This course, during the Fall of 2025, was definitely not ideal for Professor Tung, since his wife was undergoing medical care, but he left week 4 and switched us to online pre-recorded lectures and came back week 10. I kid u not, this made it so difficult for not only me, but everyone I spoke to in the class. On top of this, the online prerecorded lecture videos were NOT for physics 5A, yet they were instead for physics 1A, which is AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COURSE that is taught at a different level and different speed. This clearly displays Professor Tung's lack of preparation when teaching this course. This is a very heavy course, and when your professor disappears for more than half of the class (Both midterms came back right before the final), it feels nearly impossible to perform well in this course, let alone simply passing. I hope this is not the case for everyone who has taken this course with Professor Tung, as he is a sweet man, but he should have known better than to teach this course. He additionally sent out an email with an AI prompt in the title and then claimed it was "a personal draft" he left in the email by mistake. His lack of accountability as a professor is incredibly unprofessional, and I highly suggest you stay away from Professor Tung for the time being; that is, until he is capable of actually showing up to his job. :)

Side note: he had only ONE office hour held before midterm 1 that was on Zoom, not in person. That should not be allowed. A professor teaches this course. The TAs had to end up teaching the entire class, all while Professor Tung was ghosting them just like he was with us students. I am very fed up and angry since all of this was fully out of the student's hands. Professor Tung thinks he is being engaging by doing little stunts in class, but beware that those are fully a waste of time, and he is busy dressing up as Indiana Jones instead of explaining the never-before-seen problems he's putting on the midterms/final...

I fear I would give a -10 / 10 rating for Professor Tung. :(

Worst class I have taken at UCLA. Tung tries to be funny and sweet but his exams are hard and not the materials which he goes over. He left our class from midterm 1 to 2 and only posted recorded lectures from 2024 PHYSICS 1A. He was going through a family matter, but it was something he knew was going to happen and fail to plan ahead. I have never struggled so much in a class because we are soooo behind in lectures to the point where labs end up being on things we haven’t covered. He is a poor educator and failed his students this quarter as a professor leading to failing students.

Heading into this class, I already knew from other reviews that his exams lean on the theoretical, conceptual side over calculations/plug-chug. HIs exams did reflect that, and I would say was particularly true for the first midterm (which was not that great for many people, as it was a lot of short answer for free response). Be warned that the somewhat new test format included a good amount of multiple choice, which could make/break your total score, as each question could easily be worth 3 points. You should actually learn the concepts to do well, and above the level that the slides go into. His lectures are genuinely pretty engaging with frequent demonstrations (Tung is very knowledgeable with strong interests in the material he teaches), but I wish he provided more practice resources that's not only the kudu (long, though not as difficult). I found the second midterm easier, as it was more problem-solving and I liked some of the circuit material. The final wasn't too bad, and going to TA reviews definitely helped. The only unfair thing was that the two lectures were a few days apart taking the final, and the test ended up being incredibly similar.

His lectures were impressive,,, I felt like he truly understood the kind of "physics fantasy" many freshmen come in with. Topics like astronomy or quantum mechanics naturally fascinate students, and he leveraged that excitement to keep us engaged. He seemed genuinely kind and thoughtful.

I liked the idea of giving unlimited homework attempts to discourage reliance on AI tools.... that showed he was trying to promote real understanding. But honestly, I’m not sure how well it translated into exam preparation.

Personally, I found the homework platform’s UI/UX a bit frustrating and distracting.

I also heard that he would give extra curve or grade boosts to lower-performing students if we consistently did quizzes and homework, but I’m not sure if that applied to me in the end.

The first two midterms were totally fine, I had no issues at all with them and was on track to get an A in the course. And then the final came... I am not going to say that I was the best prepared I could have been for the final, because I was not. However, that final was horrible. While Tung did not reck my 4.0 as I did not have one before, he did wreck my chance of getting latin honors.

Like many others, I thought this class would be a free A and be pretty easy, as it was for the first 8 weeks. Professor Tung's lectures were fun and engaging, and were recorded, though he takes attendance through Kudu, but if you have a friend, someone could tell you to log on remotely. However, this class was horribly paced. Too much time was spent on simpler topics such as kinematics, projectile motion, and forces and not enough content was spent on during class as Tung rambles about some random topics. By week 9, Tung was rushing to get through all the material, such as equilibrium and torque, making it super difficult to grasp these topics in time. Even though Tung had said the final would be cumulative, it wasn't and was almost completely based on torque. While he does give extra credit, it barely matters if you do well on the midterms. I had As on both the midterms and still ended with a B in the class.

Like many others, I thought this class would be a free A and be pretty easy, as it was for the first 8 weeks. Professor Tung's lectures were fun and engaging, and were recorded, though he takes attendance through Kudu, but if you have a friend, someone could tell you to log on remotely. However, this class was horribly paced. Too much time was spent on simpler topics such as kinematics, projectile motion, and forces and not enough content was spent on during class as Tung rambles about some random topics. By week 8, Tung was rushing to get through all the material, such as equilibrium and torque, making it super difficult to grasp these topics in time. Even though Tung had said the final would be cumulative, it wasn't and was almost completely based on torque. While he does give extra credit, it barely matters if you do well on the midterms. I had As on both the midterms and still ended with a B in the class.

To preface: If you have never taken an AP Physics class, or something along the lines, be ready to put in double the work that your peers are doing. Everyone is relearning concepts from their high school classes. Physics taught at UCLA is tough with any professor.
Tung is honestly overrated. Everyone praises him for being a great professor, but in all honesty, he is just like any other Physics 1 series professor. His format is deriving equations and doing practice problems at lecture, then doing practice problems at home.

Any physics class here is heavy self-studying.

I took the course over the summer, where homework and extra credit assignments were done on Kudu. The exams, also on Kudu, consisted of multiple-choice questions with some short-answer items. There was no partial credit for multiple-choice questions, and the entire course, including exams, was online without a camera requirement. None of the exam questions were available elsewhere online—I think he wrote them all himself.

Exams were held weekly, though he canceled one in week 5 and adjusted the grading scheme accordingly. Class averages never exceeded 75%, typically staying around the mid-60s, yet he didn’t curve the grades at all. While he seemed knowledgeable and, in fairness, putting in the effort could help improve your grade, it was frustrating that, despite low averages and the potential for a curve, he ultimately chose not to adjust grades.

He spends an entire lecture on one problem showing you how to derive problems using basic algebra often with no numbers at all. His lectures were not helpful besides for the MCQ portion of the exams. The TA (josh) posts discussion notes on bruinlearn every week which were REALLLLLYYY helpful. The hw system kudu does give practice problems but they often did not help on the exams.