Huan Z Huang
Department of Physics
AD
2.8
Overall Rating
Based on 16 Users
Easiness 2.3 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.6 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 2.4 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.

GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
20.3%
17.0%
13.6%
10.2%
6.8%
3.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

19.8%
16.5%
13.2%
9.9%
6.6%
3.3%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

23.3%
19.4%
15.6%
11.7%
7.8%
3.9%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

AD

Reviews (12)

1 of 2
1 of 2
Add your review...
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 3, 2023

Professor Huang was honestly an extremely helpful professor. Granted, his accent made it hard to understand him sometimes, but he really did put a lot of effort into ensuring that his students had a good grasp on the class materials. He assigned weekly homeworks and quizzes online which counted for 15% of our grade. Towards the end of the class he informed us that, since he recognized how hard we were working, he would give us all 100% in all the homeworks and quizzes. He also gave everyone who got above a 90% in the final exam at least an A-, regardless of their midterm and lab grades. He is one of the few professors I have met who truly want their students to succeed. He provided us with the exact topics we would get in both midterms and told us beforehand that the final exam would consist of several repeat questions from the lecture slides and the previous midterms. As long as you went to lecture and paid attention to his hints about the exams, it's pretty easy to pass this class.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: N/A
April 24, 2023

Dude has a very harsh accent and isn't engaging at all. Nice guy but a crappy professor. Midterm averages were very low, which I believe was because he wasn't an effective communicator. Lectures had bad attendance. I wouldnt recommend this guy but wouldn't say it was insanely difficult material. I just was uninspired by the guy. Not worth the tuition dollars to hear him lecture.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A-
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 16, 2023

Absolutely not. I saw the reviews saying that it wouldn't be as bad as it seemed, but it was quite literally the trenches. When I fought tooth and nail for a 5A spot in September when seats were gone in minutes, I told myself maybe this professor wouldn't be bad. Fast forward in December, I think he was the worst professor I've ever had here actually.

Pros
- He ends up giving full credit to everyone for homework and quizzes (a combined total of 10% of your grade! everything else depends on lab and his terrible exams!)

Cons
- His lectures are unclear. Don't bother going to them (I went every time, and I still didn't retain information)
- On BOTH midterms, he messed up on one of the problems (mind you, there's literally only 4 questions worth 25 points each) and changed the instructions HALFWAY through the exam. On the first midterm, he ended up curving 2/3s of that question, but on the second midterm, he did not. Granted, averages for midterm 2 were better (82) compared to midterm 1 (around 67), but then he decided to give us that final
- I'm telling you this man is not real because he is a pathological liar. If you hear the words "river problem" or "banked curve", just be aware he will not stay true to what he says will be on the exam. - He gave diagrams on the Week 10 slides as "what we'll see on the final", but we quite literally did not see 50% of them on the final. Like yes, they had the same topic, but they were the most random problems ever that had no correlation to the examples he told us to study.
- He says his tests are easy, but they never match with the homework or the examples he shows in class or the old exams he posts from previous quarters aside from 1-2 problems
- He teaches momentum during Week 8 (when the Physics Department literally says "skip Momentum") and combines it with energy concepts, so be warned
- He basically has a bell curve distribution for the class, so you're technically competing against other people for your grade (there's cutoffs, but these are based on rank)

The only saving grace of this class was the TA and LA. Save yourself from this class and if you are forced to take him because there's no more 5A spots, I wish you the best of luck.

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: C
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Feb. 24, 2024

Oh my god I hated this class with Huang. While I found the concepts really interesting, I still barely passed the class because THIS MAN CAN NOT TEACH. He would just put equations up and say here's the equation and not walk us through what they meant. He would also have practice problems on the slides and then just click to the next slide where the answer would be LIKE HELLO can you walk us through the processes please. Also, he's so hard to understand!!!! I have an Asian mom with an accent but I still struggled to understand him which is saying something. I had to sit really close to him to be able to hear him because if the back of the lecture hall there was absolutely no chance even though he has a mic.

OH MY GOD and the test!!! He would always say that he wasn't going to throw curve balls at us but then test us on crazy variations of the concepts!! His tests were sooooooo much harder than the other professors that quarter (Tung and Bauer). If you can take the class with someone else DO IT.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+
Jan. 24, 2024

Use Professor Huang's lectures as a list of what to study that takes him 50 min to say, not as a way to learn. Because of this, I stopped showing up to lectures in Week 3 as I found they were actually WORSE for my learning because he tends to severely downplay how difficult the concepts are / their difficulty on exams. He gives out a list of exam topics a week before the midterm via email (if they haven't been sent out via email just watch the previous week's lectures on 2x speed they are NOT WORTH WATCHING). Again, DO NOT TRUST PROF HUANG because he says the exams will be easy. THEY ARE NOT EASY. However, his lists of exam topics are reliable. I recommend PhysicsNinja because a lot of the more difficult PhysicsNinja examples were what appeared on exams...like...exactly...I almost wonder if he gets his problems from PhysicsNinja. The previous midterms are 50/50 representative of exams, just take them with a grain of salt. Make sure your cheat sheet is decked out because the way to do well on exams is copy pasting from your cheat sheet.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B
Jan. 9, 2024

Huang was not a great teacher. You can read the other reviews to see the breakdown of the class, but he's not a great teacher. He doesn't teach the material, he just REVIEWS it, so if you don't have a background in physics, you're basically fucked. He will go over problems in class that are very simple and not that in depth about the topics, but his exams combine multiple different topics into one problem that is virtually impossible. Good luck if you have him.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 6, 2024

Rather than add to all the negative reviews, I will write what tactics I found most helpful to pass his class:

1) youtube practice problems based on class content for each test and the professor's practice problems (do these for hours and you will be prepared as possible for the tests, they're truly the only way I could prepare for the tests)
2) don't worry to much about homework or quizzes, he ends up giving everyone 100%. The homework is a little helpful but literally the quizzes aren't relevant
3) don't copy down practice problems on your cheat sheet, actually learn them through youtube because his problems are slightly different
4) attend lecture because he will emphasize specific concepts that will be on the test. However, don't expect to learn anything from them. THIS IS VERY MUCH A CLASS WHERE YOU WILL BE TEACHING YOURSELF

*also, the fact that his exams are all free response is actually very helpful. if you don't know how to solve it, writing down equations that you think might apply and your best guess will usually get you partial credit

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 29, 2023

I was initially afraid of this class based on previous reviews, but he is actually a professor I would gladly take again.

His exam review gave us a general idea of what sorts of topics and types of problems would be covered, and he made it very clear that we might see new types of problems and be expected to figure out how to solve those, and I never felt like these new problems were very different than what he taught. As long as you thoroughly understand the material and why each problem is solved in the way it is, you'll be fine.

As for lectures, I will admit it can get hard to understand his accent at times, and sometimes it feels like he just doesn't know the words to communicate what he wants to say. So, he does end up leaving problems half-solved or unsolved in lecture, but you can easily find similar problems on Youtube with explanations (I recommend Michel van Biezen).

He ended up giving everyone 100% on the homework and quizzes, but I would definitely do the homeworks, as they were good practice for the exams. Also, he curves the class such that at least 30% get an A-, but he never curves anyone down if more than 30% has an A-.

Overall, this class shouldn't be too difficult if you set aside the proper time and effort to understand the content and do as many practice problems as possible (he provides past exams that are pretty similar to the exams he gives). He genuinely cares about his students' success and understanding of the material and is very approachable with any questions you have.

Helpful?

0 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2023
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 10, 2023

Huang has a lot of negative reviews, just because his lectures are unclear and the grading scheme does make it such that the average is curved to a B- per departmental policy. HOWEVER, I would say that if you take 5A with him, it's not the end of the world at all. Come into the class ready to take advantage of TAs/LAs for support in clarifying content since his lectures/office hours are not the clearest due to his strong accent. His exams are honestly fair and are very similar to examples in lecture/discussions– the hard part is finishing on time since they're administered during the 50min lecture window. This was the real challenge of this class: I ran out of time on both midterms, scoring about a 70% on both. But, his final does not take the full 3 hours and I was able to double check everything-- I got a 95%. THIS is what saved me: his grading policies aim to really help students that put in the work. 1) Any student scoring above 90% on the final would get a guaranteed A- in the class. I actually was able to get an A after absolutely flopping both midterms. 2) His philosophy is that he'd rather you do the homework late than not at all. So, he grants extensions NQA for any homework assignment, so there's a decent amount of padding you can do for your grade (Labs/HW/Quizzes). Plus, at the end of the quarter, he ended up just giving everyone full credit if they completed it.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2023
Grade: A
June 25, 2023

ignore the negative reviews, this class is the equivalence of ap physics 1. Midterms are 4 questions and finals are 10. To be fair, he outlines a list of concepts/questions that will be on the midterm and finals. That means you are either not paying attention in class or not attempting to get help, so stop blaming the professor's teaching ability... Weekly homework: he ended up giving everyone full credit regardless but I honestly suggesting doing them and asking for help. For labs, as long as you show up to class, complete projects on-time and don't mess your partners up, should also be a perfect score.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: A-
April 3, 2023

Professor Huang was honestly an extremely helpful professor. Granted, his accent made it hard to understand him sometimes, but he really did put a lot of effort into ensuring that his students had a good grasp on the class materials. He assigned weekly homeworks and quizzes online which counted for 15% of our grade. Towards the end of the class he informed us that, since he recognized how hard we were working, he would give us all 100% in all the homeworks and quizzes. He also gave everyone who got above a 90% in the final exam at least an A-, regardless of their midterm and lab grades. He is one of the few professors I have met who truly want their students to succeed. He provided us with the exact topics we would get in both midterms and told us beforehand that the final exam would consist of several repeat questions from the lecture slides and the previous midterms. As long as you went to lecture and paid attention to his hints about the exams, it's pretty easy to pass this class.

Helpful?

2 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2023
Grade: N/A
April 24, 2023

Dude has a very harsh accent and isn't engaging at all. Nice guy but a crappy professor. Midterm averages were very low, which I believe was because he wasn't an effective communicator. Lectures had bad attendance. I wouldnt recommend this guy but wouldn't say it was insanely difficult material. I just was uninspired by the guy. Not worth the tuition dollars to hear him lecture.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A-
Dec. 16, 2023

Absolutely not. I saw the reviews saying that it wouldn't be as bad as it seemed, but it was quite literally the trenches. When I fought tooth and nail for a 5A spot in September when seats were gone in minutes, I told myself maybe this professor wouldn't be bad. Fast forward in December, I think he was the worst professor I've ever had here actually.

Pros
- He ends up giving full credit to everyone for homework and quizzes (a combined total of 10% of your grade! everything else depends on lab and his terrible exams!)

Cons
- His lectures are unclear. Don't bother going to them (I went every time, and I still didn't retain information)
- On BOTH midterms, he messed up on one of the problems (mind you, there's literally only 4 questions worth 25 points each) and changed the instructions HALFWAY through the exam. On the first midterm, he ended up curving 2/3s of that question, but on the second midterm, he did not. Granted, averages for midterm 2 were better (82) compared to midterm 1 (around 67), but then he decided to give us that final
- I'm telling you this man is not real because he is a pathological liar. If you hear the words "river problem" or "banked curve", just be aware he will not stay true to what he says will be on the exam. - He gave diagrams on the Week 10 slides as "what we'll see on the final", but we quite literally did not see 50% of them on the final. Like yes, they had the same topic, but they were the most random problems ever that had no correlation to the examples he told us to study.
- He says his tests are easy, but they never match with the homework or the examples he shows in class or the old exams he posts from previous quarters aside from 1-2 problems
- He teaches momentum during Week 8 (when the Physics Department literally says "skip Momentum") and combines it with energy concepts, so be warned
- He basically has a bell curve distribution for the class, so you're technically competing against other people for your grade (there's cutoffs, but these are based on rank)

The only saving grace of this class was the TA and LA. Save yourself from this class and if you are forced to take him because there's no more 5A spots, I wish you the best of luck.

Helpful?

1 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: C
Feb. 24, 2024

Oh my god I hated this class with Huang. While I found the concepts really interesting, I still barely passed the class because THIS MAN CAN NOT TEACH. He would just put equations up and say here's the equation and not walk us through what they meant. He would also have practice problems on the slides and then just click to the next slide where the answer would be LIKE HELLO can you walk us through the processes please. Also, he's so hard to understand!!!! I have an Asian mom with an accent but I still struggled to understand him which is saying something. I had to sit really close to him to be able to hear him because if the back of the lecture hall there was absolutely no chance even though he has a mic.

OH MY GOD and the test!!! He would always say that he wasn't going to throw curve balls at us but then test us on crazy variations of the concepts!! His tests were sooooooo much harder than the other professors that quarter (Tung and Bauer). If you can take the class with someone else DO IT.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+
Jan. 24, 2024

Use Professor Huang's lectures as a list of what to study that takes him 50 min to say, not as a way to learn. Because of this, I stopped showing up to lectures in Week 3 as I found they were actually WORSE for my learning because he tends to severely downplay how difficult the concepts are / their difficulty on exams. He gives out a list of exam topics a week before the midterm via email (if they haven't been sent out via email just watch the previous week's lectures on 2x speed they are NOT WORTH WATCHING). Again, DO NOT TRUST PROF HUANG because he says the exams will be easy. THEY ARE NOT EASY. However, his lists of exam topics are reliable. I recommend PhysicsNinja because a lot of the more difficult PhysicsNinja examples were what appeared on exams...like...exactly...I almost wonder if he gets his problems from PhysicsNinja. The previous midterms are 50/50 representative of exams, just take them with a grain of salt. Make sure your cheat sheet is decked out because the way to do well on exams is copy pasting from your cheat sheet.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B
Jan. 9, 2024

Huang was not a great teacher. You can read the other reviews to see the breakdown of the class, but he's not a great teacher. He doesn't teach the material, he just REVIEWS it, so if you don't have a background in physics, you're basically fucked. He will go over problems in class that are very simple and not that in depth about the topics, but his exams combine multiple different topics into one problem that is virtually impossible. Good luck if you have him.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: B+
Jan. 6, 2024

Rather than add to all the negative reviews, I will write what tactics I found most helpful to pass his class:

1) youtube practice problems based on class content for each test and the professor's practice problems (do these for hours and you will be prepared as possible for the tests, they're truly the only way I could prepare for the tests)
2) don't worry to much about homework or quizzes, he ends up giving everyone 100%. The homework is a little helpful but literally the quizzes aren't relevant
3) don't copy down practice problems on your cheat sheet, actually learn them through youtube because his problems are slightly different
4) attend lecture because he will emphasize specific concepts that will be on the test. However, don't expect to learn anything from them. THIS IS VERY MUCH A CLASS WHERE YOU WILL BE TEACHING YOURSELF

*also, the fact that his exams are all free response is actually very helpful. if you don't know how to solve it, writing down equations that you think might apply and your best guess will usually get you partial credit

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2023
Grade: A
Dec. 29, 2023

I was initially afraid of this class based on previous reviews, but he is actually a professor I would gladly take again.

His exam review gave us a general idea of what sorts of topics and types of problems would be covered, and he made it very clear that we might see new types of problems and be expected to figure out how to solve those, and I never felt like these new problems were very different than what he taught. As long as you thoroughly understand the material and why each problem is solved in the way it is, you'll be fine.

As for lectures, I will admit it can get hard to understand his accent at times, and sometimes it feels like he just doesn't know the words to communicate what he wants to say. So, he does end up leaving problems half-solved or unsolved in lecture, but you can easily find similar problems on Youtube with explanations (I recommend Michel van Biezen).

He ended up giving everyone 100% on the homework and quizzes, but I would definitely do the homeworks, as they were good practice for the exams. Also, he curves the class such that at least 30% get an A-, but he never curves anyone down if more than 30% has an A-.

Overall, this class shouldn't be too difficult if you set aside the proper time and effort to understand the content and do as many practice problems as possible (he provides past exams that are pretty similar to the exams he gives). He genuinely cares about his students' success and understanding of the material and is very approachable with any questions you have.

Helpful?

0 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Spring 2023
Grade: A
Dec. 10, 2023

Huang has a lot of negative reviews, just because his lectures are unclear and the grading scheme does make it such that the average is curved to a B- per departmental policy. HOWEVER, I would say that if you take 5A with him, it's not the end of the world at all. Come into the class ready to take advantage of TAs/LAs for support in clarifying content since his lectures/office hours are not the clearest due to his strong accent. His exams are honestly fair and are very similar to examples in lecture/discussions– the hard part is finishing on time since they're administered during the 50min lecture window. This was the real challenge of this class: I ran out of time on both midterms, scoring about a 70% on both. But, his final does not take the full 3 hours and I was able to double check everything-- I got a 95%. THIS is what saved me: his grading policies aim to really help students that put in the work. 1) Any student scoring above 90% on the final would get a guaranteed A- in the class. I actually was able to get an A after absolutely flopping both midterms. 2) His philosophy is that he'd rather you do the homework late than not at all. So, he grants extensions NQA for any homework assignment, so there's a decent amount of padding you can do for your grade (Labs/HW/Quizzes). Plus, at the end of the quarter, he ended up just giving everyone full credit if they completed it.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Spring 2023
Grade: A
June 25, 2023

ignore the negative reviews, this class is the equivalence of ap physics 1. Midterms are 4 questions and finals are 10. To be fair, he outlines a list of concepts/questions that will be on the midterm and finals. That means you are either not paying attention in class or not attempting to get help, so stop blaming the professor's teaching ability... Weekly homework: he ended up giving everyone full credit regardless but I honestly suggesting doing them and asking for help. For labs, as long as you show up to class, complete projects on-time and don't mess your partners up, should also be a perfect score.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
1 of 2
2.8
Overall Rating
Based on 16 Users
Easiness 2.3 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 2.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.6 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 2.4 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

There are no relevant tags for this professor yet.

ADS

Adblock Detected

Bruinwalk is an entirely Daily Bruin-run service brought to you for free. We hate annoying ads just as much as you do, but they help keep our lights on. We promise to keep our ads as relevant for you as possible, so please consider disabling your ad-blocking software while using this site.

Thank you for supporting us!