This course was a 100% meh course. It wasn't a horrible experience, but this class was definitely one to just get done and over with. I'm not sure if this was due to the class being 100% online due to COVID, the fact that this was summer with a 10 week course crammed into 6, or if this is how the course is normally, but this course felt very rushed and not very useful.

I technically took the course under Ni Ni, but I believe that both Ni and Arisaka design this course. Never saw or heard from either of the two, except through emails and possibly one video that Ni might have made of herself. In other words, your experience will be based on your TA and your groupmates, which depending on your TA, you might or might not be able to choose.

Since this was summer, the TA didn't really care about this class (I don't blame him, it would suck to teach this class during the summer). That meant we were given plenty of wiggle room when we did stuff wrong in lab, and that he graded leniently, but that also meant that he wasn't very helpful.

The grade was calculated as follows:

25% for assignments: 10% (pre-lab) + 15% (post-lab). Basically free points
10% attendance (-2% for first absence and -4% for the next 2). Also free points
5% survey: 2.5% each for pre-class and post-class. More free points
30% Unit reports (10% for each report). Somewhat difficult and VERY TIME CONSUMING
30% project (split as 15% presentation and 15% report). Somewhat difficult and VERY time consuming

​The grade ranges are:
A+ 95-100.0% A 90-94.99% A- 85-89.99%
B+ 80-84.99% B 75-79.99% B- 70-74.99%
C+ 65-69.99% C 60-64.99% C- 55-59.99%
D+ 50-54.99% D 45-49.99% F 0-44.99%

The labs themselves weren't very good, since they were ONLINE. The TA couldn't help us very much in the experimental setups, and it was hard to collect data since there were no labmates to help you set stuff up. The data analysis was through Python. I had no clue how the data analysis worked; the first three weeks were literally just copy and paste the code the instructors wrote for you, while the last three weeks were more or less copy and paste the code from the first three weeks, but tweak the code slightly. No previous knowledge of physics was really needed until the last project, since they told you what to do, down to the actual code.

Lab reports took a while to write, despite the fact I had 3 really good groupmates. They also came one after the other; I was constantly writing. It appears that the 4AL/4BL series was designed for the semester system. In other words, these people took a 16 week course, squashed it to 10 weeks for the quarter system, and further squashed it into a 6 week course for summer session. Also, instructions were super unclear for the lab reports. I had no clue how we were supposed to format, and in some cases, I HAD NO IDEA WHICH EXPERIMENTS I WAS SUPPOSED TO ANALYZE FOR THE REPORTS!!! Grading also felt arbitrary at times for the lab, despite the use of Gradescope.

The project was time consuming. Basically only one person was able to do the experiment, and we had to cross our fingers that the person did the experiment correctly. It came with a report and a presentation, and we had to video ourselves presenting the slides.

Tl;dr: This class should be an easy A, but you'll still have to work for it. There are lots of free points, but these points take time to obtain. You'll sort-of learn Python and learn how to use this software called Tracker, but that's really it.

The class ended up not being too tough, but it did feel like a lot of work for not too impressive of a result. The pre-labs and post-lab analysis are mostly just about following directions, you barely even need to know any of the physics that are being discussed since they basically hold your hand through everything, including giving you all the Arduino code that you need to work with.

The lab reports are, as advertised, a pain in the butt. They take a good amount of time if you want a good grade, and everything feels really vague in terms of requirements, since there's no clear rubric – you're kind of stuck guessing in the dark for what kind of analysis they want you to make. They do make up a substantial portion of your grade, so make sure that you get a good group, since those reports are enough of a pain with a group working on it, let alone doing it on your own.

Not a big fan of the class, but it's also not exactly Professor Arisaka's fault. It's a good introduction to how to write lab reports, but unfortunately, that's all I really got out of it.

This course was so free, but your experience in this class is entirely dependent on how strict your TA's grading is and how much your lab mates are willing to do work. You don't interact with the professor at all and the lab content is entirely laid out on these 10+ year old slides. Workload-wise, I spent at most an hour every week working on pre-lab/lab reports outside of labs. Also, your group only needs 2 Arduino's (in fact a majority of the labs only required one Arduino). So if your lab group already has two save your money!

This class is a total waste of time. The fact that so many people have to take this useless course is ridiculous. It is just a glorified Python class without actually teaching Python. The primary instructor has essentially put everything into a step by step formula without doing any teaching. I do feel for the TAs as they are given very little information outside of the slideshows, but Tina really didn't know what she was talking about. We would ask her questions and it was rare that we got a helpful answer outside of "ask ChatGPT". My group and I just came into lab twice a week and stumbled through the labs while having the search up most of the answers. The assignments aren't necessarily hard, just a waste of time.

Genuinely every lab didn't make sense to me, the bluetooth connections don't work well with MacBooks, so much busy work with data analysis and project reports. There's also very minimal instruction, you kind of just have to figure it out. That said grading is very lenient, on one report my group got a 97 when I was expecting around an 80 based on the rubric. You could probably do every lab wrong and get a B or so.

Also choose your lab mates wisely or else you will end up doing everything!!!!!!!!

I have never been more miserable to go to a lab before. Also, Noah Moran is the goat.

absolutely useless class, they have esp32 to use so don't buy, esp32 is annoying to work with, hope for a good ta and a good group

I cannot understand how this class can be so disorganized despite being offered for years. Lab instructions are consistently spread out across multiple formats from PDFs on Gradescope or Google Slides to Jupyter notebooks. It is time-consuming to deduce which instructions to follow, especially when they conflict with each other. The due dates on the instructions are outdated, so it's sometimes hard to guess when your reports and labs are due until the assignments are posted on Gradescope. The TAs try their best though, but from my impression, you are discouraged from contacting the professor directly.

Honestly a pretty fun class in my opinion.

This is more a review of my TA than the professor who I never interacted with (except one short email at the beginning of the quarter).

This is a TA-dependent course. The TA grades everything, and since the material for the course (slides and instructions) are super outdated (the slides still say Arduino even though we're using ESP 32), if you have any questions, you better hope your TA can answer it properly. Personally, I had an amazing TA. He was super helpful and kind, and he actually cared about the students. I also had a really great group and we worked really well together.

Generally, I would say this course is pretty easy. They give you step-by-step instructions for almost everything. It just takes a lot of time for a 2-unit course, so definitely start early on assignments in you can.