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James Rosenzweig
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If you've taken 1AH and 1BH already, might as well finish strong with 1CH as well. You already know how the honors series works; it feels like hell but you'll learn a lot and get a decent grade anyways.
If you're interested in physics at all, I HIGHLY recommend the honors series. Jamie is may not have the best handwriting for online lectures, but the honors series is just great. I appreciated the opportunity to actually learn interesting physics instead of just learning how to apply formulas to questions. His homework assignments are impossible and his tests make you questions your life, but go to the TA office hours for homework help and trust the way this class is curved. Everyone in my section got some kind of A's.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I remember anxiously searching through bruinwalk during my freshman orientation so I thought I'd drop some hints for those considering to take this class :)
---
1. if you didn't feel comfortable with AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C material, you might want to reconsider the physics honors series.
---
2. if you have some time in your hands and nothing better to do in quarantine, do consider taking a multivariable calculus class at a community college.
familiarity with multivariable calculus is a must for this class; you'll either come in with some experience or try your best to learn as you go.
---
3. if you don't find the lectures helpful, find other ways to learn the material.
no one is forcing you to go to lectures. if you learn better by reading the textbook or watching lectures from other people, you should do what works for you.
---
4. DON'T PANIC.
even when the you don't know what the homework questions are asking. even when you look at the test and feel like you should drop the class. even when they just through a shit ton of math on you as if you should know this already. just breathe and go find Trevor.
---
5. Trevor. he's your TA (hopefully). go find him. use him. get to know him.
---
6. make/join the class groupchat.
physics honors series is relatively small and most people stay together through the entire year. get to know some of your classmates in groupchats because you WILL need emotional support after those tests. and your classmates are actually really smart.
---
7. no matter what they tell you, you choose which classes you take.
they're not letting you take 3 stem courses in fall? well if you'd be happier taking a stem course than a GE, do what you gotta do. it's week 4 and an unnecessary class is giving you hell? DROP that shit and take it later/find other options. they're scaring you into repeating a class you already have credit for? judge for yourself and decide for yourself.
---
8. you can drop classes. you won't die or not graduate on time because you drop one class and find other ways to fulfill the requirement. just make sure you do your research and decide before it's too late to go back.
---
9. try to enjoy feeling dumb
most of us never found any of our high school classes too challenging and probably never got below an A on a test in stem courses, without even trying so hard. some of us continue to do so in college, but that's probably not a good sign because in college you're supposed to challenge your mind. and in freshman year you're supposed to get a taste of what the next 4 yrs are going to be like and decide if you really want to do what you chose to do. so if you're feeling lost and/or feeling like a dumb piece of shit, just trust that you're doing it right. if it helps you, always remember curves do exist. if you found the test difficult, your classmates did too. don't worry.
---
10. ignore all above and just do what you gotta do to be happy. take care of yourself. this class only lasts 10 weeks but you are stuck with yourself for your entire life. so if you ever have to choose between being good for the class/grade or being nice to yourself, choose the latter.
---
+ talk to upperclassmen.
if you don't know any, just find random people in clubs. most of them will be more than happy to share their tips and resources. they've been through this already and therefore already have all you need to get through this class (probably). the resources they have collected are just sitting in their google drive. befriend them. swipe them. join their clubs.
Jamie tries. But his lectures are very disorganized, his handwriting is messy, and (at least online) he's just not engaging. Maybe it's my fault for not being able to focus too well through a screen, but I found it virtually impossible to pay attention to more than ten minutes of him talking. Our textbook (Hecht) was similarly disorganized (even our TA agreed that it's really hard to tell which ideas, derivations, and formulas in it are actually important). Jamie went pretty deeply into some topics that (according to our TA) aren't necessarily standard (such as a deep dive into using matrices to understand optics) and (again, according to our TA) many of the ideas and derivations he used were not standard (ie, even our TA found them hard to understand and it was difficult to look it up in any source outside of Jamie). It's frustrating that you have to double check every equation on these topics because 1) you won't find it on the Internet without searching for an hour, 2) Jamie's handwriting is awful and he does often make algebraic errors, and 3) sometimes he'll type up notes but again, typos happen. Homework problems are generally a combination of textbook problems (which are generally pretty easy, and sometimes have answers in the back) and problems that Jamie himself wrote (which are often hard to understand and even the TA wasn't sure what was being asked; sure, you can ask, but Jamie doesn't always answer questions too clearly and sometimes people walk away more confused than they were originally, but even if he was 100% clear, this means looking at the homework very early to allow time for correspondence). Pray that you'll have an amazing TA like ours, Dima Vaido, who was super helpful, solved homework with us during recorded office hours, shared a BUNCH of resources to supplement the lectures, and was overall very funny and pleasant and approachable.
For me, taking this class made me think that any other class besides physics is easy. I feel like you have to do more critical thinking in this class than in any undergraduate class (except 1BH). Also, Hect is a pretty good book, but definitely ask Jamie which parts you should read/skip. Even though the you don't know what his homework questions are asking 2 days before the deadline and sometimes even the TA doesn't know what the question is asking and how to get the answer, you gotta love Jamie and his witty jokes in retrospect. Definitely take this class since the grading is lenient.
Oh, Physics 1AH. I decided to take this course as a biophysics major, and while I definitely don’t regret my decision as an A- is a good grade, it was an extremely difficult class. Leading up to the first midterm, the content was manageable despite difficult. After the first midterm, however, the class really picked up and got particularly difficult. Most of the time I felt like I was just trying to survive instead of learn physics. The professor often said grading was very lenient, which to some extent is true, but the content being so exceptionally challenging means you still have to work for your grade. If you push through, you’ll probably get a decent grade (at least a B), but my god is it rough.
Some pieces of information I think are important:
-I cannot stress this enough but READ THE ENTIRE CHAPTER before the first lecture. You will be very confused otherwise. I didn’t realize this until several weeks in, and at that point I was very behind.
-Make sure you are solid with vector calculus and some multivariable calc (basically 32A), otherwise you will struggle to understand how to even approach problems. If you’re concurrently enrolled in 32A (which I was and it seems most people are), learn vector calculus and partial differentiation before class starts. Also review how to solve differential equations since every other problem involves them.
-Lectures were honestly unhelpful; the professor explained how to do problems and that involved content we barely learned, which is why it’s so important to read the textbook to learn how to do the problems beforehand. Lectures also frequently involved completely tangential topics that served no purpose other than to give those listening a migraine.
-The class does follow the textbook somewhat closely, which means reading and independent study were significantly more helpful for me than lectures. There was weekly homework that was easy to complete due to being straight from the textbook, which has a complete answer key. You can find the textbook online (as well as the answer key).
-I don’t know if Trevor will continue to TA for the class, but he is amazing. He explains problems incredibly concisely and is very helpful. If he’s still the TA, would definitely recommend office hours and the tutoring hours he provides.
-Discussions were useless, since the TA just explained how to do homework problems... and there’s the answer key that shows all of the work. If you’re confused about a problem, I would go into office hours instead of expecting clarification in discussion. Only times I went were to pick up my midterms the week after we took them.
In general I would not recommend taking this course unless you’re a physics major who is also in the honors program or doing EE fast track. There’s no reason to subject yourself to the painful experience the class was otherwise.
Took this class in my first quarter at UCLA and it was so tough that it literally made me change majors. The concepts in this class are only meant for people who were already top of their class in physics and intend to keep performing at that level, as they start hard and only get harder.
"Jamie" gives lectures only on trivial (a word you'll hear too much), incredibly difficult, and out-of-the-scope-of-the-course concepts. However, he is very good in office hours save only for his sometimes condescending nature if you don't understand the setup of a problem.
The homework problems are EVERYTHING in this class. They will take a long time and will get increasingly difficult, but the midterms and the final are straight from the homework. Sometimes, he'll throw in a problem from lecture but it's usually one explained heavily in the book. However, we got one problem that was one of the terribly complicated things we discussed in lecture and almost everyone got screwed on it.
Every Tuesday, he brings in baked goods his wife makes and they are almost always superb. The only reason I came to lecture on Tuesdays.
If you really want a physics degree, go ahead and take this class. You should do fine. If not, then I guess it's a rather easy class with the grading scale being largely As and a couple of Bs. But the class itself won't be easy. Good luck.
Also, beware of the Fast Track Electrical Engineering kids. They will screw up the curve. And if you are one, congratulations. You'll do just fine.
This guy knows his stuff. His passion for physics is obvious for anyone who goes to his lectures. He is very, very intelligent as well, which may make it a bit intimidating for someone to ask a question on the basic concepts such as Gauss's Law or the right-hand rule. His lectures often piqued my curiosity and they honestly seemed to breeze by most times. I wish I could sit in 4-5 hour lectures of him.
HOWEVER, and this is huge, this course assumes a mastery of math through 32B when you enter the class, and professor Roszensweig very often loses students in his derivations. You should also have a baseline understanding of E&M before you take this class, as it's pretty much implicitly assumed. I felt like a was fighting an uphill battle the entire time because I was not either mathematically prepared or prepared on the physics side. This course was the first exposure I've ever had to E&M outside of a three-week glaze in my 10th-grade high school physics class (so pretty much 0 experience).
Another thing: really emphasize problem-solving, even when the problems seem p=edagogical. My intent throughout the entire time was to convince myself that E&M is worth studying for its elegance, but I missed out on many opportunities to learn cold problem-solving skills. That is ultimately what lead me to be unprepared for a class of this level of rigor. I couldn't seem to make most of the homework problems make sense to me. I became insecure and thought of myself as an impostor. This was because when getting down to doing the math, I had a difficult time actually making physical arguments: I got lost in the math when I had to chiefly focus on homework problems. The solutions often seemed to come out of outer space. I did improve on this front a little bit, but not enough to have done well in this course (I'm not sure how my grades are going to be curved). I would really like to retake this course but have more necessary attributes to succeed. On tests, I tended to rely super heavily on wrote memorization, which helped me get through test anxiety in the past but wasn't effective for the midterms.
I suggest using Desmos and even Python for some problems in this class. To understand what is physically occurring in a problem, say it's about how relativity affects moving charges, you'll want to have some physical context that you can actually look at. Reading through Purcell and Morin was helpful to some extent, but was not enough for the concepts to sink in.
Some advice for the homework: this is not your ordinary "pen and paper" work where you cut yourself off from resources. Explore the problem/concept, discuss with peers, and if you need to, put in numerical values to help you understand limitations in physics. You really need to understand the dx/ds/da terms in an integral. try asking yourself why the topic you are learning are contained within the same course. Then bust out your best attempt at the problem with reasoning. You might get stuck or be wrong. Interact with your TA (Dima Vaido was pretty good) and classmates (who are very intelligent and diligent). Try to avoid putting off work until the last day.
Ultimately, this class is very challenging for a novice, and one can easily question their own abilities and/or why they would be crazy enough to take this class. Yes it's hard, but if you really engage with the material and find ways to enjoy and enhance your learning, I believe this course is manageable. Unless you are already very well acquainted with E&M, I would suggest that you avoid taking this class with other demanding courses. This class easily ate up 3 to 4 hours a day outside of lecture. If you are in 4 classes that also have steep learning curves, you'll overwhelm yourself or not get as much out of a class as you could have.
Two things about him really bothered me:
1) Lectures are pretty incomprehensible. He writes messy, writes everywhere, and does not label things well. If you already understand what he is talking about, then this isn't a problem, but if you are like me and had no idea what superfluidity (or various other things) was, then you will be writing like mad only to later figure out that you have no idea what some equation or graph even meant.
2) He lectures on things that he never has any intent of testing/making you do a report on.
For 18L this was certainly bearable, as our TA was great and let us know what was expected of us (though was not the type to just hand out A's), though I cannot imagine how incomprehensible Rosenzweig might be in a regular lecture.
Overall, Physics 1C with Rosenzweig was bearable, but I wouldn't take it again with him. He's not the best at teaching the material since he writes his notes on an iPad and his handwriting is barely readable and he often skips through different pages of his notes during lecture, giving us little time to take down notes. Also, he often goes on a tangent and does numerous derivations that are difficult to follow. I learned more from discussion and reading the textbook than attending lecture. However, participation does matter during the lecture sections as he does in-class activities through Kudu (although you don't have to attend lecture as long as you do the activities).
As for the exams, they are quite difficult since the homework assignments do not help you in preparing for them. However, getting a decent grade on the midterms and the final is possible if you have a great TA since they would be very generous in giving partial credit. Also, cheat sheets are allowed for the tests and you are given a few extra credit points for your test grade for them.
Lastly, Rosenzweig implemented a "curve" for our class although it wasn't helpful since our class size was ~40 people. Based on the curve, you need to be at the top 10% to get an A and top 30% to get a B. However, if the curve doesn't benefit you, absolute points in the class would determine your final grade instead.
Jamie is a knowledgeable professor, and is very clearly passionate about E&M (he has talked about his research several times during relevant topics in class); however, his style of lecturing is very difficult to follow. Of course this only pertains to his online lectures, but Jamie would have everything written down pre-class, and simply scroll through his notes and explaining them. This made it very difficult to see the process of his explanations and solutions worked on, and was especially difficult when it came to mathematical derivations. The textbook for this class, Purcell and Morin's E&M is very dense and frankly very boring to read, but I do have to say it is quite helpful in clearing up things we've discussed in class. I highly recommend reading the textbook before or after lecture, but if you're illiterate like me, there are also a lot of helpful youtube videos that explain the concepts at a fifth-grade level.
Despite this class having Math 32B as a co-requisite, we used 32B knowledge from day one in this class, which made it difficult for me to follow along as I would learn the math in we used a week or two in 32B after needing it for physics. Furthermore, some days Jamie would spend the first hour of class explaining math that went over my head, but this math was never in the textbook, homeworks, or tests, so my inability to pay attention never hurt me.
The weekly (sometimes we are given more than week) homework for this class is always 7 problems, 1-2 written by Jamie and the rest from the textbook. Jamie's questions are usually a lot more difficult than the textbook ones, and would be a lot more mathematically involved. The textbook's solutions are easily available, and I honestly needed to use the solutions to even start the majority of the questions because I had seriously no idea how to; however, I think it was looking over the homework solutions and familiarizing myself with using its methods that helped me the most on the exams. In terms of the exams, they actually aren't as bad as I thought they would be. Doing Jamie's released practice problems (ahem I mean reading over the texbook's solutions for them) is one of the best ways to study IMO.
Overall, this class wasn't too much work. You can scramble together homework solutions in an hour or two and spend the rest of the time trying to get your seven remaining brain cells to actually understand what it is you learned in today's lecture. Even though I still don't really understand magnetism, figuring something out in this class is super rewarding. If you need to take this class, then take it. You might dread it but you'll be fine.
If you've taken 1AH and 1BH already, might as well finish strong with 1CH as well. You already know how the honors series works; it feels like hell but you'll learn a lot and get a decent grade anyways.
If you're interested in physics at all, I HIGHLY recommend the honors series. Jamie is may not have the best handwriting for online lectures, but the honors series is just great. I appreciated the opportunity to actually learn interesting physics instead of just learning how to apply formulas to questions. His homework assignments are impossible and his tests make you questions your life, but go to the TA office hours for homework help and trust the way this class is curved. Everyone in my section got some kind of A's.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I remember anxiously searching through bruinwalk during my freshman orientation so I thought I'd drop some hints for those considering to take this class :)
---
1. if you didn't feel comfortable with AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C material, you might want to reconsider the physics honors series.
---
2. if you have some time in your hands and nothing better to do in quarantine, do consider taking a multivariable calculus class at a community college.
familiarity with multivariable calculus is a must for this class; you'll either come in with some experience or try your best to learn as you go.
---
3. if you don't find the lectures helpful, find other ways to learn the material.
no one is forcing you to go to lectures. if you learn better by reading the textbook or watching lectures from other people, you should do what works for you.
---
4. DON'T PANIC.
even when the you don't know what the homework questions are asking. even when you look at the test and feel like you should drop the class. even when they just through a shit ton of math on you as if you should know this already. just breathe and go find Trevor.
---
5. Trevor. he's your TA (hopefully). go find him. use him. get to know him.
---
6. make/join the class groupchat.
physics honors series is relatively small and most people stay together through the entire year. get to know some of your classmates in groupchats because you WILL need emotional support after those tests. and your classmates are actually really smart.
---
7. no matter what they tell you, you choose which classes you take.
they're not letting you take 3 stem courses in fall? well if you'd be happier taking a stem course than a GE, do what you gotta do. it's week 4 and an unnecessary class is giving you hell? DROP that shit and take it later/find other options. they're scaring you into repeating a class you already have credit for? judge for yourself and decide for yourself.
---
8. you can drop classes. you won't die or not graduate on time because you drop one class and find other ways to fulfill the requirement. just make sure you do your research and decide before it's too late to go back.
---
9. try to enjoy feeling dumb
most of us never found any of our high school classes too challenging and probably never got below an A on a test in stem courses, without even trying so hard. some of us continue to do so in college, but that's probably not a good sign because in college you're supposed to challenge your mind. and in freshman year you're supposed to get a taste of what the next 4 yrs are going to be like and decide if you really want to do what you chose to do. so if you're feeling lost and/or feeling like a dumb piece of shit, just trust that you're doing it right. if it helps you, always remember curves do exist. if you found the test difficult, your classmates did too. don't worry.
---
10. ignore all above and just do what you gotta do to be happy. take care of yourself. this class only lasts 10 weeks but you are stuck with yourself for your entire life. so if you ever have to choose between being good for the class/grade or being nice to yourself, choose the latter.
---
+ talk to upperclassmen.
if you don't know any, just find random people in clubs. most of them will be more than happy to share their tips and resources. they've been through this already and therefore already have all you need to get through this class (probably). the resources they have collected are just sitting in their google drive. befriend them. swipe them. join their clubs.
Jamie tries. But his lectures are very disorganized, his handwriting is messy, and (at least online) he's just not engaging. Maybe it's my fault for not being able to focus too well through a screen, but I found it virtually impossible to pay attention to more than ten minutes of him talking. Our textbook (Hecht) was similarly disorganized (even our TA agreed that it's really hard to tell which ideas, derivations, and formulas in it are actually important). Jamie went pretty deeply into some topics that (according to our TA) aren't necessarily standard (such as a deep dive into using matrices to understand optics) and (again, according to our TA) many of the ideas and derivations he used were not standard (ie, even our TA found them hard to understand and it was difficult to look it up in any source outside of Jamie). It's frustrating that you have to double check every equation on these topics because 1) you won't find it on the Internet without searching for an hour, 2) Jamie's handwriting is awful and he does often make algebraic errors, and 3) sometimes he'll type up notes but again, typos happen. Homework problems are generally a combination of textbook problems (which are generally pretty easy, and sometimes have answers in the back) and problems that Jamie himself wrote (which are often hard to understand and even the TA wasn't sure what was being asked; sure, you can ask, but Jamie doesn't always answer questions too clearly and sometimes people walk away more confused than they were originally, but even if he was 100% clear, this means looking at the homework very early to allow time for correspondence). Pray that you'll have an amazing TA like ours, Dima Vaido, who was super helpful, solved homework with us during recorded office hours, shared a BUNCH of resources to supplement the lectures, and was overall very funny and pleasant and approachable.
For me, taking this class made me think that any other class besides physics is easy. I feel like you have to do more critical thinking in this class than in any undergraduate class (except 1BH). Also, Hect is a pretty good book, but definitely ask Jamie which parts you should read/skip. Even though the you don't know what his homework questions are asking 2 days before the deadline and sometimes even the TA doesn't know what the question is asking and how to get the answer, you gotta love Jamie and his witty jokes in retrospect. Definitely take this class since the grading is lenient.
Oh, Physics 1AH. I decided to take this course as a biophysics major, and while I definitely don’t regret my decision as an A- is a good grade, it was an extremely difficult class. Leading up to the first midterm, the content was manageable despite difficult. After the first midterm, however, the class really picked up and got particularly difficult. Most of the time I felt like I was just trying to survive instead of learn physics. The professor often said grading was very lenient, which to some extent is true, but the content being so exceptionally challenging means you still have to work for your grade. If you push through, you’ll probably get a decent grade (at least a B), but my god is it rough.
Some pieces of information I think are important:
-I cannot stress this enough but READ THE ENTIRE CHAPTER before the first lecture. You will be very confused otherwise. I didn’t realize this until several weeks in, and at that point I was very behind.
-Make sure you are solid with vector calculus and some multivariable calc (basically 32A), otherwise you will struggle to understand how to even approach problems. If you’re concurrently enrolled in 32A (which I was and it seems most people are), learn vector calculus and partial differentiation before class starts. Also review how to solve differential equations since every other problem involves them.
-Lectures were honestly unhelpful; the professor explained how to do problems and that involved content we barely learned, which is why it’s so important to read the textbook to learn how to do the problems beforehand. Lectures also frequently involved completely tangential topics that served no purpose other than to give those listening a migraine.
-The class does follow the textbook somewhat closely, which means reading and independent study were significantly more helpful for me than lectures. There was weekly homework that was easy to complete due to being straight from the textbook, which has a complete answer key. You can find the textbook online (as well as the answer key).
-I don’t know if Trevor will continue to TA for the class, but he is amazing. He explains problems incredibly concisely and is very helpful. If he’s still the TA, would definitely recommend office hours and the tutoring hours he provides.
-Discussions were useless, since the TA just explained how to do homework problems... and there’s the answer key that shows all of the work. If you’re confused about a problem, I would go into office hours instead of expecting clarification in discussion. Only times I went were to pick up my midterms the week after we took them.
In general I would not recommend taking this course unless you’re a physics major who is also in the honors program or doing EE fast track. There’s no reason to subject yourself to the painful experience the class was otherwise.
Took this class in my first quarter at UCLA and it was so tough that it literally made me change majors. The concepts in this class are only meant for people who were already top of their class in physics and intend to keep performing at that level, as they start hard and only get harder.
"Jamie" gives lectures only on trivial (a word you'll hear too much), incredibly difficult, and out-of-the-scope-of-the-course concepts. However, he is very good in office hours save only for his sometimes condescending nature if you don't understand the setup of a problem.
The homework problems are EVERYTHING in this class. They will take a long time and will get increasingly difficult, but the midterms and the final are straight from the homework. Sometimes, he'll throw in a problem from lecture but it's usually one explained heavily in the book. However, we got one problem that was one of the terribly complicated things we discussed in lecture and almost everyone got screwed on it.
Every Tuesday, he brings in baked goods his wife makes and they are almost always superb. The only reason I came to lecture on Tuesdays.
If you really want a physics degree, go ahead and take this class. You should do fine. If not, then I guess it's a rather easy class with the grading scale being largely As and a couple of Bs. But the class itself won't be easy. Good luck.
Also, beware of the Fast Track Electrical Engineering kids. They will screw up the curve. And if you are one, congratulations. You'll do just fine.
This guy knows his stuff. His passion for physics is obvious for anyone who goes to his lectures. He is very, very intelligent as well, which may make it a bit intimidating for someone to ask a question on the basic concepts such as Gauss's Law or the right-hand rule. His lectures often piqued my curiosity and they honestly seemed to breeze by most times. I wish I could sit in 4-5 hour lectures of him.
HOWEVER, and this is huge, this course assumes a mastery of math through 32B when you enter the class, and professor Roszensweig very often loses students in his derivations. You should also have a baseline understanding of E&M before you take this class, as it's pretty much implicitly assumed. I felt like a was fighting an uphill battle the entire time because I was not either mathematically prepared or prepared on the physics side. This course was the first exposure I've ever had to E&M outside of a three-week glaze in my 10th-grade high school physics class (so pretty much 0 experience).
Another thing: really emphasize problem-solving, even when the problems seem p=edagogical. My intent throughout the entire time was to convince myself that E&M is worth studying for its elegance, but I missed out on many opportunities to learn cold problem-solving skills. That is ultimately what lead me to be unprepared for a class of this level of rigor. I couldn't seem to make most of the homework problems make sense to me. I became insecure and thought of myself as an impostor. This was because when getting down to doing the math, I had a difficult time actually making physical arguments: I got lost in the math when I had to chiefly focus on homework problems. The solutions often seemed to come out of outer space. I did improve on this front a little bit, but not enough to have done well in this course (I'm not sure how my grades are going to be curved). I would really like to retake this course but have more necessary attributes to succeed. On tests, I tended to rely super heavily on wrote memorization, which helped me get through test anxiety in the past but wasn't effective for the midterms.
I suggest using Desmos and even Python for some problems in this class. To understand what is physically occurring in a problem, say it's about how relativity affects moving charges, you'll want to have some physical context that you can actually look at. Reading through Purcell and Morin was helpful to some extent, but was not enough for the concepts to sink in.
Some advice for the homework: this is not your ordinary "pen and paper" work where you cut yourself off from resources. Explore the problem/concept, discuss with peers, and if you need to, put in numerical values to help you understand limitations in physics. You really need to understand the dx/ds/da terms in an integral. try asking yourself why the topic you are learning are contained within the same course. Then bust out your best attempt at the problem with reasoning. You might get stuck or be wrong. Interact with your TA (Dima Vaido was pretty good) and classmates (who are very intelligent and diligent). Try to avoid putting off work until the last day.
Ultimately, this class is very challenging for a novice, and one can easily question their own abilities and/or why they would be crazy enough to take this class. Yes it's hard, but if you really engage with the material and find ways to enjoy and enhance your learning, I believe this course is manageable. Unless you are already very well acquainted with E&M, I would suggest that you avoid taking this class with other demanding courses. This class easily ate up 3 to 4 hours a day outside of lecture. If you are in 4 classes that also have steep learning curves, you'll overwhelm yourself or not get as much out of a class as you could have.
Two things about him really bothered me:
1) Lectures are pretty incomprehensible. He writes messy, writes everywhere, and does not label things well. If you already understand what he is talking about, then this isn't a problem, but if you are like me and had no idea what superfluidity (or various other things) was, then you will be writing like mad only to later figure out that you have no idea what some equation or graph even meant.
2) He lectures on things that he never has any intent of testing/making you do a report on.
For 18L this was certainly bearable, as our TA was great and let us know what was expected of us (though was not the type to just hand out A's), though I cannot imagine how incomprehensible Rosenzweig might be in a regular lecture.
Overall, Physics 1C with Rosenzweig was bearable, but I wouldn't take it again with him. He's not the best at teaching the material since he writes his notes on an iPad and his handwriting is barely readable and he often skips through different pages of his notes during lecture, giving us little time to take down notes. Also, he often goes on a tangent and does numerous derivations that are difficult to follow. I learned more from discussion and reading the textbook than attending lecture. However, participation does matter during the lecture sections as he does in-class activities through Kudu (although you don't have to attend lecture as long as you do the activities).
As for the exams, they are quite difficult since the homework assignments do not help you in preparing for them. However, getting a decent grade on the midterms and the final is possible if you have a great TA since they would be very generous in giving partial credit. Also, cheat sheets are allowed for the tests and you are given a few extra credit points for your test grade for them.
Lastly, Rosenzweig implemented a "curve" for our class although it wasn't helpful since our class size was ~40 people. Based on the curve, you need to be at the top 10% to get an A and top 30% to get a B. However, if the curve doesn't benefit you, absolute points in the class would determine your final grade instead.
Jamie is a knowledgeable professor, and is very clearly passionate about E&M (he has talked about his research several times during relevant topics in class); however, his style of lecturing is very difficult to follow. Of course this only pertains to his online lectures, but Jamie would have everything written down pre-class, and simply scroll through his notes and explaining them. This made it very difficult to see the process of his explanations and solutions worked on, and was especially difficult when it came to mathematical derivations. The textbook for this class, Purcell and Morin's E&M is very dense and frankly very boring to read, but I do have to say it is quite helpful in clearing up things we've discussed in class. I highly recommend reading the textbook before or after lecture, but if you're illiterate like me, there are also a lot of helpful youtube videos that explain the concepts at a fifth-grade level.
Despite this class having Math 32B as a co-requisite, we used 32B knowledge from day one in this class, which made it difficult for me to follow along as I would learn the math in we used a week or two in 32B after needing it for physics. Furthermore, some days Jamie would spend the first hour of class explaining math that went over my head, but this math was never in the textbook, homeworks, or tests, so my inability to pay attention never hurt me.
The weekly (sometimes we are given more than week) homework for this class is always 7 problems, 1-2 written by Jamie and the rest from the textbook. Jamie's questions are usually a lot more difficult than the textbook ones, and would be a lot more mathematically involved. The textbook's solutions are easily available, and I honestly needed to use the solutions to even start the majority of the questions because I had seriously no idea how to; however, I think it was looking over the homework solutions and familiarizing myself with using its methods that helped me the most on the exams. In terms of the exams, they actually aren't as bad as I thought they would be. Doing Jamie's released practice problems (ahem I mean reading over the texbook's solutions for them) is one of the best ways to study IMO.
Overall, this class wasn't too much work. You can scramble together homework solutions in an hour or two and spend the rest of the time trying to get your seven remaining brain cells to actually understand what it is you learned in today's lecture. Even though I still don't really understand magnetism, figuring something out in this class is super rewarding. If you need to take this class, then take it. You might dread it but you'll be fine.