also want to mention I had never taken physics before in my life and so he was my first introduction to it. I didn’t rly good on the first midterm and good on the second but the final was ridiculous. I wish I choose a different professor but whatever an A- is still an A (unless your a university which that’s another issue) but overall, take him if you want to have utter fear of your midterms and avoid him if you choose peace and happiness. He is extremely overrated its insane the amount of bootlicking people do here.

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: C-
Dec. 25, 2024

I’m a straight A student who puts in a lot of effort, but this class was an absolute nightmare. Professor Tung is, hands down, the worst professor I’ve ever had. He doesn’t teach he just derives formulas and shows slides that are completely useless. Over the entire semester, he only showed THREE practice problems during lectures. How are we supposed to prepare for midterms or finals with that?

The homework is on Kudu, which is no help at all, and the questions there are nothing like the exams. The exams are brutal: multiple choice and free response, but the free response questions are basically your entire grade. Make one mistake on those, and you're done, since each one is worth a third of the test.

Professor Tung mentioned he can curve grades, but even though tons of people failed, he didn’t curve at all. For the final, he brought in material that wasn’t even taught and rushed through everything else. He skipped many important concepts altogether because he didn’t have enough time to cover them. On top of that, the physics lab was completely out of sync with the lectures. The lectures were so far behind that when you went to lab, you had no idea what was happening.

To make things worse, the recordings of his lectures often took weeks to be uploaded on Bruin Learn, and sometimes they weren’t even posted before exam dates. When I asked him if he could upload them earlier, he basically said there was nothing he could do and ignored everyone.

Also, don’t be fooled by the good reviews online most of them are from students who took his class during COVID and cheated their way through. It’s insane that UCLA pays this guy when YouTube is free and does a much better job of teaching. If you’re thinking of taking his class, don’t. Save yourself the headache and find someone who actually teaches.

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B+
Dec. 24, 2024

The guy stinks. Let me break it down, I'm a 4.0 physiology major and Ive taken MANY harder classes than physics 5A. In this entire course, Ive gotten 3 questions wrong, and ended up with a B-, from only 3 questions. His first exam was easy, not because the material was easy, but because he's so slow he couldn't reach any new material by week three. The way his exams are set up, usually around 10-12 multiple choice questions, and 1-2 show your work questions. If you get EVERY single multiple choice question correct (your work doesn't matter here btw, so if you get it wrong you get 0), but if you get every single multiple choice question correct, but miss the last question, you get a 50! YOU FAILED :) for missing 1 question out of the entire subject he taught:) Lets break down his teaching style, you show up to class, he plays his stupid intro and then you watch a grown man do 1 problem the entire class using letters and not even one number. God forbid he explains what the thing he's doing is, no no no, he just plugs in letters and Jesus Christ takes the rest. Over the entire fall quarter, I swear to god, he did 3 or 4 problems in class, and he never used 1 number solving those problems. Dont believe me? Take him and find out. Since he's so amazing at teaching (sarcasm), and since he uses only letters and barely explains what he's doing, I decided re-watching his lectures would probably help, but unfortunately his lectures were not uploaded on Bruinlearn for the first 3 weeks. My friends and I asked him, probably 5 times if there's anything he could do to help, he leaned over and said word for word "Sorry, can't do anything about it". So, all his online videos were uploaded 2 days before his first exam, and he was completely aware of it and did nothing about it. Now let's talk about the second exam, he got sick for a week and cancelled class. During that week, he uploaded random YouTube lectures from a previous class that were NOT in synch with our class, they were 40 minutes behind. Then exam 2 rolls around and guess what, the problem that's worth 30% of your grade on exam 2 was the section he never taught properly in class. I tried to go irl to ask, but coincidentally he cancelled his office hours. Final rolls around, the guy is 2 weeks behind and 1 week out, so what doe he do? There no time to teach anymore, he just goes over 2 more problems using all letters during class time and sends you off. His entire homework is AI generated, not even written by a human being. The kudus homework is not helpful, because it's not representative of his problems on his exams, AT ALL. Look, take it from me, this guy ruined my gpa, and yeah it's not a big deal but this was out of my control. There was genuinely nothing I could've done. So, moral of the story, if you take him your grade is like 60% in your hands, and the other 40% more in his, even if you study all day. He's just garbage. Not a good teacher, always behind to the point everyone showed up to lab with zero understanding of the subject, and never used a single number in an example, all letters. His class is talking, he just talks a lot, not much work being done. Only 3 or 4 problems were solved in class the whole semester. But his exams are not talking, they're all work. So he's no help. If it wasn't for YouTube, I think I wouldve gotten a C. Trust me, Im not some idiot who need physics to pass something. Ima 4.0 physio major, your grade is NOT all in your control. He STINKS!

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: N/A
Nov. 15, 2024

Prof Tung's lectures are very conceptual. They're fun because of his demonstrations, but they won't prepare you for the exams at all. You either get it or you don't. He's also not very nice in office hours. I would take Bauer over Tung.

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PHYSICS 1C
Quarter: Summer 2024
Grade: A
Oct. 18, 2024

Honestly a completely manageable summer course. Tung's lectures were super engaging and I personally loved in-depth explanations on why things work. He did rearrange our class scheduling a bit as he started teaching at another institution midway through our course, but since lectures were recorded it wasn't a big deal. He did cut into office hours a lot, which is disappointing. Homework was generally easy (8-15 questions) and had unlimited attempts. The weekly quizzes were pretty decent although hard to predict exactly what types of questions we'd see. The averages were in the 60s and 70s. The extra credit was kind of irrelevant but do it anyways. Tung was pretty forthright when it came to what topics would be on the final, but there was definitely a lack of practice material given. Overall solid class if you're decent at physics because although interesting, you're pretty much on your own.

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PHYSICS 1C
Quarter: Summer 2024
Grade: A-
Sept. 26, 2024

I specifically took this class to avoid taking Simpson during A sesh, and all I can say is that it was probably not worth it. I'm not sure whether he's different during the summer, but this class was very strange. First of all, Tung decided to cancel one of our classes and just tack on an extra 25 minutes to other classes because he was teaching at a CC. I'm like 90% sure this is not in fact legal, as class should occur at the designated time on the syllabus as well as on myucla.

In addition, lecture was almost completely useless. He spent maybe a week on complex numbers, which was interesting but not on the exam, which sucks during a summer class when you only have 6 weeks to learn material that is difficult to master in 10 weeks. He rarely went over problems, and when he did, they were usually very rudimentary. The textbook he uses sucks, and it barely explains anything. I taught myself almost entirely from the University Physics textbook.

Apparently, during the regular school year, if you complete over 65% of the homework you get extra credit. This was not the case for us as extra credit was extra work and graded on completion. I had better exam scores than extra credit scores, so it did not help me at all. Also, he completely did not understand the questions that I asked about the homework. Sometimes I had a conceptual question, and he would just solve the problem. The one time I genuinely needed help solving the problem, he didn't solve it, despite saying it wasn't a topic he was putting on the exam.

He randomly decided not to put AC circuits on the final, which I didn't really find fair for students who were the best at that specific topic. As far as the exams, multiple choice exams do not belong in math/physics, in my opinion, as it allows for rampant cheating since there is no proctoring in online classes. I get that it's easier to grade, but it meant getting zero credit for small mistakes.

Lastly, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but a lot of people complained about the way he curved grades. I think he ended up curving more at the end because too many people complained. He also deleted the canvas site almost immediately after the end of class.

Overall, I would not recommend taking this class over the summer with Tung.

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PHYSICS 5C
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: A
June 26, 2024

Professor Tung's physics class stressed more theoretical physics over quantitative. The first midterm was mostly conceptual, which led to a very low grade distribution, but the second midterm was much easier as a result. The class itself is interesting, as he often does demos and is a good lecturer. The material is interesting as well, but sometimes the conceptual nature of the class became too much. The final however was more quantitative which probably helped many students. Lectures are not mandatory, but if you attend and do the Kudu's, they count towards extra credit. All of the extra credit totals to around 3% which is very generous.

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PHYSICS 5A
Quarter: Spring 2024
Grade: A
June 4, 2024

Nothing against the TA, but how Dr. Tung handled class with the on going events was disappointing and disrespectful. he never addressed any campus events other than saying that "things were happening" and after my peers had been victim to police brutality, he made us take a midterm without even addressing it or making it a low stakes exam. It was upsetting because I have heard so many good things about this professor, but honestly not ok with the campus events going on, and he is honestly very inconsiderate. He really only cares about physics and thats it. nothing else, not physical well being of students and not the mental well being of students. It was hard to go through physics like this. something that is already hard made even harder through inconsiderate professors with no lack of empathy or compassion. The class itself was honestly pretty straight forward content wise, but be wear of the midterms (two questions each worth 45 points & 5 multiple choice each worth 2 points). If you don't know how to do the problems ur screwed but you can also write down every equation known to man and still get at least a 50 percent lol. I just don't understand how this is a good way of assesing learning if you give students two problems worth 45 points each....

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