I have very mixed feelings about this class. It started off strong, but then Tung left right after week 3 and did not come back until week 10. The class starts being really easy, and then you get hit by a semi truck. It doesn't help when you have to watch videos from 1A and not even the actual class. The midterms are hard but fairly reasonable if you can self study quite a bit. Jinyan and James, the TAs this quarter, were absolute angels. They were very understanding to the students and picked up Tung's slack. I do understand that Tung had some medical family complications, but he could have prepared MUCH BETTER for his absence. I think Tung as a person is a kind, charismatic man, but I don't even know where to begin on his teaching. His demonstrations are fun, but at this point in the quarter I am realizing that this may have been a coverup for his poor lecturing skills. He spends an entire class period going over ONE problem, and three different ways to solve that ONE problem. Then he tests us on 3-4 of those long ass problems, and expects us to know how to do them. Kudu doesn't help at all either, I wish Tung gave us actually written homework problems. This class is AI slop, even the professor can't help but send out a CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT with "Here is the revised, finalized draft. It's ready to copy and send." If you want to take a class created and facilitated by chat gpt, this is your best bet. Otherwise, I would avoid Tung as a physics professor. Great man though.

This course, during the Fall of 2025, was definitely not ideal for Professor Tung, since his wife was undergoing medical care, but he left week 4 and switched us to online pre-recorded lectures and came back week 10. I kid u not, this made it so difficult for not only me, but everyone I spoke to in the class. On top of this, the online prerecorded lecture videos were NOT for physics 5A, yet they were instead for physics 1A, which is AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COURSE that is taught at a different level and different speed. This clearly displays Professor Tung's lack of preparation when teaching this course. This is a very heavy course, and when your professor disappears for more than half of the class (Both midterms came back right before the final), it feels nearly impossible to perform well in this course, let alone simply passing. I hope this is not the case for everyone who has taken this course with Professor Tung, as he is a sweet man, but he should have known better than to teach this course. He additionally sent out an email with an AI prompt in the title and then claimed it was "a personal draft" he left in the email by mistake. His lack of accountability as a professor is incredibly unprofessional, and I highly suggest you stay away from Professor Tung for the time being; that is, until he is capable of actually showing up to his job. :)

Side note: he had only ONE office hour held before midterm 1 that was on Zoom, not in person. That should not be allowed. A professor teaches this course. The TAs had to end up teaching the entire class, all while Professor Tung was ghosting them just like he was with us students. I am very fed up and angry since all of this was fully out of the student's hands. Professor Tung thinks he is being engaging by doing little stunts in class, but beware that those are fully a waste of time, and he is busy dressing up as Indiana Jones instead of explaining the never-before-seen problems he's putting on the midterms/final...

I fear I would give a -10 / 10 rating for Professor Tung. :(

Worst class I have taken at UCLA. Tung tries to be funny and sweet but his exams are hard and not the materials which he goes over. He left our class from midterm 1 to 2 and only posted recorded lectures from 2024 PHYSICS 1A. He was going through a family matter, but it was something he knew was going to happen and fail to plan ahead. I have never struggled so much in a class because we are soooo behind in lectures to the point where labs end up being on things we haven’t covered. He is a poor educator and failed his students this quarter as a professor leading to failing students.

An amazing lecture and entertainer, Tung's lectures were never boring to attend (it was like watching a cinematic movie). Gives a lot of extra credit (although it didn't really help me) just by doing more than 75% of the hmw and supplemental math. He does curve the class, but unfortunately grades are inflated due to the cheaters. Kudu as a hmw platform sucks a$$, make sure you save all your hmw answers before closing the tab. I thought exams were very difficult, but still fair. I recommend drilling all discussion problems until memorized and understanding lecture definitions. Unfortunately, I would have given him a higher score, if not for our quarter's unfortunate dilemma of him taking an extended medical leave for 6 weeks (basically absent for both midterms and final). I felt bad for how much hate he got, but in all honesty the TAs really carried us this quarter via OH/discussions. It was slightly unfair how much self learning we as the F'25 quarter had to do... keep that in mind. Best of luck :)

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.

Tung had a personal emergency this quarter so hard to give him a complete review but I felt like he put no effort into his actual lecture material and looked for them to be entertaining rather than useful. He just teaches you what the equations are rather than how to use them, but the tests aren't bad and the review questions are very useful to study for midterms and finals.

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.

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!!

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.

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 :(