Dr. Bauer is possibly one of the most passive-aggressive, rude, uncaring professors at UCLA. When I first came into contact with him, I thought he was accommodating and chill because I had a complicated circumstance and he allowed me to take one of the exams online to make up for it. After finishing the quarter I realized how he is completely unwilling to help his students genuinely learn, and if you do not understand a topic the first time then he thinks you are simply incompetent. I had failed the first midterm (due to having a horribly strict TA who graded me unfairly) but scored above the average on all subsequent exams. I had discussed this with him and my worries about not succeeding in the class because I did so poorly on the first midterm and he offered no guidance or reassurance. He essentially told me, "I don't know if you pass. You should just study better." I found this outraging as someone who spent almost ALL OF MY TIME studying for this course singlehandedly. The class average was 60-75% on all exams with *no* curves. Also, the extra credit is worth a measly 0.3% of your grade at the most... so it's practically pointless. He once even said in his final review session "I don't know how this will help any of you at all." which goes to show how much effort he puts into preparing students for his finals. His 2-hour zoom session, indeed, did not help at all. Don't be fooled by all the good ratings. If you are not already well-rounded in physics and you are taking this class in person, it is NOT EASY.

Pros: Clear lectures, light workload, gives extra credit, decent amount of practice problems, and organized system on CCLE in general.

Cons: However, he watered down the lectures too much to the point where the quizzes were much harder. What is the point if you are not explaining the complicated things? You can earn up to 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 percent of extra credit in your total grade based on your status on Campuswire. He really thought he did something with 0.1% 🙃🙃. You have a weekly quiz starting from Week 2 to 10 during Wednesday's lecture time, which is 7 quizzes in total after dropping the lowest 2, which means you cannot slack off or you will be in trouble. Furthermore, he was extremely strict with the deadline as the submission box closed right after and you couldn't submit. He is the only professor I've had who will straight up give you a 0 for being late. Luckily, I didn't experience that problem.

To be fair, I never attended office hours and that might have slightly affected my grade. However, he sometimes posted office hour questions on CCLE.

I’ve never taken physics before, but Bauer definitely made the class as manageable as possible. He is very clear during lecture and gives many examples to solidify topics. He is also pretty active on campus wire to answer questions if you have any. We had weekly quizzes, and the difficulty varied tbh. Some were easy and some were hard, it just depends on the week, but he does give partial credit so its not all bad. He also posts practice exams that are pretty representative of the quizzes. There are no midterms, only 5 quizzes and a final exam, and he drops the lowest quiz. We had FRQs, but he removed them for 5B during session C because they took too long to grade, so I don’t think he’ll add those again. The only extra credit is through campuswire.

If you took AP physics 1 or C in high school, this class is a repeat of that except a little more in-depth with fewer topics. Dr. Bauer is a great lecturer and explains the concepts very well. Someone said he reads off the slides, but that just isn't true??? I thought there was a good balance of conceptual stuff and practice problems during lecture. He's very helpful when you ask questions after class/during office hours, and it's clear he wants people who care about the class to succeed. The HW problems aren't super reflective of the exams, but it's a good start to get familiar with the material, and the problem bank and the discussion worksheets were very helpful. The past exams were significantly easier than the ones we got, but he did tell us that he was going to make the exams significantly more difficult. He also said that just doing the homework and discussion worksheets would be enough to pass the class, so if you want a better grade you need to do the textbook practice problems. Dr. Bauer recommends the University Physics textbook by Young and Freedman for additional practice (it's free on libgen), and I second that. I'd argue it's even worth to just read the concepts from that textbook instead of the life science one because the life science one explains things in such a weird roundabout way. The only downside is that University Physics goes into a lot more detail and has some calculus, so you just need to judge what's important and what you can skip. Go to office hours, either Dr. Bauer's or your TA's or both, and set aside at least a few hours every week to actually study and do practice problems. It isn't a class like the 7 series where you can just follow the lectures, study two days before the exam, and get a decent grade.

The tests were so much harder than the past examples he gave us. Thank god for the ta Thomas Marshall for actually caring about his students and wanting us to succeed. Bauer just read off his lecture slides and didn’t give that many example problems. I had to go searching for examples online and even then couldn’t find any that matched the difficulty of the tests. I will say he did curve up after the average on the second midterm was 52 percent.

The tests are 10X harder than the practice ones that he gives out.

Take Tung or Shriver or don't wait until the next quarter.

Overall a fair and decent professor. Midterm averages were high Cs, maybe even a low B. I liked that the Mastering homework was not due until the end of the course, but pacing deadlines were still given. Working through Mastering problems prior to exams and writing them down on my formula sheet helped me study. I think with any physics course (including this one), problems covered during lecture will never be entirely comprehensive of every possible physics problem out there, so it's definitely helpful to utilize other sources (like the internet, I used an AP Physics prep book I found online) to find more practice problems. From my interactions with Bauer, he seems to be a nice guy who is always willing to help if you actively seek it. No complaints really.

I have never taken a physics class before Bauer, so that's just a preface to my review. I think Professor Bauer himself is very sweet and kind. However, his teaching feels tailored towards people with past experience. I worked super hard to try and do well in the class and it honestly didn't pay off until the final. I think his tests are pretty fair, but you need to do a lot of outside work to be prepared because any of his practice problems during lecture or even the homework is not even close to sufficient enough to be prepared.

I don't love physics, but needed it for my major. I took it in the summer which was a great choice. Bauer was more lenient on homework than previously due to the fast nature of summer quarters. A lot of old study guides were irrelevant since we didn't have time to cover as much material in class. Listening to lectures is super important, and they're available on BruinLearn, which is helpful. Homework on mastering physics was a drag (and I used homework help sites to finish it because it was mostly busy work. Switch discussions and labs as needed to find a TA you like. Some of the TAs are fantastic, others not so much. Go to a few different TA's section and labs in the first week and move around as you see fit; it will make your whole quarter easier.

Dr. Bauer was an incredibly clear and knowledgable physics professor. He did a thorough job in explaining the content during lecture, showing applications of the content through practice problems, and answering student questions when asked. I would say that I highly recommend Dr. Bauer for Physics 5A because he was methodical in his explanations which is useful to have a strong foundation in the first physics course within the Physics 5 series.
In the summer quarter, we had 2 midterms and 1 final exam. The tests were weighted such that they determined the majority of our course grade, and they primarily involved applying the physics concepts we learned in lecture to problem-solving mathematical scenarios. The tests were definitely challenging because they involved new problem types and setups that we had not explicitly seen before in lecture or homework, but they still involved the same concepts and problem-solving strategies. Therefore, the best practice for all the exams were the lecture example problems and the Mastering Physics homework problems. Having a solid conceptual understanding of why we perform each step within a problem is essential in order to apply it into an unknown context during the exam. Dr. Bauer also hosted online review sessions before each exam to work through practice problems and answer other student questions; he also posted the exams that he administered in previous quarters as practice for us to complete.
Overall, Bauer was an incredibly helpful and clear professor who taught this course well. My only grievance about his class philosophy is that he aims for the class average to be a B/B-. For our summer session class, in the first midterm, we well exceeded his expectations (we had a B+/A- average), so he made the second midterm considerably more difficult to compensate. This feels quite unfair as we should not be punished as a class for performing well by having more difficult exams in the future.
Other than that, the exams were nothing crazy. There were definitely challenging problems but all doable if you understand the content well and studied by doing the suggested practice problems. I recommend Bauer! He was a good professor for Physics 5A.