Professor Samani is one of the coolest professors I've ever had, in terms of his humor/relatability as well as his ability to teach physics in such an understandable and structured way. He introduces each of his lectures with goals and builds up to the big concepts, allowing for a much better holistic understanding. In terms of class structure, there are PSets due almost every week, which take a lot of time, but I enjoyed some parts of them to be honest. The midterms were 24 hrs for us in Spring 2020, and were very doable! I highly recommend taking this class – it was not only great for my GPA lol but also in terms of my understanding towards 1B material/physics intuition in general!

Really nice guy, really engaging. Really hard work (in a fun way, like solving a puzzle). Forgot about tests, but it seems like everyone did pretty good. Also has some good elevator music intro / breaks.

Professor Samani is probably one of the best professors at UCLA. I took 1B with him during Spring Quarter, the first quarter to start online, and it didn't feel like I missed a lot by not being in a classroom. He made sure to go over every topic thoroughly and used a blackboard to draw/write everything during the lectures. He made sure to allocate time for questions multiple times during the lecture, made the class engaging and explained things extremely well. At least for me, the material of 1B was not the easiest to understand and grasp completely, but Professor Samani really helped in making sure we understood what was going on. The homework problemsets were difficult, and if you can form study groups I highly recommend doing so. They take a while to figure out (I'd recommend doing them in the span of 2-3 days if you have the time since they take a few hours at least) but give you more insight on the topic that is covered during lecture that week, and helped prepare for the midterms and the final. The midterms were very difficult: They took hours ranging into the double digits and very heavily relied on how well you understood each and every aspect of the topics covered. Even then, the answers posted afterwards were very thorough and left almost no room for doubts and extra questions. The final ended up being optional for us, and was much more manageable since we were given a 3 hour time frame. He is very passionate about Physics and very understanding of his students, and if you can take him for 1B I highly recommend you do so. He's one of those professors that really wants you to succeed and makes it worth the difficulty of the material.

Samani was very engaging in lectures, but what he taught was at a much simpler level than what his exams asked of us. That being said, both midterms were very difficult, and I did not even finish the final during the three hour time period. I don't feel like his slides or homework accurately prepared us for the storms that were his exams.

I took this class when it was online so it may have been different, but here is the outline for how Professor Samani ran Physics 5B.

No midterms or finals- HOWEVER, there were weekly quizzes (noncumulative, but is helpful to know previous stuff) that he gave us 1.5 hours for.
They were honestly a bit difficult, but as long as you attend his lectures and do the worksheet, it should be fine. He said himself that he wanted students to feel challenged, but was still able to get it in the end, which he succeeded since that was exactly how I felt. There is also partial credit. I honestly loved this system of constant review, and it was less stressful during midterms and final seasons

no lectures-HOWEVER, he would post a recorded lecture that covers the whole week's material at the beginning of the week. They are on average 2 hours long, but is actually shorter if you speed up the parts where he writes. Instead of lecture, he would hold sessions where he showed us practice problems. These were very helpful for understanding the material and the quizzes, and THEY WERE SUPER INTERESTING.

Everything is recorded and posted so very flexible
We can start the quizzes whenever we want in a 24 hour period, but there is a 90 min time limit,

Overall, Professor Samani was amazing, he really cares about student learning, and is a wonderful lecturer. I honestly enjoyed this class quite a bit because of him, despite not liking Physics in general. Take him if you want to learn!

Samani is a great lecturer and he is clearly passionate about what he teaches. The format of the class was we had 1 long lecture video for the entire week posted on Monday, with live problem-solving sessions on Wednesday and Friday. Instead of a midterm and final, we had weekly quizzes. The quizzes were moderately difficult, and we had adequate time to complete them. I liked the quizzes overall since they were a bit lower stakes than a big exam.

My gripes with the class:
Some of the labs are not fun and very frustrating, but that's out of Samani's control. Hopefully it's only because we had to do the experiments at home.
We had a final group project that was worth 30% of our grade, but it had no clear guidelines/expectations. I thought it was gonna be pretty chill, but I felt the grading was quite harsh and there were no justifications given for why points were taken off. It dropped my grade more than 5% and almost screwed me over.

Samani is a great teacher and passionate but his quizzes/final were a lot more difficult than what he taught. I always found myself to be confident with what he lectured but the quizzes did not reflect what we were taught- they were always obscure algebraic derivations rather than physics problems. This course definitely took the majority of my time due to the weekly quizzes and don't even get me started on my STACK of flashcards of equations we had to memorize for the final. He was not accomodating at all honestly and expected life science students to make physics their whole life. If he adjusted his exams to reflect lecture material perhaps I'd be more positive but I won't lie this course was super stressful.

I was dreading this class initially, because I am not a huge fan of physics and didn't think I'd be too good at it. Dr. Samani, however, is very encouraging and a really good professor. The tests are definitely a bit weird (they are very conceptual), but make sure that you pay attention in class, understand the clicker questions, go over the discussion worksheets, and do the practice exams. I also found that working with friends helped me understand content on a more conceptual level.

He also offers a loooot of extra credit and buffer with Mastering Physics, Lab grades, and clicker questions, so you should be fine. For example, he realized that our first midterm was too long for the time we were given, so he had a corrections policy to get some points back and ended up giving us full credit on a question that many students got wrong.

As an aside, he has these "group midterm" components of your grade, in which you take the midterm twice (once individually, once in your pre-determined groups), and the individual one is 15% of your grade and the team one is 5% if the team one is higher than the individual one -- otherwise you keep the individual score as your 20%. In my opinion, I thought this was a bit of a flawed system as I did better on both of my individual components anyways and people end up discussing their answers with other groups anyways as we have a 10 minute break in the middle of the two identical tests. However, I know many friends in the class who did indeed like this "team component" aspect of the midterms.

Overall, I really liked Dr. Samani. He's a fair professor and a really cool dude. Screw the labs though -- those were a colossal waste of time in my opinion lol... this is standardized for the whole 5 series though haha.

I think (if you couldn't already tell from other reviews) that Samani is very polarizing! if he's not for you hes NOT for you and if he is for you then he REALLY is!

things that made him not for me:
1. idgaf about physics, and I'm not an MCAT warrior. This class is a requirement for my major, and that's literally it. I was hoping to thug it out and not have my GPA become abysmal (goal failed) + I hate math, always been bad at it
2. Three pages of equations and conversions (such as temperature and diopters to meters) that we were expected to have memorized for the final! sorry what!??? to be fair: he was VERY clear about this right from the get go but I had no choice but to pick him since I work 24hrs a week and was in need of a specific schedule
3. (Pretty much) Mandatory attendance, unless you want to lose 2% of your grade
4. In order to create memory reinforcement, lots of practice materials, such as his textbook with questions and all sorts of stuff, and they were worth like 2% of your grade but at times felt like weird busy work, it was not my favorite
5. final worth 35% :0 after having everything worth 15% or less, the final is so daunting

Things that make him cool:
1. really engaging lecturer! super chill personality, friendly and approachable!!
2. actually made ts applicaple, again idgaf about physics but every now and again i was like okay this is kinda cool!
3. is not as unflexible as people say he is- he gave my class some additional extra credit randomly which is apprecaited
4. 4 tests instead of midterms, they were each worth like 7% which made it less stressful to fumble a topic and you were getting more frequent feedback!
5. good music taste
6. he gave ec
7. i had a 55% quiz/midterm average pretty much and a 60 on the final and I passed so he's VERY kind

Professor Samani is by far the best professor I've ever had. The content is quite difficult, but he makes it approachable and interesting. I look forward to this class every day. The homework is tailored well to the tests, and office hours are informative and fun. He has two regular office hours weekly that are always really interesting, and one open office hour per week, which is not strictly physics-focused, but always has very thought-provoking conversations.
Overall, you should absolutely take this class with Professor Samani if you can.