I recommend taking PHYSICS 5A with Dr. Tung. The class taught me a lot while being low stress (as every class should be). Dr. Tung’s lectures were very clear, organized, and well thought out. They were more like conceptual lectures though, so example problems in the lectures will not exactly mimic homework problems. The lectures were sort of like extended Khan Academy videos with some participation questions that were extra credit. Dr. Tung also has an extremely cool intro video that he plays at the beginning of every lecture which amazed me every time I watched it.

Homework was collected all at the end of the class. These problems mostly prepared me for tests. Some of the homework problems were difficult, so ask on Campuswire for help. Only 60% of homework is need to get full credit for the homework part of your grade. Anything else over that is extra credit.

Discussions were somewhat useful. We worked on worksheets in groups and the TA’s went over the solutions at the end of class, which cleared things up. However, this might be the case just for the session I took.

Labs were tedious, but doable. They took a long time as we had to set up and record our own videos to analyze. The labs were also extremely independent, so no one really talked to their group members during lab. My TA wasn’t that helpful, but the lab manuals had enough instruction for me to figure out most stuff on my own.

The four midterms we had were similar to homework. Each midterm was 15% each and there was no final. There were only about 15 questions on each test, so one question was 1% of your grade. That can seem intimidating, but there was a lot of extra credit in the class. We were also given 24 hours to complete it and we could use the whole 24 hours if needed, meaning there wasn’t any time limit within the 24 hours.

Dr. Tung is an excellent professor who really cares about his students. He explains concepts very easily and always addresses questions throughly. His homework policy is very generous as its not due till the end of the quarter and if you do more than 65% you can receive Extra Credit. Exams were definitely fair overall. The multiple choice portion was pretty straightforward but the free response was definitely more difficult. It was still very doable for a 24 hr exam. I highly recommend Shardul if he is a Lab TA for 5A because he made labs really enjoyable. I highly recommend Dr. Tung for any physics class.

Tung is a great professor! He speaks in a manner that is very straight-forward and clear. He's able to break down concepts well and gives relevant examples. He cares very much about the students, his tests are fair and similar to the homework and in-class questions. He gives us review sessions before the midterms, which are exactly like the tests. You just need to do the homework and go to his review sessions in order to do well on the class.

I'm retaking this class with a different professor right now because I was unable to finish the first time due to personal issues. I'm coming back to say that, after taking this class with a different prof (Rombes), I think that the way Tung teaches makes the course a lot harder than it needs to be. His lectures were engaging for the most part, and he was good at explaining things clearly, but I think he tried to teach concepts in a way that was too in-depth for an intro physics course. There are a lot of things in my old notes from this course that haven't even been mentioned in the one I'm taking now because they're not necessary to understand the curriculum.

If you like physics and want a deep, integrated understanding of the different concepts in 5A, then this might be the professor for you. Otherwise, I found that other profs like Rombes make their courses a little more beginner friendly.

Great dude. So worth taking

As the rest of the reviews say, he was gone for most of the quarter which was not planned. While things do happen that are out of our control, I don't think he handled it very well. I did not feel supported and basically self studied all the material. His tests were quite hard even though he said they wouldn't be. I got a good grade just cause I locked in and had only a 12 unit quarter.

It was an absolute honor to take Physics 1A with Dr. Tung! I was very scared about taking this class beforehand as I had never taken a Physics course in high school before, but his clear explanations and demonstrations really made physics intuitive for me. His midterms weren't a walk in the park, but they were very doable given the 24 hours he gave. Some tips: I strongly recommend going over class examples before the midterms and exams and making sure you understand every step. Also, the homework and worksheets he assigns are often much harder than his exams, so it's more useful to focus on Tung's lectures to study.

This class was absolutely awful. I know physics is not my subject and knew going into the class that it was going to be hard, but taking Tung, I felt absolutely stranded. He assigns homework assignments which have absolutely NOTHING to do with the exam. He provides no practice exams and will spend one class lecture working on one problem - and it doesn't even help with the exam problems. The discussions and TA's were the only help I got, and it still didn't help with exams. Sometimes it felt like parts of the exam problems were things we never even learned or practiced in lecture or discussion. Please take a different professor if you can. He also says he provides extra credit but I'm skeptical of it.

Tung had a personal emergency this quarter so hard to give him a complete review but I felt like he put no effort into his actual lecture material and looked for them to be entertaining rather than useful. He just teaches you what the equations are rather than how to use them, but the tests aren't bad and the review questions are very useful to study for midterms and finals.

How does one describe the disaster of a class 5A with Tung was?

To preface, I am a fairly hard worker and typically believe that I or anyone can do well if you try hard enough. With this class, it got to the point where I genuinely believed I was inherently bad at physics and wanted to drop so badly.

I have never taken physics before + I took this class with Chem 14D (wouldn’t recommend), so take this advice with a grain of salt.

Tung was gone weeks 4-9, with minimal communication other than past recorded 1A lectures from this summer (that were useless). However, his in person lectures also tend to be fairly useless and were very conceptual and did not really help me.

Here’s my advice as someone who cried over this class every day (my parents are Tung’s number 1 haters after me):

• Don’t waste your time reviewing or really doing a ton of kudu (other than the conceptual questions), they didn’t ever show up
• Use Chad’s prep to supplement Tung’s lectures as he goes over many different types of problems that help prepare you for the exams far more than Tung’s conceptual lectures
• Spend a lot of time doing problems before each exam
• TAs carried me through this class (live laugh love Jinyan and James). Go to discussion and watch the review sessions as they will basically tell you what’s on the exam and prepare you accordingly. Also, they are super helpful during exams, so take advantage of that and ask follow up questions (they will answer!)
• Chat GPT is very good at solving problems, so use it if you need to learn the process
• Tung says there’s some sort of cosine curve, but many people in my class said otherwise. My grade never changed, so I’m not sure, but I do believe them

Tung was also EXTREMELY unresponsive and super unhelpful. I had to potentially get surgery over winter break, so I emailed him week 4 regarding taking the final with the other lecture and he ghosted me until week 9, which was after my flight was booked. I was extremely upset and had to confront him after class week 10 to finally settle everything.

I will say, Tung is a nice guy and he is decently engaging during lecture, but I always felt like he spent more time on gimmicks and tricks than actually teaching us content in the way he tested us.

I would never take this class again or any with Tung, but if you have the misfortune of having him, you can do this!

TLDR: Hated this class, almost dropped, use TAs and discussions/reviews, self taught through chat gpt and Chad’s prep, got an A after flunking midterm 1, so you will be ok (midterms don’t really matter, just clutch on the final)