Nathan C Tung
Department of Physics
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3.8
Overall Rating
Based on 74 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.8 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.6 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.7 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
38.3%
31.9%
25.5%
19.1%
12.8%
6.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

78.3%
65.2%
52.2%
39.1%
26.1%
13.0%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

51.8%
43.2%
34.5%
25.9%
17.3%
8.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

65.1%
54.3%
43.4%
32.6%
21.7%
10.9%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

73.1%
60.9%
48.7%
36.5%
24.4%
12.2%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

93.3%
77.8%
62.2%
46.7%
31.1%
15.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

80.6%
67.2%
53.7%
40.3%
26.9%
13.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (64)

2 of 7
2 of 7
Add your review...
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: C
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
July 10, 2025

His lectures were impressive,,, I felt like he truly understood the kind of "physics fantasy" many freshmen come in with. Topics like astronomy or quantum mechanics naturally fascinate students, and he leveraged that excitement to keep us engaged. He seemed genuinely kind and thoughtful.

I liked the idea of giving unlimited homework attempts to discourage reliance on AI tools.... that showed he was trying to promote real understanding. But honestly, I’m not sure how well it translated into exam preparation.

Personally, I found the homework platform’s UI/UX a bit frustrating and distracting.

I also heard that he would give extra curve or grade boosts to lower-performing students if we consistently did quizzes and homework, but I’m not sure if that applied to me in the end.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 7, 2025

He spends an entire lecture on one problem showing you how to derive problems using basic algebra often with no numbers at all. His lectures were not helpful besides for the MCQ portion of the exams. The TA (josh) posts discussion notes on bruinlearn every week which were REALLLLLYYY helpful. The hw system kudu does give practice problems but they often did not help on the exams.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: B+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 2, 2025

Tung is a good lecturer, but not necessarily a good professor. He didn't provide us with that many resources to be successful, and the assigned homework felt disconnected from the content that appeared on the exams. The first midterm was fine, but it went downhill after that. The second midterm had like a 15% average decrease. Tung does seem to truly love physics, and the demonstrations he does during class are very engaging. However, he tends to rush through important practice problems and the entirety of the last 2 units (which showed up as an FRQ on the final) were shoved into the last class period. Also he claims to give extra credit but it's based on this weird arbitrary scaling that he himself is in charge of deciding so I'm half convinced he didn't add any extra credit at all. My advice would be to really focus on problems he does during class and definitely pay attention in lecture, because small things he says may show up as multiple choice questions on the exam. Good luck!!

Helpful?

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
March 31, 2025

At the beginning of the quarter I was happy. I continued to be happy when I found out that all the homework was due at the end of the quarter, to which you could check if you got them all right guaranteeing full points in that section. I continued to be happy taking my midterms to which I got As in both even though he did not give practice tests and said to rely on the homework to guide you to victory. All this happiness came crashing down the day I walked into the final. For some reason he thought it would be an amazing idea to build your hopes up, "Im actually doing alright in this class" I said with glee... When I tell you I have never seen half of that final material in my life- I am not joking in the slightest. Not in any notes, not in any homework, not in any discussion section, not even in the final review session. Only God knows what was going on in that mans head when he wrote it, my theory is that he was possessed because thats the only logical explanation.

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 23, 2025

Professor Tung is a really sweet and funny guy, which is why I feel bad to give him a bad review. However, his exams were very difficult, and they often recalled material that he glazed over in class. In addition, his practice problems in class were very long and complicated and used variables instead of actual numbers, making them not very applicable to learning how to actually solve equations. He gave us little to no review resources, so how well you study really just depends on what test banks you can get. He also said he'd give us extra credit but didn't give us any :(

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 9, 2025

I took the equivalent of this class in highschool and knew about 85% of the content already, I just kept making really dumb mistakes on the exams which led me to finish with an A- rather than an A. So the class overall is not too bad, the midterm and final are pretty easy and fair. His lectures are pretty boring and slow, except when he does a demonstration which is a nice change of pace. When he pulls up the onenote blackboard everyone just mentally checks out. He is great at explaining the theoretical side of the physics but in terms of actual practice, I think he lacks in that area. If someone who had no exposure to physics previously, I could definitely see someone getting confused and a bit lost when he explains the concepts. The labs are fine, a bit tedious but if your lab group doesn't do anything its pretty annoying. If you have a good/fine lab group its fine. Just take it with Tung.

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 9, 2025

The first two midterms were totally fine, I had no issues at all with them and was on track to get an A in the course. And then the final came... I am not going to say that I was the best prepared I could have been for the final, because I was not. However, that final was horrible. While Tung did not reck my 4.0 as I did not have one before, he did wreck my chance of getting latin honors.

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 27, 2024

I'm not sure what happened, but Tung doesn't curve that much anymore. He didn't give out that 3% extra credit a lot of other older reviews talked about. His curve is based on cosine, so the better you do on the midterms (which were so much easier than the final), you won't get any extra credit. None of the exam questions reflected the homework, though the TAs provided pretty good p sets. I didn't spend that much time studying to be very honest, but there was never good preparation for the exam questions; you will be left in the dark.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 25, 2024

Started studying for this class a few weeks before it began due to the reviews I read (the non-COVID ones) and was worried about how his exams would go and boy was I right. Reading the COVID reviews here is very infuriating because it’s so obvious that there were other “tactics” at play when they were taking his class. I used mainly outside sources to study for this class, his in class notes were otherwise useless. It such a slap in the face that I didn’t get an A and stained my 4.0 GPA all because I missed a few multiple choice questions (where there’s no partial points given) its ridiculous to have your exam scores in the hands of knowing the detailed mechanics of circular motion even though those concepts were never discussed. I also rewrote and read his own notes in DETAIL which ended up being mostly useful but somewhat redundant. I also want to mention I had never taken physics before in my life and so he was my first introduction to it. I didn’t rly good on the first midterm and good on the second but the final was ridiculous. I wish I choose a different professor but whatever an A- is still an A (unless your a university which that’s another issue) but overall, take him if you want to have utter fear of your midterms and avoid him if you choose peace and happiness. He is extremely overrated its insane the amount of bootlicking people do here.

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Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: C-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 25, 2024

I’m a straight A student who puts in a lot of effort, but this class was an absolute nightmare. Professor Tung is, hands down, the worst professor I’ve ever had. He doesn’t teach he just derives formulas and shows slides that are completely useless. Over the entire semester, he only showed THREE practice problems during lectures. How are we supposed to prepare for midterms or finals with that?

The homework is on Kudu, which is no help at all, and the questions there are nothing like the exams. The exams are brutal: multiple choice and free response, but the free response questions are basically your entire grade. Make one mistake on those, and you're done, since each one is worth a third of the test.

Professor Tung mentioned he can curve grades, but even though tons of people failed, he didn’t curve at all. For the final, he brought in material that wasn’t even taught and rushed through everything else. He skipped many important concepts altogether because he didn’t have enough time to cover them. On top of that, the physics lab was completely out of sync with the lectures. The lectures were so far behind that when you went to lab, you had no idea what was happening.

To make things worse, the recordings of his lectures often took weeks to be uploaded on Bruin Learn, and sometimes they weren’t even posted before exam dates. When I asked him if he could upload them earlier, he basically said there was nothing he could do and ignored everyone.

Also, don’t be fooled by the good reviews online most of them are from students who took his class during COVID and cheated their way through. It’s insane that UCLA pays this guy when YouTube is free and does a much better job of teaching. If you’re thinking of taking his class, don’t. Save yourself the headache and find someone who actually teaches.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: C
July 10, 2025

His lectures were impressive,,, I felt like he truly understood the kind of "physics fantasy" many freshmen come in with. Topics like astronomy or quantum mechanics naturally fascinate students, and he leveraged that excitement to keep us engaged. He seemed genuinely kind and thoughtful.

I liked the idea of giving unlimited homework attempts to discourage reliance on AI tools.... that showed he was trying to promote real understanding. But honestly, I’m not sure how well it translated into exam preparation.

Personally, I found the homework platform’s UI/UX a bit frustrating and distracting.

I also heard that he would give extra curve or grade boosts to lower-performing students if we consistently did quizzes and homework, but I’m not sure if that applied to me in the end.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: A-
April 7, 2025

He spends an entire lecture on one problem showing you how to derive problems using basic algebra often with no numbers at all. His lectures were not helpful besides for the MCQ portion of the exams. The TA (josh) posts discussion notes on bruinlearn every week which were REALLLLLYYY helpful. The hw system kudu does give practice problems but they often did not help on the exams.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: B+
April 2, 2025

Tung is a good lecturer, but not necessarily a good professor. He didn't provide us with that many resources to be successful, and the assigned homework felt disconnected from the content that appeared on the exams. The first midterm was fine, but it went downhill after that. The second midterm had like a 15% average decrease. Tung does seem to truly love physics, and the demonstrations he does during class are very engaging. However, he tends to rush through important practice problems and the entirety of the last 2 units (which showed up as an FRQ on the final) were shoved into the last class period. Also he claims to give extra credit but it's based on this weird arbitrary scaling that he himself is in charge of deciding so I'm half convinced he didn't add any extra credit at all. My advice would be to really focus on problems he does during class and definitely pay attention in lecture, because small things he says may show up as multiple choice questions on the exam. Good luck!!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
March 31, 2025

At the beginning of the quarter I was happy. I continued to be happy when I found out that all the homework was due at the end of the quarter, to which you could check if you got them all right guaranteeing full points in that section. I continued to be happy taking my midterms to which I got As in both even though he did not give practice tests and said to rely on the homework to guide you to victory. All this happiness came crashing down the day I walked into the final. For some reason he thought it would be an amazing idea to build your hopes up, "Im actually doing alright in this class" I said with glee... When I tell you I have never seen half of that final material in my life- I am not joking in the slightest. Not in any notes, not in any homework, not in any discussion section, not even in the final review session. Only God knows what was going on in that mans head when he wrote it, my theory is that he was possessed because thats the only logical explanation.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
Jan. 23, 2025

Professor Tung is a really sweet and funny guy, which is why I feel bad to give him a bad review. However, his exams were very difficult, and they often recalled material that he glazed over in class. In addition, his practice problems in class were very long and complicated and used variables instead of actual numbers, making them not very applicable to learning how to actually solve equations. He gave us little to no review resources, so how well you study really just depends on what test banks you can get. He also said he'd give us extra credit but didn't give us any :(

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Jan. 9, 2025

I took the equivalent of this class in highschool and knew about 85% of the content already, I just kept making really dumb mistakes on the exams which led me to finish with an A- rather than an A. So the class overall is not too bad, the midterm and final are pretty easy and fair. His lectures are pretty boring and slow, except when he does a demonstration which is a nice change of pace. When he pulls up the onenote blackboard everyone just mentally checks out. He is great at explaining the theoretical side of the physics but in terms of actual practice, I think he lacks in that area. If someone who had no exposure to physics previously, I could definitely see someone getting confused and a bit lost when he explains the concepts. The labs are fine, a bit tedious but if your lab group doesn't do anything its pretty annoying. If you have a good/fine lab group its fine. Just take it with Tung.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: B-
Jan. 9, 2025

The first two midterms were totally fine, I had no issues at all with them and was on track to get an A in the course. And then the final came... I am not going to say that I was the best prepared I could have been for the final, because I was not. However, that final was horrible. While Tung did not reck my 4.0 as I did not have one before, he did wreck my chance of getting latin honors.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Dec. 27, 2024

I'm not sure what happened, but Tung doesn't curve that much anymore. He didn't give out that 3% extra credit a lot of other older reviews talked about. His curve is based on cosine, so the better you do on the midterms (which were so much easier than the final), you won't get any extra credit. None of the exam questions reflected the homework, though the TAs provided pretty good p sets. I didn't spend that much time studying to be very honest, but there was never good preparation for the exam questions; you will be left in the dark.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: A-
Dec. 25, 2024

Started studying for this class a few weeks before it began due to the reviews I read (the non-COVID ones) and was worried about how his exams would go and boy was I right. Reading the COVID reviews here is very infuriating because it’s so obvious that there were other “tactics” at play when they were taking his class. I used mainly outside sources to study for this class, his in class notes were otherwise useless. It such a slap in the face that I didn’t get an A and stained my 4.0 GPA all because I missed a few multiple choice questions (where there’s no partial points given) its ridiculous to have your exam scores in the hands of knowing the detailed mechanics of circular motion even though those concepts were never discussed. I also rewrote and read his own notes in DETAIL which ended up being mostly useful but somewhat redundant. I also want to mention I had never taken physics before in my life and so he was my first introduction to it. I didn’t rly good on the first midterm and good on the second but the final was ridiculous. I wish I choose a different professor but whatever an A- is still an A (unless your a university which that’s another issue) but overall, take him if you want to have utter fear of your midterms and avoid him if you choose peace and happiness. He is extremely overrated its insane the amount of bootlicking people do here.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2024
Grade: C-
Dec. 25, 2024

I’m a straight A student who puts in a lot of effort, but this class was an absolute nightmare. Professor Tung is, hands down, the worst professor I’ve ever had. He doesn’t teach he just derives formulas and shows slides that are completely useless. Over the entire semester, he only showed THREE practice problems during lectures. How are we supposed to prepare for midterms or finals with that?

The homework is on Kudu, which is no help at all, and the questions there are nothing like the exams. The exams are brutal: multiple choice and free response, but the free response questions are basically your entire grade. Make one mistake on those, and you're done, since each one is worth a third of the test.

Professor Tung mentioned he can curve grades, but even though tons of people failed, he didn’t curve at all. For the final, he brought in material that wasn’t even taught and rushed through everything else. He skipped many important concepts altogether because he didn’t have enough time to cover them. On top of that, the physics lab was completely out of sync with the lectures. The lectures were so far behind that when you went to lab, you had no idea what was happening.

To make things worse, the recordings of his lectures often took weeks to be uploaded on Bruin Learn, and sometimes they weren’t even posted before exam dates. When I asked him if he could upload them earlier, he basically said there was nothing he could do and ignored everyone.

Also, don’t be fooled by the good reviews online most of them are from students who took his class during COVID and cheated their way through. It’s insane that UCLA pays this guy when YouTube is free and does a much better job of teaching. If you’re thinking of taking his class, don’t. Save yourself the headache and find someone who actually teaches.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
2 of 7
3.8
Overall Rating
Based on 74 Users
Easiness 3.0 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.8 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.6 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.7 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
    (47)
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