TLDR: Don't take the class, waste of time take a class with a bad prof and teach yourself since you will have to teach yourself in this class too

just don't that's my opinion. I came from horrible physics professors ie Freiman etc and yet he managed to be worse. He thinks he is a god at lecturing and because of that he justifies giving exams which are actually hell. For example the final and second midterm weren't evenly spaced out on the material at all. Like bro? For a cumulative final I expect the content to be spread out.

He is a mid lecturer at best. He goes way too much time going into derivations of formulas and teaches us barely any skills on learning how to solve a single physics problem. Don't worry though you can derive a formula though!! His discussion worksheets were irrelevant to the course where the TA's would be like "yea idk why he gave you this"

Don't even get me started on Kudu. This man straight up goes "my lectures accompany Kudu and Kudu accompanies my lectures" so now I have to read a terrible textbook ifykyk and deal with his derivation heavy lectures. At least with bad lecturers, you can teach yourself from the book. But nope not with this class!

The practice problems from Kudu and the discussion worksheets are nothing like the exams. But don't worry he won't give you a practice test because "Kudu is practice enough"

This man is the definition of ego issues too. He should not be a prof

Dr. Tung is a passionate lecturer and cares about learning, but this is a challenging and content-heavy course. Homework is not very time-consuming, but understanding the concepts beyond that can be. Something that helped me was attending his office hours. They were hosted over Zoom at a convenient time. The few times I attended, there were little to no people in attendance. He was very attentive to my questions and provided explanations from different angles than in lecture.

He also hosted a lengthy final review stream, which was so considerate! He gave a few hints about the final material, but ultimately the final was far beyond my abilities. It almost seemed a little unfair as the last unit was not tested evenly. Nonetheless, I believe he curved the final. To succeed on the tests, really understand the discussion questions and his "Nathan's Notes" pdf, not the homework! He often glosses over problems in lecture, so discussion questions are really the only place you'll see problems that he "likes." He often writes the discussion questions and relates them to what he wants you to know.

In terms of exam difficulty, I do believe Dr. Tung was just doing his best to satisfy the physics department policy (class mean must be around B-). However, he also tried to reward proof of understanding. He would even give points if we wrote out our thoughts in English, and mostly full credit if we just erred in computation. Also, 2-3% extra credit was available (which theoretically could bring the class mean to B).

If you are someone who needs solid practice problems before taking an exam, do not take this class with Professor Tung! He throws you out to the wolves for every exam. The only thing he does during lecture is demos and equation derivation. He uses Kudu, a site where you take every exam and do every homework assignment on. The only saving grace is the extra credit, where he adds 3% of your grade at the end of the quarter. But genuinely, I wanted to die because of this class, and going into every exam I just accepted my fate because I knew that nothing he taught was going to be on it. And, I was right.

If you're looking for a professor who does his best to engage students with the material, is clear and thorough with delivering course content, provides extra credit opportunities, and is accommodating, take Tung's class. It was a great introduction to Physics (I never took it in highschool), and his quirky sense of humor doesn't hurt either. I want to clarify that his class was not "an easy A"- I had to do and redo homework, go to office hours, and really practice to have a chance at doing well. If you do the homework and don't skip lectures, you'll be fine.

Dr. Nathan Tung is by far one of the best professors at UCLA. He is engaging, full of life and very kind and understanding. Though I had him online for 1A his interactive videos and demos made it worth it to attend live lecture.

idk why this man is praised as a god. if u have never taken physics before this will be an incredibly hard class good luck m8

Disclaimer: I took physics 1A before taking this class, as well as mechanics from honors physics in high school, so take my judgment on the relative easiness of the class with a grain of salt if you don't have that background.

Overall, I think Tung was a really reasonable professor, and he's really good at explaining physics in a terms that make sense to someone who hasn't studied physics in depth before -- like, he understands that it's 5A and we're all just life science majors trying to fulfill a requirement and takes that into account in his teaching. His lectures were pretty engaging too, he always added in things that weren't just him going through slides (went through equations, showed videos of experiments or sometimes did them in the classroom).

About grading: very reasonable, I think. We had readings and practice problems for each unit on Kudu (a program which I literally hate, but only because I find the user interface to be just The Worst), and we only had to do 65% of the practice problems and the rest that we completed after that were extra credit. There were worksheets in discussion but attendance wasn't taken so you could do them on your own if you wanted. Midterm and final were alright, different than the stuff in class but still applied the same concepts in the same way.

Oh where to start? I saw this professors seemingly great reviews on bruinwalk and was very excited to have him for c sesh physics… boy was I wrong. That class was such a mess! His lectures were really a waste of time, and unorganized. He taught nothing of substance and provides no resources. Let me be the first to say I’m fine with bad professors so long as they give the necessary resources to succeed. This man is neither a good professor nor does he give any extra resources to his students. And on the topic of students… this man is so narcissistic and apathetic towards his students. He repeatedly referred to us as his “audience.” I doubt he learned a single kids name. When he was approached with questions he usually was rather unhelpful and condescending.

The biggest blunder of this course, though, were his tests. You see Tung’s tests are multiple choice and he really doesn’t allow for partial credit on much, meaning a lot of your grade comes down to a few questions. They are also on this godforsaken website called kudu, which we had major tech problems with. He was absent for our midterm, ultimately messed up calculating grades, and as a result canceled midterm scores and made our 12 question final exam the only test grade of the entire class.

Above all this, he really was a bad teacher. He confused people more than he helped them the more he went on, and often approached problems in the most conceptually difficult ways to grasp. I was lucky to have had experience in physics, otherwise I feel this class would have been more of a challenge. I found myself often explaining problems to peers, as the professors explanations and instruction was too rudimentary to cover the homework/ quizzes. Just don’t bother with him - not worth it at all.

The best professor at UCLA so far in my experience! As someone who miserably failed AP Physics back in high school, I dreaded having to take this class. However, Tung was able to teach us everything so clearly and his resources are great. He also knows how to use technology well, making it very neat and convenient. The workload could be a bit heavy, but it's definitely something you want to complete since they are a great study tool for the exams. Overall the class is super organized and Tung is super reasonable with everything. I truly learned a lot and actually started liking physics after this class.

Nathan is a fantastic lecturer. He is funny and engaging and when he explains things it feels like a science documentary (in a good way). Homework was on mastering physics and he worked with us to make it a manageable amount which we all really appreciated. Tests are average difficulty as far as the physics series goes here and he puts a lot of effort into getting us prepared through review sessions. I recommend taking 1C with him.