Vijay Gupta will take you on a roller coaster of emotions throughout the quarter. He started off weak by drawing 18 "arbitrary potatoes" the first lecture confusing the whole class. But then the next 5 weeks were hella solid imo and he taught the concepts pretty well. Right before the first midterm he'll tangent and tell you how he solved a murder trial using the strength of a bottle of wine which was dope, but then you'll get a 70 on the first midterm because its super hard. Then he'll teach super well again and surprise you with a week 10 midterm making you wanna cry. But then the midterm is super easy and all 3 problems are straight from lecture! You'll get a 90 something because all my homies hate algebra and start studying for the final. THEN the night before the final he'll tell everyone to check CCLE for a Christmas miracle and he gave everyone A's to B+'s and changed the final to be one question and if you get a 50% you get an A. Somehow not turning in a HW and getting a 70 on the first midterm got me an A. This man works in mysterious ways and I love him. If you get this silver fox as your prof, it'll all work out, just your mental health may take a slight toll.

Professor Gupta is a very reasonable and understanding man, first and foremost. He cares more about the education part of his class rather than the actual grades (which is a good thing, as I'll get into later). His lectures can be pretty boring sometimes, but the material is not really all that hard. As the other review for this quarter said, while he can be a bit disorganized or go off on a tangent sometimes, his lectures are actually pretty solid most of the time, and you come out of them feeling like you have actually learned something. His drawings are also pretty entertaining, and we all rejoice when he draws his famous "Arbitrary Potato" diagram to summarize the class topics for each chapter.

For homework, he gives weekly problem sets usually with 5 or 6 questions. These questions come from the book, but he writes them down on the document, so you won't need a textbook to complete them. His tests are relatively straightforward, although one problem may be a bit tricky. But he is very understanding and if you got most of the concept right, he will be generous with partial credit.

Finally, for our Fall 2020 quarter, Professor Gupta, the epic chad that he is, gave us an early Christmas gift and gave most of us A's (because apparently our class was already doing 'exceptionally well' this quarter), and for those who didn't have A's they took a very toned down/easy final to boost their grade. Of course this was probably an exception, but it demonstrates how he wants to see us understand the material, and is understanding of our circumstances as students in this time. Basically, I got 75% and 85% on both midterms, and ended up with an A.

I took Gupta because I heard his class was very easy, which something changed this quarter and all the midterms and finals got way harder than previous ones. That being said, statics is a super easy subject so his tests went from easy to something you might have to study a couple hours for. The homework also got much more difficult and the TA's were no help and even told me wrong information often times.

His lectures are super boring if you can even hear him. He sometimes uses an overhead projector to project diagrams that are so old that even he has trouble figuring out what is on them. I'm not sure whether it is helpful or not to go to lecture unless you want a nice place to sleep. I almost never took any notes until the very end of the class where it started to become a little more difficult.

He kinda overcomplicates the topics, so if you zone off, that's okay, as long as you understand the core subjects. He says lectures are not required nor are they recorded, and honestly he's right. Don't use his notes and learn from maybe online or through skimming the textbook (online but not provided). First midterm stuff is gonna be the statics part, super easy, use that time to take it easy, get the fundamentals and you can basically do it all. After the second midterm ish, like strength of material stuff (friction, strain, etc etc) REALLY start to focus and try to understand what is going on, because it can be weird and honestly is not explained pretty well in class. I suggest going to class before a midterm or final because he starts to say what might be on it, but other than that I wouldn't say it is necessary. Homework is easy enough if you go to discussion (highly suggest!) Midterms and finals are all like extremely extremely short. Good luck!

I really enjoyed my experience with Gupta! As a ChemE major, I took this class as a tech breadth elective and found the content very manageable since it felt like an extension of Physics 1A. Gupta was very approachable and cared for his students! His lectures weren't the most organized and sometimes he would sound repetitive, but he always had a fun story or two from his life to share which made lectures engaging. His weekly homeworks were problems from the textbook, which the TAs usually went over during discussion before they were due, making them easier to solve. There were two midterms and the final, both very fair with questions similar to those done in lecture/hw/discussion/practice problems. Gupta always stressed on us learning content well rather than grades/exams which was always nice! Shoutout to the TAs Marwan and Parsa for being so helpful throughout! Overall, definitely a positive experience!

ΣF = 0, ΣM = 0, stress and strain, shear force, bending moment. Congrats, you're done. When Gupta says this is a "classical subject" and that he expects some people to be self-taught, I doubted him at first. Nope, everything you can find online in any manner whatsoever is exactly what he teaches as well. Trust me, this is a universal class that cannot be taught much different than how Gupta teaches it. Differences is, he's terrible at teaching it. Easily the most difficult lecturer to listen to and extremely unclear with how he choses to explain things. His tests are easier than you expect every time, and the problem set answers are practically given to you in discussion (albeit they're easy to do anyway). Just understand that if you take this class, you don't NEED to go to lecture. I went to every single one at 8AM, and I regret it. Other than that, this class if fine.

Professor Gupta is an interesting professor. His lectures can be a bit boring and unhelpful at times but at other times he spouts critical on-the-test information so it helps to attend lectures whenever you can. Gupta is very knowledgeable in his work and this can be seen with his real life stories that he sometimes told in class. Overall the homework isn't too bad if you pay attention in class and same goes for the tests. He is a very easy grader when it comes to these so just make sure you get the basics down and you're all set.

Gupta is the GOAT. As far as grading is concerned, whatever that is on the syllabus is irrelevant. As long as he sees that you are getting a basic understanding of course material (which is a very vague grading standard), he'll give you an A. For both my midterms, I scored below the mean by like 10ish points. I scored 73 on my first and 74 on my second. While on the final, I scored an 84 which is 4 above the mean, and that got me an A.

In class lecture, he has a funny story or two and uses some interesting examples for what concept we are learning. He can ramble a lot at times. He is a really down to earth professor. Lenient about grades. I didn't get back my first exam score, failed the second and I honestly did not know how I did on the final but by some Christmas miracle I got an A-. If you bombed the exam there is still hope haha. If you like physics 1 you will like this class.

Good Professor. Sometimes told long stories about some crazy murder case he helped solve or something similar. Aside from that, his slides weren't too helpful, but the textbook was. Most importantly, he let you bring in a cheat sheet with example problems into the exam, which made them pretty straight forward. Do the home works, as they are the main way you learn in the class.