I do not recommend this professor putting aside the fact that he wasn't present basically the whole quarter and gave us lecture to watch from 1A the lectures didn't compare to the tests. I felt like the lecture were so unhelpful and unrelated to the exams and exam formats. There were no practice exams which was the worst part of it all. The TA's held review sessions which were probably the only helpful material we had available as well as the discussion sheets. The KUDU homework wasn't helpful either. I wish we had more resources to succeed in this course because I was so lost during the whole thing. I had to teach myself everything regardless of always taking notes and not missing a lecture. To me the exams were difficult and unpredictable I do not recommend taking this proffesor. The TA's also feel the final as difficult for us and taking it I was so confused as the m Ian concepts were just brushed upon.

This was easily one of the worst classes I have taken at UCLA. Professor Tung started off well and after reading some reviews I was excited for his class because people made it seem as though he made physics more digestible. This could not be further from the truth. Not only did he teach us nothing related to what we would be tested on, he also gave us no practice material so there was no way to even teach yourself the concepts. A lot of the other reviews for Fall of 2025 are much lengthier and I recommend people look at those to see just how bad this class was, but please just DO NOT TAKE IT.

The few lectures that Tung gave this quarter were very engaging, and I could tell that he has a genuine passion for physics. However, considering the range of material we learn in 5A, I don't think the class was appropriately paced. He spent the first 3 weeks of the quarter explaining displacement, and crammed some of the most important topics (that extend to 5B/5C) in the last 2 weeks of the course. Furthermore, the videos that he sent to us were past lectures for Phys 1A, so it was unclear what we should be studying for the final. Homework and extra-credit supplementary math assignments are assigned through Kudu, which I found to be an unhelpful AI-heavy resource. Focusing more on the discussion worksheets and review sessions from our TAs was much more helpful for exams than any of the material Tung provided.

While I understand that Tung was going through a tough time, his lack of communication throughout this quarter, not just with students but with his TAs, was unacceptable. It's genuinely distressing to think about how much stress this guy probably put on Jinyang and James, who basically ran his class for him despite having their own PhDs to worry about.

Overall, I'm disappointed that I paid UC tuition for this class. Stay away from Tung if you aren't interested in taking a class that's almost entirely AI generated. If you have to take him, you might be lucky if your TAs are as gracious as ours were this quarter.

Ooooooooooooommggg there are no words to explain the stress and frustration I felt in this class. Genuinely. I have never felt so disrespected by a professor in my life. I understand that he had a personal situation and I hope all is well with his family but I don't think it's fair that he left us to rot. This dude spent the first 3 weeks explaining displacement and then left us until finals. Take this class if you're cool with disregarding every single piece of information he puts out and completely learning everything yourself. Not to mention that every email he sent was AI generated and WRONG. We are lucky that we had TAs as great as we did who really wanted us to succeed and tried their absolute best. His homework is shit and does not help during exams in the slightest. I recommend pulling a Tung and just Chatgpting that because it is not worth your time. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he does really seem to love physics.

So many things to say about this professor, but long story short, do not take him if you WANT to learn physics. It was absolutely draining this quarter to be in his class.

If you want to take an AI generated class content, no professor, and self-teach yourself the whole quarter without any practice materials, Tung is for you. I do not know what happened this year but he was absolutely unprofessional this quarter, leaving his students stranded (as you can probably read with other comments from F25).

The first midterm was absolutely awful given the fact that we didn’t have any solid foundation of knowledge and practice materials given/presented by professor.

Second midterm was hard (in my personal opinion) I self studied, did all the kudu homework and TA’s review notes but did not get up to my expectation. I am not sure how people were able to find his past exams as he never published it and no one in physics group me shared any resources/past midterms to each other, so obviously people who already understand/taken physics and people who have his past midterms already have advantage.

The final came like a truck and boom, we spent total 3 lectures on the new topics and 80% of them were on questions he never even showed before. I am absolutely mortified for my grades and GPA. This is my first quarter here and it just sucks to think that my tuition went towards this awful education system.

When I tell you I lost hair, sleep, sanity, and my dignity over this quarter, I am not exaggerating in the slightest; and look at the other reviews both prior AND I know damn well there will be some subsequent to mine to back everything up. I began the quarter honestly very terrified for the content of this class, specifically, as I'm not some goated AP Physics warrior; my high school barely offered basic math so yeah, I'd say I had NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE. For the first 3 weeks, this fact didn't seem like it would hinder my ability to excel in this class, so long as I put in the work (which I was damn well prepared to do). Also note of subtle foreshadowing, Tung spent one whole class period, of the few actually in person, demonizing how Chatgpt could do anything he asked us to do in this class but we just needed to be smarter than it....how the turn tables...just keep reading.....However, as others have said on that fateful October day, in person, Tung Tung Tung warned us about an upcoming medical situation that he could be out for 1 maybe 2 weeks. We were incredibly sympathetic to this and understood; and I was expecting maybe a zoom lecture or something of that nature. but NO, that is not what we got.

Tung got sick first then proceeded to prolong his absence (I'm not trying to pass judgment on a situation I am totally unaware of personally) for THE NEXT 6 WEEKS AND SENT US HELLA VIDEOS FROM PHYSICS 1A. YEAH I KNOW WHY WE TAKE 5A INSTEAD OF 1A BECAUSE YOU ARE A LIFE SCIENCE MAJOR, YOU DONT WANT ANY OF THAT CALC BS. The videos, prerecorded from years ranging from 2021-2024 were all skewed in content and some weeks he even just kept sending as the same fuckass video about centrifugal force and the anti-gravity ride (which I will never fuck up at the county fair anymore due to the nightmares I've now been subject to...). Okay, despite Tung's personal circumstances, we are all aware of how tuition makes our pockets hurt, and I personally pay for that tuition to get in person, enhanced classes from a world renowned university. What we got is tears compared to that. I feel scammed out of an education I worked so hard for, all thanks to Tung's lack of preparation or action to mitigate the pre-existing situation. The class just kept further digging itself in a hole and Tung's absence was not only physical, as he fully lost communication with students, TAs, and admin through this 'unprecedented' time so you can say.

The communication we did get, as like Tung's whole being, was AI generated, given all of his office hours were canceled. I know others have mentioned this but lemme just copy the words Tung sent us (at first they were hella funny but weren't funny once I realized bro uses ai for everything including exams pretty sure...)

Okay first email: "You're right, let's lock in those details. Adding the note about emails is a very smart move. It's a "pro-student" way of managing your own backlog.Here is the revised, finalized draft. It's ready to copy and send." 3:33 PM

Second (FOS) email: "It appears I accidentally included some of my personal drafting notes at the top of the last announcement.Please disregard that extra text. " 3:40 PM

Bro realized he was fried; bro is NOT PRO STUDENT BRO IS PRO STUDENTS FAIL AND HAVE DEPRESSION OVER TS. Okay but in all seriousness why can't you even write a few lines of your email? You clearly have extra time given that you are reusing ass videos that spend 6/7 of the time talking about other class (1A), and the whole homework (Kudu) is also Ai and is absolute hairless cat shit. Now you cannot even take accountability for doing the exact thing you discouraged so heavily way back in the days of week 1? Nah thats some bs

Another tangent, everyone cheated on the midterms too and yes I know they may not have been most difficult, yet I saw and heard of countless people pulling out their literal phones and using chat gpt or fully taking the test with their seat neighbor. No wonder averages are that high....The TAs (bless their hearts I love them both so much) had no way of regulating this in any way, as there's like 200-300 people doing this exam, they can only take so many actions against each individual. I never cheated and it made me extremely anxious that everyone else was so I did horrible on the first midterm; unsure of what to even expect anyways. Maybe a bs excuse but seriously it was just so upsetting and insane. But don't worry! the average was upwards of 90 (insane tbh) and I did ass, and it made me so discouraged, but the second midterm I was able to self-study a lot and pull it together and do pretty good besides the stupid mcqs I'd misread (be careful about that those easy ones can trip you up). Tung didn't give any resources to be successful on such exams; so I suggest doing what I did and finding practice exams online or joining a PLF session.

You can see everyone elses comments about the final bc i know they'll have stuff to say as well. But what I will say is that if James or Jinyan is reading this---you are heaven and angels sent from above. The TA review sessions are the only reason I even feel mildly confident about my performance on the final. They truly cared so much about our learning and understood the gravity (tehe) of the circumstances we were in and did the most to give us everything they could. They deserve a raise or 67,000 dollars in compensation for their sacrifices. They have their own PhD and lives to worry about but were selfless enough to put all 600 of us on their backs to carry us; both parties in extreme disdain. They truly made the only content I actually feel like i learned based on their worksheets and reviews for all the exams.

I just hope this shit gets curved or adjusted by the department itself and they realize the pain we endured and we all get the As we deserve. I know Tung had these difficulties and I hope everything is okay in his personal life as I do find myself an empathetic person; yet simultaneously, I feel for the thousands of dollars we all paid for a stressful experience in which we have all earned nothing. I want 1/3 of my tuition back!! Good luck to 5b soldiers, hopefully we have a redemption arc... Good luck to any of y'all in Tungs class now, maybe he will actually show up to class. Don't be fooled by his stunts of dressing up as Indiana Jones or jumping off a table or swinging a glass around; he is a performative male at his core.

Prepare yourself for a long rant but plz read if you have to take this class with him bc you can’t get into anything else or whatever, like actually do:

Tung, tung, tung…

The things I would’ve said to your face if I could’ve, but you were too scared to show up to ur own final. Today when I see an email bright and early saying send an individual email to a. Support team for each question his STUPID BROKEN website graded wrong, and then signing off the message with good luck with the rest of your exam prep when our exam was on Wednesday…lord have mercy. I was trying to mentally recover from the torture he put us through and he won’t let me heal. this man is the single most unprofessional teacher I’ve ever met. Genuinely (pardon my French) what the ever living fuck is your problem? I understand having a medical or family issue but let’s be fr about what ACTUALLY HAPPENED (according to Tung himself):
The first week of classes were cancelled on Oct 19, bc he said he woke up feeling ill
After that no information was given and we were asynchronous to the final, receiving 3 or 4 emails total, all of which were chat gpt and most of which were incorrect. Bro spent more time correcting himself than he did ever on the actual class material. I really do understand having a family emergency I’m not evil, it’s just if it was really so time consuming that you can’t answer an email, show up to class, have a zoom OH every once in a while, DO ANYTHING AT ALL!!! You would probably not have a) in person exams, b)EXAMS AT ALL (for what teaching????) c) IDK MAYVE GET SOMEONE ELSE TO LECTURE LIKE YOUR EXTREMELY LOVELY AND COMPETENT TAS.
More on that literally bless Jinyan and James heart. I was soooo exhausted after the final and delirious and I was tearing up looking at them collect tests bc they tried so hard to help us went absolutely above and beyond but clearly understood how unfair it was. I feel like they got equally as screwed over as us and i really admire the work they put in to clean up the mess to the best of their ability. Without their review sessions at the end we prob wouldve gotten a class average of 10% or less (maybe we did idk). Plus certain ppl lowkey insinuated we were cheating on the midterm 2, which is hilarious bc the class average was a b so he knew in his heart that he didn’t teach us well enough that we could’ve possibly gotten a b (midterm 2 is notoriously easy in comparison to the other exams). Bro admitted he hadn’t been teaching at all and gave us an in person final.
My actual advice to anyone who has to take this class:
I know from other people under normal conditions that he is a conceptual based teacher. My take on his teaching style is he spins a ball in a circle and then asks you to calculate the rotation of the earth.
His lectures are worthless, don’t go, unless ur required too. Sometimes he puts 5% sometimes not. I have never seen him get any part of the website he plans to take attendance on to work. Just don’t go or literally doesn’t matter he will show you videos of nuclear weapons and stuff and walk thru one problem, symbolically to derive the equation you need to solve a problem that is 10000000x harder.
For midterm 1, ur gonna do bad no matter how you study. Can’t help you on that front, you will learn nothing, have no idea what’s going on, and do bad, sorry about it.
Midterm 2 I got a near perfect score, did not cheat. Go thru all of his practice exams for like 5 years back bc he won’t give you one and make a list of all of the hardest questions he’s ever asked. That will be what the exam is, he is too lazy to make new questions.
The kudus I think might help around midterm two time, other than that ask for answers, get quizlet, or chat gpt them. It’s hundreds of questions and will eat up all of ur studying time for absolutely zero reward. Do not spend any time doing the Kudus after midterm 2.
Okay now for the final. I no joke, lost my mind studying for this final. The finals week and subsequent all nighter I pulled after watching the review session where the TAS LAUGHED about how impossible the exam was… it was actually like going to war. I could not eat, could not sleep, could not read bc of anxiety and just mental overload. Idk what he expects you to learn in the two weeks between the midterm 2 and the final, but whatever it is it’s not possible in that amount of time. I would only pay attention to the review sessions with the TAs.
Make a group me and participate in it, make sure he or the TAs don’t weasel their way in.
Never ask Tung for help if you really need personal help as the TA or a smart person in ur class. Spend the time you have from skipping his lectures to pray and watch organic chemistry tutor videos/professor dave explains. Nothing else will save you.
To conclude:
I can’t stand unprofessional stuff like this it made me go insane to be dragged along and just randomly being told something every two weeks, stopped watching his lecture videos after 2 weeks of him talking about centrifugal force for 3 hours back in summer 1A PHYSICS. I literally made my wallpaper the screenshot of the slide saying “what about centrifugal force?” Bc every single lecture started and ended with that slide. For two full weeks I learned that centrifugal force is a fictitious force bc no force goes radially outwards only radially inwards. Luckily the exam was one question that said what about centrifugal force? And I thus got a 100 in the class.
Yall it was comical!
Class was so poorly planned that I laughed out loud when I opened the final. sincerely lost my sanity over this class it was AWFUL and the last kind of stress I needed with all of my other hard classes.
UCLA should be better than this, I understand it was a tough situation, honestly would’ve been understanding if I had ever heard it from his mouth, not chat gpt, not a TA, BUT HES TOO SCARED TO SHOW UP.
If you can’t tell I genuinely cannot stand this man. I hate the reviews where people are like bad teacher, good guy. Sorry? What about this man is good? He single handedly and without a care in the world ruined the careers of like 600 students? HE DIDNT EVEN GET THE FINAL DAY RIGHT ON THE SYLLABUS LEADING TO MASS PANIC AND CONFUSION!!!! How do you fuck up everything to the point you can’t write 3 numbers down without fucking up? He’s just sloppy, he takes no care in his work, but gaslights everyone into thinking he’s nice, when he’s just plain and simply not. Plus he has a pattern of disappearing like this only to reappear with an exam weeks later, crafted by Lucifer himself. That’s prob where he was, travelling to the 9th circle of hell to speak to the whispering trees of condemned souls and writing exam questions with them.
Yall, I am not even kidding, listen to my words. I am a trooper, I do NOT get scared of hard classes, I opened this final and literally almost vomited from the stress of just reading it.
In the end, I Honestly I think I will do okay among many others who worked their asses off, I don’t care, it cost me my health and sanity so he could spend 30 seconds every 4 weeks to put a prompt in chat gpt and send us the wrong shit for the exams. moreover, KUDU needs to be removed from the internet as a terrorist threat? Plz don’t ever. Dont ever. Why would you have a website that is admittedly useless to our learning and assign HUNDREDS OF QUESTIONS. WHY IS THETE NO SUBMIT BUTTON ALSO????? the user interface is like intentionally bad. Please guys heed my warnings, do not solve the riddles three of tung. Don’t try. Wait for someone else. Fuck this class backwards upside down sideways in any shape or form I don’t care -********************/10
(Also, my fellow F25 5A soldiers, I will remember you forever we have been through the valley of the shadow of death. Everytime I see that g force spinning carnival ride, or wake up screaming thinking tung tung sahur is going to come get me with la polizia I will think of you 💔💔💔 hopefully our slaughtered GPAS can comfort eachother in the grave.)

I have very mixed feelings about this class. It started off strong, but then Tung left right after week 3 and did not come back until week 10. The class starts being really easy, and then you get hit by a semi truck. It doesn't help when you have to watch videos from 1A and not even the actual class. The midterms are hard but fairly reasonable if you can self study quite a bit. Jinyan and James, the TAs this quarter, were absolute angels. They were very understanding to the students and picked up Tung's slack. I do understand that Tung had some medical family complications, but he could have prepared MUCH BETTER for his absence. I think Tung as a person is a kind, charismatic man, but I don't even know where to begin on his teaching. His demonstrations are fun, but at this point in the quarter I am realizing that this may have been a coverup for his poor lecturing skills. He spends an entire class period going over ONE problem, and three different ways to solve that ONE problem. Then he tests us on 3-4 of those long ass problems, and expects us to know how to do them. Kudu doesn't help at all either, I wish Tung gave us actually written homework problems. This class is AI slop, even the professor can't help but send out a CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT with "Here is the revised, finalized draft. It's ready to copy and send." If you want to take a class created and facilitated by chat gpt, this is your best bet. Otherwise, I would avoid Tung as a physics professor. Great man though.

This course, during the Fall of 2025, was definitely not ideal for Professor Tung, since his wife was undergoing medical care, but he left week 4 and switched us to online pre-recorded lectures and came back week 10. I kid u not, this made it so difficult for not only me, but everyone I spoke to in the class. On top of this, the online prerecorded lecture videos were NOT for physics 5A, yet they were instead for physics 1A, which is AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COURSE that is taught at a different level and different speed. This clearly displays Professor Tung's lack of preparation when teaching this course. This is a very heavy course, and when your professor disappears for more than half of the class (Both midterms came back right before the final), it feels nearly impossible to perform well in this course, let alone simply passing. I hope this is not the case for everyone who has taken this course with Professor Tung, as he is a sweet man, but he should have known better than to teach this course. He additionally sent out an email with an AI prompt in the title and then claimed it was "a personal draft" he left in the email by mistake. His lack of accountability as a professor is incredibly unprofessional, and I highly suggest you stay away from Professor Tung for the time being; that is, until he is capable of actually showing up to his job. :)

Side note: he had only ONE office hour held before midterm 1 that was on Zoom, not in person. That should not be allowed. A professor teaches this course. The TAs had to end up teaching the entire class, all while Professor Tung was ghosting them just like he was with us students. I am very fed up and angry since all of this was fully out of the student's hands. Professor Tung thinks he is being engaging by doing little stunts in class, but beware that those are fully a waste of time, and he is busy dressing up as Indiana Jones instead of explaining the never-before-seen problems he's putting on the midterms/final...

I fear I would give a -10 / 10 rating for Professor Tung. :(

Worst class I have taken at UCLA. Tung tries to be funny and sweet but his exams are hard and not the materials which he goes over. He left our class from midterm 1 to 2 and only posted recorded lectures from 2024 PHYSICS 1A. He was going through a family matter, but it was something he knew was going to happen and fail to plan ahead. I have never struggled so much in a class because we are soooo behind in lectures to the point where labs end up being on things we haven’t covered. He is a poor educator and failed his students this quarter as a professor leading to failing students.