First major gripe: Monday's pre-recorded lectures, which are scheduled for 50 minutes on MyUCLA, would sometimes last TWO AND A HALF HOURS; the first week he put in the effort to edit it and condense it down, but then he just gave up and uploaded them at ridiculously long length.

Quizzes: instead of midterms and such, we had weekly timed quizzes on gradescope. Having one every week got overwhelming at times, and they were quite challenging themselves. Difficulty was similar to 5A tests I had with Prof Tung.

Overall not a bad class. These were my only real struggles. A is definitely doable. Samani is a good lecturer and nice person.

I thought this class was great! Prof Samani was very accomodating throughout the quarter, and he made his policies very clear from the start. Although I disagree with them (ex. no equation sheet), he was clear from the first day, so people shouldn't be upset about it on the very the last day of class. To be honest, us LS majors couldn't give a rat's ass about physics and learning these equations, but they aren't even that bad to memorize. At most, it was just a minor inconvenience for the final exam if you did not study. As a professor, Samani was great at explaining tricky concepts. He took constant feedback about what the class wanted to do for the quizzes, and he was pretty considerate about student's needs. I switched out of Lancaster's 5B into Samani's 5B and my god was it the best decision I ever made. You can't go wrong with this prof.

You definitely need to work hard in this class to understand the concepts. Instead of a Monday lecture, we have 24-hr timed weekly quizzes over the content we learned. No midterms at all! No homework! I really appreciated this approach as I thought it was way less stressful. The quizzes themselves were pretty straightforward. If you pay attention to his lectures, he pretty much goes over examples that are very similar to the ones of the quizzes. He gives an optional practice packet of questions every week, but I didn't find them helpful while studying. The best thing to do to prepare for the quizzes and finals is to look over the discussion worksheets and the examples he goes over in class.

One thing I wish Samani did differently though was the way he structured his content videos. Instead of Monday lecture, we would have the weekly quizzes. Samani would post a pretty lengthy content video that goes over all of the content for the week, and he spends class time on Wed and Fri talking about specific example questions relating to that week's content. I really liked this format because we got to see what kind of questions he would ask us. However, the content videos would often be 2hrs long, which sucked. Again, the lack of an equation sheet sucked, but it was at most just a minor inconvenience.

Most of the people complaining in these reviews either didn't show up to class, didn't watch his content videos, or just didn't know how to study for his quizzes. Newsflash: Physics is tough! A prof can only do so much for your grade, and there is a very small minority that will use the lack of an equation sheet to justify why they couldn't do well throughout the entire course. His lectuers are more than sufficient to be prepared for the quizzes, which I felt were pretty straightforward. Great class, and if I had to take it again, I would take it with Samani.

Samani overall was a great Professor, in that I learned alot from what he taught, and the way he lectured made me interested in physics. However, do not take this class if you want an essay A. He invests alot of time in this class including posting well-made demos simulations and weekly content videos. The videos were a little long but weren't horrible if you watched at double speed. The weekly quizzes were pretty manageable assuming you went to class and watched the content video. However, they were closed notes so that definitely made them more difficult. While the class isn't easy if you put in the time and work you can defiantly succeed. If you actually want to learn physics would definitely take this class.

Samani is a great professor. He is passionate about the subject and has thorough explanations. Many of the people writing poor reviews here likely never showed up to class and/or refused to study for the final.
Surprise! Physics is hard... but as somebody who has had actually bad physics professors in the past I can assure you this is the guy to take. If you show up to class and study for just 15 minutes a week outside of class, you will do great on every quiz and the final. Plus, there are no midterms, which means less stress on you when all your other professors are breathing down your neck weeks 4-7. Look at the grade distribution.

I think professor Samani is the greatest physics professor I've ever met. Other than teaching physics concepts, he really cares about students' needs. He changed the quiz duration to be much longer than usual in order to reduce students' anxiety on unsuccessful gradescope submission. The difficulty of quizzes and the final is reasonable as long as you follow the lectures carefully and do most of the practice pracket problems. Also, go to his office hour which is really useful! To be honest, as a math major, I spend 60-70% of my time on this physics course, but I think it's worth it. I really enjoy this course because I can feel Samani's passion when teaching it. I'll definitely enroll in other courses of Samani in the future if I had a chance. Take his class if you really want to learn sth!

BEST PROFESSOR EVER!!! Samani will make you LOVE physics even if you've never loved physics before. He is so engaging and funny and makes every single lecture relatable and applicable to your life. Like I would leave lecture wanting to learn more and I never really liked 5A so Samani completely turned the experience around for me. TAKE PHYSICS WITH SAMANI HE WILL MAKE YOU LOVE SCHOOL!!!

Favorite professor by far at UCLA!

Samani not only brings in real examples to help understand the applicability of the material from the very beginning, but also makes you feel like you are not even learning physics. Attendance is taken through in person reflection sheets, yet I found them so much more engaging than iClicker used for other classes, as they had us working through ideas and actually encouraged discussion with our peers around us. The homework is an automatic 90% through completion, and are the SAME level of difficulty as exam problems - which I found challenging in the very beginning, but appreciative that there were absolutely NO curveballs thrown whatsoever. No online access for a textbook is needed for the homework too (which is a plus), he just releases assignments through BruinLearn.

On the note of not having an equation sheet - it honestly is not that bad, coming from someone who took 5A with an equation sheet. Through lecture, Samani gives tips for memorizing the least information possible and use that information to create a logical system of reasoning to get to almost any equation you need. Also, using active recall by redoing the homework and the practice exams he releases without looking anything up really helped me succeed. Also, by doing so many problems over and over again, you'll find that most of the equations become muscle memory.

Lastly, one piece of advice I would give is to go to office hours! I found that my discussion section wasn't particularly helpful in my understanding of the material. However, once I started going consistently to office hours, I saw how my conceptual understanding of the material improved drastically - which just made it easier when studying and doing homework. (one tip though, try to show up as close to the beginning as possible - his office is super small and fills up quite fast).

I could not recommend him enough, and I honestly really wish he taught other classes just so I can have him as a professor again!

Bro take 5B with Samani and you will actually feel like you got your money's worth coming to UCLA. This guy is the best Professor I've ever had, he might just be one of the best teachers you've come across in your life. Insanely good at teaching really hard concepts and actually finding practical ways to use them in our daily lives, everything made sense, everything was interesting. I also found that because lecture attendance was forced through the reflection sheets, I learned so much more and barely had to study for the final. Also the fact that he makes you discuss questions within lecture with your peers and the mandatory discussion sections makes for a really social experience in an otherwise really STEMmy class, always a bonus to make new friends.

Bottom line: Take Samani
5B and the physics series in general is difficult but Samani makes learning the material very easy to do. His exams are fair. His homework is graded on 90% completion and 10% correction so essentially the lowest you can achieve on a homework assignment is a 90%. He does take attendance for class but the attendance serves as extra credit and you can miss up to three lectures without giving an excuse.

I loved how Dr. Samani taught each lecture and how it was structured. He was always very receptive and wanted to help students. He was a great teacher and was always looking for ways to improve based on student needs. He was a great professor!