Don't listen to these reviews. It's just a bunch of whiny stem kids. The class and professor are fair, and I am sure everyone will eat their words when final grades come out. He's trying his best and it's clearly evident, and to put yourself in his shoes would give you a lot of perspective on how good of a teacher he is trying to be. Emphasis on teacher, as he cares about education and is going against the grain on just giving A's to everyone who think they deserve it, which is why he's experienced such a backlash from these entitled students who think that grades should be handed to them on a silver platter. Don't get me wrong, I still failed the first midterm like everyone else; I am not someone who's excelling and is on a high horse. To give him such bad ratings shows the disconnect between the value of education and the demand by stem students to be handed a good grade so they can move on and go to med school. These people seems to be missing the point about why they are in college... Every classmate I have spoken to has not blamed the professor as they can see him really trying and adjusting, and they all trust that he will be very fair in grades at the end. The students on bruin walk are NOT representative on how students feel in this class, don't let the whiners dissuade you from taking this professor, he is a good man and a great teacher with a lot of potential in the future.

Nathan Tung didn't prepare well enough for this class. Although this is his first time teaching his test were poorly worded and he continued having poorly worded tests all throughout the quarter. I would highly advise against taking this class with him if you want to learn. Not only did he want us to practice the questions on mastering physics, but they had no correlation with his tests. The only way to describe this class is chaotic. Every lecture he had a new experiment which was visually appealing however we're here to learn and to prove that we understand the material. It's impossible to do so when the tests don't reflect what we studied which was unguided. How were we supposed to study what we didn't know was going to be on the test.

Professor Tung did not prepare us enough for the tests in this class and the materials covered in class were much too easy compared to the material tested. The first midterm was a complete shock to me as I had reviewed over the class material religiously and still could not do HALF of the test. The second midterm was a bit better due to the review session but it was still quite difficult to me, and a lot of the wording was just confusing for no reason. Lectures were generally not very engaging besides several experiments, and all the notes were done on the chalkboard. It was EXTREMELY difficult to see any of the notes past the fifth row from the front of the lecture hall and the material we did in class was usually pretty easy, like explanations of simple conceptual ideas or formulas. Professor Tung also did not give out any extra credit, even after the entire class was very upset over the first midterm. The only helpful thing from this class was the final exam review. I would strongly advise against taking this professor unless you already have a solid foundation in Physics knowledge.

As a 3rd year taking this class, I've never failed any course in my life until taking this class. To the people who said the class was easy, yes the class itself (concepts, ideas) are pretty easy, but the exams are the problem. Tung did not do a good job of emphasizing what was important takeaways for the course. The midterms and final were obviously physics related, but going to lecture, doing mastering physics, or reading the book will not help you. For Tungs exams, you either get it or you don't. I had several friends take the same course, and they all say the same thing-- they had no idea how to study for mt2 or the final because of how open ended Tungs approach to asking questions are. He stated himself multiple times that mastering physics will not help us answer his exam questions. I think as a person Tung is passionate, and wants us to learn which I appreciate, but his approach is all wrong. I originally failed this class, but he likely realized too many people failed his class and gave me a passing grade. Would not recommend taking this professor.

I feel like many of the negative reviews are unwarranted. After the low scores on the first midterm, Tung did change things. Like others said, he hosted his own review sessions which were extremely helpful and told everything we needed to know for the exams.

I do agree that the Mastering Physics homework was useless. But, he provided “Nathan’s Notes” which supplemented the textbook and covered almost everything he talked about in lecture. These notes were super useful to me and prepared me well for the final.

The class is heavily concept based, so the examples provided in class weren’t exactly “examples” as we’d expected. However, he pulled most exam material directly from lecture. The second midterm and final were fair, in my opinion, given that he covered everything in class and review sessions.

This was professor Tung’s first quarter at UCLA and he was by far the worst professor I have ever had. He would spend all of lecture reviewing formulas and expect students to answer elaborate problems on exams. Not to mention, he provided no preparation for the exams and was absolutely a mess.

Honestly, dont listen to those bad reviews, those are the people that just rely on the lectures and dont take the time out of their day to commit and use other resources. While it is the professor's first quarter teaching the class, i believe he is doing well in it because i was able to score decently in both the first and second midterm. A huge part was due to his lectures and whatever i did not understand, i went home read the book, did practice problems, or i went onto khan academy. This guy teaches you on concepts, not pure numbers and formulas you have to memorize. Honestly, he is a good professor, those people complaining want everything given to them including an easy A.

Avoid Tung at all costs. He graded half of my midterms incorrectly and had to do multiple regrade requests to get back over 20 points. I loves to take random leave of absences for a week at a time and posts old recording from Covid times to make up for it. Which by the way does not align with our current lectures and is often missing a lot of information. He absolutely does not go over any calculation type questions or problems during lecture and does random demonstration like cooking a hot dog. The problems we get on kudu are so random they sometimes use formulas out of our classroom and do not even fit the scope of the lesson it’s assigned with. He does not go over any problems so essentially you’re on your own to self teach that. The only thing he does is talk about the theoretical aspect of physics for hours and hours so that’s it. Worst Professor ever not worth it

NOTE: I took AP Physics 1 in high school, which covers the material in Physics 5A (and goes a bit beyond 5A material). Thus, your mileage may vary, especially if you've never taken a physics class harder than high school physics before.

Overall, I'd say Dr. Tung did a pretty good job at teaching 5A. The lectures in class were somewhat helpful, and the physical demonstrations played a large part in anchoring my understanding of the material. However, I'd say that the biggest source of help is going to come from your TA's- they're the ones that make the practice problems that will save you on the MT's and finals, and they're the ones you're going to be requesting help from (I'm of the opinion that Dr. Tung is generally somewhat cold when it comes to student interaction, based on my limited attempts to converse with him about course material- again, YMMV).

Oh, and the extra credit- he gives extra credit for participation in lecture via Kudu, and he gives you EC for homework if you do more than 65% of the assigned problems (according to him, the EC roughly equates to 2-3% if you max it out). It is annoying that you have to buy software to do the HW and whatnot, but at least you're getting some extra credit out of it.

I will say that the lab portion is rather... poorly organized. It really isn't the lab TA's fault-I think my lab TA (at least) did well with what he had. Rather, the main problem was that the lab was often ahead of the lecture by a lecture or two- that meant that we had to spend extra time reading in order to finish the prelabs (which could get real annoying if we had no idea what to do).

By far the hardest class I've taken at UCLA yet. Coming in with zero background knowledge in physics made for an extremely tough time in this class, which was likely exacerbated by my lack of proactivity (not doing discussion worksheets and not going to office hours when I probably needed to). If you put in consistent work from the beginning to the end though, you'll have a much easier time than I did.

Lectures: Tung will introduce the concept and the theory, derive the equation, do a couple of simple practice problems, and tie it all up neatly with a demonstration at the end of class. However, you need to put in much more work beyond the lecture to actually understand the material at the level you need for exams. Lectures provide the intro, the rest of the work is up to you. Not mandatory but he very occasionally (maybe 4 times) does in-class extra credit questions on Kudu
Discussions: TAs would assign worksheets and go over select problems from those worksheets during discussion. Shoutout to Andrew, who was a wonderful TA. Not mandatory but definitely recommended.
Homework: Tung would assign Kudu questions as homework that had an official due date at the end of the quarter. 6ish units with 25 - 30 questions per unit. The questions were pretty straightforward but it was very easy to get stuck working on your own. Do not wait until the last minute to do them.
Exams: I heard from others that Tung uses his past exam questions very frequently, so for people with access to an organization's test bank, the tests might not be so bad, but the level of knowledge required for the exam was so deep that it was insane. Exam questions far surpassed the difficulty of practice questions gone over in lecture and Kudu questions. The ones that were the closest were the discussion worksheets from the TAs, so the best form of preparation is to do those worksheets before going to discussions.
Grading Scheme (what I remember of it): 15% for each of the two midterms, 30% for the final, and 3% extra credit to the OVERALL GRADE if you complete all the Kudu homework questions

I would never take this class with Tung again, but if you've got a background in physics or are prepared to put the work in, you won't have a hard time getting an A.