It’s funny how this professor is rated so highly on bruinwalk. From my experience, and from the classmates I checked with, Peroomian simply doesn’t teach. I learnt absolutely nothing from his class. He regurgitates material directly from the textbook without explaining the key concepts. The examples he goes through in class are alright, but he just copies whatever he worked out beforehand, even the mistakes… meaning to say I have never seen him thinking on his feet or doing an actual analysis of the problem in class. If I were a professor, I would do that only if I’m unfamiliar with my topic and require notes all the time. Asking him questions were a pain; he skirts the question often, and upon being pressed to give a rigorous physics explanation, he simply uses analogies, or resort to the all-encompassing generic answer that things are just the way they are (example, he tried to explain Brewster’s angle in the topic of light, but had to resort to “oh it’s just a behavior of light…”.

Peroomian’s grading was weird. It was a 100% Final; as long as you attempted your midterm, your score for final was yours to keep. If you’ve done well for the midterm and screwed up the final, there’s nothing you can do to bump up your grade to an A, even if it’s borderline for final. And his final was not a walk in the park; you had to study hard for it. I had a few friends who didn’t so well for the final, and missed the A grade by just a bit in the final. They were extremely angry about the unfairness of it all.

In short Peroomian was disappointing, given his rave reviews on bruinwalk. No doubt he’s a great guy, but maybe he’s just not suited for teaching e&m since he has more of an astronomy than a pure physics background. I speak only of what some of my classmates and I have experienced in Physics 1C. The class was horrible for me, and I’m glad it’s over.