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.

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.

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

Nathan Tung is my TA for physics 1C in Spring 2019. He is absolutely the best TA I've ever had at UCLA. He just has the magic to make the most difficult physical concepts simple, clear and interesting. I always walked out of his discussion feeling that I had much deeper understanding of the material. It's a pure enjoyment to attend his discussion and I would 10/10 recommend him. If you're not convinced, just check out his physics 1C reviews: https://www.bruinwalk.com/professors/david-bauer/physics-1c/
I'm really shocked to see that he got such low rating at Physics 5C. It could be that he made the exams too hard or wrongly estimated his students' physics background. I believe that he will do better next time teaching because he is so enthusiastic about teaching. I'd still recommend him for he is such an amazing lecturer.

Tung was the best prof. I could have asked for. You won't regret taking him

Nathan is an absolute god. His exams are straightforward and he offers SO MUCH extra credit. I would 100% recommend.

Not sure if this review would be any different if the class was offered in person instead of online but overall the assigned work was not justified and the exams were fine as long as you paid attention during lecture.

Tung assigned a lot of homework through MasteringPhysics and was lenient about due dates (everything due at the end of the quarter) and completion for grading (initially needed 75% completed for full credit which then changed to 65%), however the homework was just busywork instead of actual help with learning about class concepts or exams.

In addition, labs also felt like busywork. Pre-labs are due prior to the start of lab and my TA set post-lab due dates 48 hours after lab. We worked with an infuriating program called Tracker (incredibly slow at times and outdated ugly looking UI) which allowed us to analyze our recorded videos of experiments we performed at home. It's not the lab's fault that the software was difficult and annoying to work with, however I feel like most of the grief could have been avoided if we had pre-recorded sample videos to work with instead of recording our own.

This quarter exams were open for 24 hours and open book + open note and Tung had review sessions which were actually pretty useful and practically outlined how to work out the written portion of the exams. He also gave out extra credit for those purchased a Tophat subscription and answered questions during live lecture.

So overall not the best, not the worst. If you can, I suggest you try to find a more engaging professor to take 5A with.