Professor Tung is a great lecturer, his exams are easy if you understand his lectures. This class has 4 exams which are conceptual. Before each exams, he holds a review session where he solves problems which are similar to the problems you see on the exams. So definitely attend the review sessions.
Overall this class is easy A.
4 Midterms each worths 15%
Mastering Physics 20%
Discussion 5%
Lab 15%
Attendance: extra credit

Dr. Tung is a really funny guy. He really tries to make lectures fun and engaging with fun demos and random jokes. His exams were a little annoying for me because they were all theoretical with no numbers but I got used to them after a while. They aren't super challenging but he has no practice problems that are like his exam questions. He uses slides but they aren't really helpful so you have to go to lecture to get the actual notes. He gave a LOT of extra credit this quarter, I don't know if he does that for every quarter but attending class was extra credit and doing all of the launchpad problems were extra credit. Two midterms and a final. Labs were graded on completion this quarter which was great because they were hard to do at home vs in person. Overall, I can't say I loved the class but it definitely wasn't as bad as the other reviews made me believe before taking the class.

Made an account just to absolutely review bomb this guy. Professor Tung is something else, don't let the kiss ass reviews convince you. Honestly the most selfish and unprofessional professor you can meet (I'm not exaggerating). First of all, Fall 25 was the famous quarter that Tung abandoned our class after WEEK 3. I get it, he got sick week 3, and told at the beginning of the quarter he would be out because his wife was getting surgery (which ended up not happening). But, that just raises the question (for me at least) as to why he didn't just skip teaching this quarter if he knew he was going to be out for 7 out of the 10 weeks. His first test wasn't that bad, second test was a bit diabolical, and the final was just wack. His MCQ questions are also very conceptual so you have to do the kudu and know the concepts in which he doesn't teach (especially for the final). Another thing, if you don't pay for bruin one, the kudu is 50 BUCKS.

Anyways, enough ranting, lets get to lectures and discussion. James, our TA (who sadly isn't one anymore) was a godsend. Him and the other TA single handedly saved you from this course because of the discussion questions and review questions. They were pretty on par with the exam, so know how to do them if you have TAs that post questions. The kudu wasn't much help except for the MCQ questions. If you can find past tests, they will quite literally save you. Lectures were a bust, he spends basically an hour and 15 ranting nonstop about random conceptual stuff you don't need to know, and then does ONE question for the entire lecture. I will say, he does teach you how to derive the formulas for certain situations which was helpful (hint hint it will likely be an exam type question). We even had one lecture that was purely an AI roleplay (the infamous Indiana Jones. Thats Tung's best friend). The best way to explain the type of guy he is would be this; He has a big ego and tries to be the cool flashy physics professor, but is absolutely dogshit at teaching.

I think the worst thing about fall 25 was that he would not answer any emails, even from the TAs. His emails that were AI generated (he left a prompt/answer from the AI at the top of the email and tried to play it off as a mistake/extra note) were really unhelpful and had a billion mistakes. He would take a really long time to fix it. Also, it's pretty obvious that his FRQs on the exam are generated by AI (if you haven't gotten it yet, he really likes AI). The TAs also seemed a little frustrated because he would send them the exam last minute, and again, WOULD NOT ANSWER ANY EMAILS. The video's that he posted to fulfill the lectures he would obviously be missing due to his absence weren't even relevant to 5A, THEY WERE 1A/1C LECTURE VIDEOS. Not only that, he would post the same links for two weeks, so we basically learned nothing during that time. This was a bit funny as he sent an email saying he "fixed the links", but posted the exact same links that he supposedly changed.

TAKE BAUER, he gives you more practice and there were higher averages for their class (my friends took the class). Overall, I'm a D1 Tung hater, the physics department did nothing about the complaints that students sent, and a lot of people suffered because of this guy. If you have a good physics background and know the basics about incline problems, friction, 2D kinematics, rotational stuff, some inertia problems and mechanical energy, then you'll be fine. For people who don't know a thing about the topics I just said, avoid this guy like the plague (unless you have confidence in your self studying skills).

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.

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)

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.