As everyone else says, please do your best not to take this class. I took this class at the urging of my sister who attended before me only to get completely blindsided by the total ineptitude, inadequacy, and straight up disrespect from this professor. He completely dipped on us about halfway through the quarter yet still held us to standards that are near impossible in regular conditions. I understand needing to take care of your wife but you still have duties as a teacher. We pay thousands of dollars a year for a good education and this is unacceptable. I’ve attended three different UCs: UCR, UCI, and UCLA, and I have never witnessed such a blatant failure of a course until now. Halfway through the course he essentially left us high and dry. We had no office hours, no in-person synchronous lectures or assignments, and no email correspondence. When he sent out weekly emails for lesson plans, there were so many errors. I understand using AI to help send out emails, especially in times of stress, but at least check to make sure everything works fine. We were supposed to watch lectures from a previous summer session of Physics 5A. Some weeks the YouTube links were broken, or if they worked, they led to Physics 1A lectures instead. But honestly, even if you attended lecture over YouTube or in person, his lecture-exam format is just so infuriating and a waste of time. He spends 90% of his time pulling out equations from nowhere just to compute the simplest of physics equations. And he expects you to do the same on his one-hour, in-person tests, THAT HE HIMSELF DOES NOT ATTEND. There was such a rampant cheating problem on exams that the poor two TAs were not equipped to handle. I’ve noticed so many students on their phones straight up copying answers down from the Internet while actual students with integrity suffer. Through all the wrong, useless lectures and lack of communication and professor help, the tests were still the same difficulty as the would be if the course were proceeding normally. I’ve compared his exams to UCI’s, UCR’s, UCSD’s, and even other UCLA professors just to find that his tests are excruciatingly hard for no real reason. To summarize, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Save yourself and your GPA, even if it takes waiting a quarter for a better, competent professor. I understand “weeder classes” but this is a lower division introductory course. I am a straight A student who passed Calc BC in 12th grade with a 5 and the entire OChem sequence with As, but I still failed this class beyond repair. After taking this class, I’ve lost so many weeks of sleep, my STEM GPA has dropped 0.2 points, my hair has fallen out so much that all my friends and family have begun worrying about me and sent me to a dermatologist, I have bags under my eyes, and I permanently have a B- on my transcript that med schools can see.

Horrible. He left mid-way through the semester and was posting video lectures from a different class and different year. Doesn't respond to emails. Didn't have office hours- not even zoom. I genuinely wish I had never even taken it. He only came back for like the last week becuase he said he was obligated to.

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.

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)

An amazing lecture and entertainer, Tung's lectures were never boring to attend (it was like watching a cinematic movie). Gives a lot of extra credit (although it didn't really help me) just by doing more than 75% of the hmw and supplemental math. He does curve the class, but unfortunately grades are inflated due to the cheaters. Kudu as a hmw platform sucks a$$, make sure you save all your hmw answers before closing the tab. I thought exams were very difficult, but still fair. I recommend drilling all discussion problems until memorized and understanding lecture definitions. Unfortunately, I would have given him a higher score, if not for our quarter's unfortunate dilemma of him taking an extended medical leave for 6 weeks (basically absent for both midterms and final). I felt bad for how much hate he got, but in all honesty the TAs really carried us this quarter via OH/discussions. It was slightly unfair how much self learning we as the F'25 quarter had to do... keep that in mind. Best of luck :)

Tung was out for a majority of this quarter due to a family emergency. He often didn't respond to emails from students nor his TAs, and when he would send out his pre-recorded lecture videos, it would end up being the wrong link, or they would be sent out very late. He provides no practice exams in this course, just an equation sheet, but for my lecture section, he sent out our equation sheet less than 24 hours before our final was scheduled.
Despite all of this, the materials he did provide were extremely similar to the questions featured on his exams. As long as you attend the discussion sessions and make sure you really practice the examples he does in his lectures, I think you can definitely end this course with a decent grade. Make sure you utilize the TAs as much as you can, and attend their review sections even if you feel confident in your physics abilities, since much of what they go over is featured on the exams Tung gives out. If you do well with asynchronous courses, I don't think you need to worry that much about this course with Tung. I personally had no prior experience in any physics courses prior to taking him this quarter, stupidly skipped all of my discussions/review sessions, and procrastinated on all of the content he distributed throughout the quarter, but with that being said, I think that this class is very manageable to at least pass, and if you avoid doing what I did, you could very likely end this course with an A.
Here are some of the things I wish I had known prior to taking this course that might help anyone taking this course with Tung in the future:
- The Kudu homework he assigns is mostly busy work, I would recommend spending the least amount of your studying it, other than understanding the conceptual questions they have, since many of those end up as MCQ on his exams. It's graded on correctness but you have unlimited attempts on each question.
- Make sure you really pay attention to the examples he does in lecture, since they often end up being very similar if not the same to the FRQ questions he has on his exams
- If you're able, find people who have access to his past exams, since he sometimes reuses the questions on his exams and they also are just relatively helpful for extra practice
- Do his extra credit assignments, if you're doing kinda bad in the class, they'll help you to a pretty good extent, but if you're doing really well then these assignments aren't very impactful on your grade
- Form study groups with other students very early in the quarter, especially if you're worried about doing well in this course. I didn't start studying with other people until the day before my final, and really regret not studying with others sooner
Overall, Tung was meh but this course really isn't as horrible as other people have made it out to be this quarter. Just make sure you study and you're set, if he goes M.I.A. in the future, just pay extra attention to his online lectures and really prioritize asking your TAs for help.

Without a doubt the WORST professor I've had in my three years of undergraduate studies. Ignore the Covid reviews saying he's good as it's pretty obvious why those students would make those claims. Instead, read the most recent reviews from F25 to get a clearer image of what you might be walking into. For starters, Tung simply cannot teach. His lectures are full of AI generated videos and he tries to make the class "fun" via demonstrations that ultimately waste time and serve only to fill the gaps in his nonexistent instruction. His entire method of "teaching" is just deriving formulas for 75 minutes straight, and not showing any appropriate examples nor exam pertinent guidance whatsoever. Another note — Tung disappeared after week 3 due to a surgery his wife was undergoing, which is completely understandable and something none of us had a problem with. The issues arose when he didn't return for SEVEN whole weeks until week 10. During those 7 weeks, all he did was send old lecture recordings from years ago — some of which even being from 1A, which was not the section we were in, and led to a lot of confusion among peers. He was completely unresponsive to both the students as well as the TAs (props to the two TAs this semester, as the class would've been near impossible without their help). On the off chance Tung did send emails, they were quite literally AI generated, with the ChatGPT prompt appearing in the announcement itself. Speaking of AI, the Kudu website he used for homework was a disaster. The assignments were filled with AI generated questions and often times failed to save answers, grade answers correctly, or just didn't function at all. Many times I checked my assignments on the due date after completing them DAYS earlier, only to find that half of the assignment unsaved itself and lost my progress. He wasn't present for any of the midterms nor final, didn't hold any synchronous class sessions during his time away, and for the two lectures he did return for during week 10, he spent the first 20 minutes reading a script about how "we persevered" and "made it to the end despite difficulties" followed by 55 minutes of a pointless demonstration that had no relevance to the final exam. We were left to self-teach some of the hardest material in 5A to prepare for the final, without any study guides, practice questions, or any sort of material. Also, forget about understanding ANYTHING in your lab section, as his class is so awfully behind you end up self-teaching laboratory material to yourself as well, and praying that your lab mates with more competent professors know what they're doing. Coming into an introductory physics course already nervous, Tung has done nothing but ruin my perception of physics and made me intimidated for 5B and 5C. I'm not one to back down from challenging courses, but this class takes incompetence and unprofessionalism to another level. Whatever you do, do NOT take this professor. Fair warning — you'll regret it.

The homework kudu’s are not very helpful, especially for the second half of the quarter as Professor Tung wasn’t there to clarify any concepts due to a family situation. During the few weeks we had in person, the lectures were engaging however they were highly conceptual. The entirety of his teaching is derivations and maybe solving one problem in lecture. I would say I did well in the class due to the TA worksheets and also studying past exams. However, if I did not have those resources, I would have suffered. Professor Tung seems like a nice person but his true face showed when he barely made any effort to reach out to students during the weeks we were “online.” I used quotations because you are basically teaching yourself everything. He never addressed midterm grades, he didn’t grade the midterms, and he didn’t even show up for the final. Bless our TAs who fully have their own education and lives to worry about but still helped us as much as they could. If it wasn’t for their review sessions and worksheets this class would have been a no go. As some have said below, he does tricks at the end of class but it seems like more of a facade to cover up his lack of teaching skills. He had us teach Torque (a difficult unit btw) completely to ourselves) and used maybe the last few lectures to teach us the most difficult things in this series. I mean he was going so slow at the beginning spending weeks on displacement and distance, etc, and we had to play catchup. Finals weeks was already so stressful for me as I have a full stem workload this quarter, and his unprofessionalism and absence did not make it any easier. I remember the first week of class he talked about how chat gpt could do this whole class for us but then we wouldn’t be learning anything. But he actually used chat gpt to draft his emails. I’m pretty sure that’s worse but ok. He’s passionate about physics but doesn’t care for his students. I understand he had a personal matter to attend to but this is his job and hundreds of us are taking the first class of physics already anxious about the class. He never addressed any of it either and just gave us some bs speech during the last week about how resilient we were and how we made it. I mean the TAs were doing his job for him at that point by proctoring all the exams and doing the grading. Take another professor if you can.