As a 3rd year taking this class, I've never failed any course in my life until taking this class. To the people who said the class was easy, yes the class itself (concepts, ideas) are pretty easy, but the exams are the problem. Tung did not do a good job of emphasizing what was important takeaways for the course. The midterms and final were obviously physics related, but going to lecture, doing mastering physics, or reading the book will not help you. For Tungs exams, you either get it or you don't. I had several friends take the same course, and they all say the same thing-- they had no idea how to study for mt2 or the final because of how open ended Tungs approach to asking questions are. He stated himself multiple times that mastering physics will not help us answer his exam questions. I think as a person Tung is passionate, and wants us to learn which I appreciate, but his approach is all wrong. I originally failed this class, but he likely realized too many people failed his class and gave me a passing grade. Would not recommend taking this professor.

Professor Tung did not prepare us enough for the tests in this class and the materials covered in class were much too easy compared to the material tested. The first midterm was a complete shock to me as I had reviewed over the class material religiously and still could not do HALF of the test. The second midterm was a bit better due to the review session but it was still quite difficult to me, and a lot of the wording was just confusing for no reason. Lectures were generally not very engaging besides several experiments, and all the notes were done on the chalkboard. It was EXTREMELY difficult to see any of the notes past the fifth row from the front of the lecture hall and the material we did in class was usually pretty easy, like explanations of simple conceptual ideas or formulas. Professor Tung also did not give out any extra credit, even after the entire class was very upset over the first midterm. The only helpful thing from this class was the final exam review. I would strongly advise against taking this professor unless you already have a solid foundation in Physics knowledge.

I feel like many of the negative reviews are unwarranted. After the low scores on the first midterm, Tung did change things. Like others said, he hosted his own review sessions which were extremely helpful and told everything we needed to know for the exams.

I do agree that the Mastering Physics homework was useless. But, he provided “Nathan’s Notes” which supplemented the textbook and covered almost everything he talked about in lecture. These notes were super useful to me and prepared me well for the final.

The class is heavily concept based, so the examples provided in class weren’t exactly “examples” as we’d expected. However, he pulled most exam material directly from lecture. The second midterm and final were fair, in my opinion, given that he covered everything in class and review sessions.

This was professor Tung’s first quarter at UCLA and he was by far the worst professor I have ever had. He would spend all of lecture reviewing formulas and expect students to answer elaborate problems on exams. Not to mention, he provided no preparation for the exams and was absolutely a mess.

Honestly, dont listen to those bad reviews, those are the people that just rely on the lectures and dont take the time out of their day to commit and use other resources. While it is the professor's first quarter teaching the class, i believe he is doing well in it because i was able to score decently in both the first and second midterm. A huge part was due to his lectures and whatever i did not understand, i went home read the book, did practice problems, or i went onto khan academy. This guy teaches you on concepts, not pure numbers and formulas you have to memorize. Honestly, he is a good professor, those people complaining want everything given to them including an easy A.

Avoid Tung at all costs. He graded half of my midterms incorrectly and had to do multiple regrade requests to get back over 20 points. I loves to take random leave of absences for a week at a time and posts old recording from Covid times to make up for it. Which by the way does not align with our current lectures and is often missing a lot of information. He absolutely does not go over any calculation type questions or problems during lecture and does random demonstration like cooking a hot dog. The problems we get on kudu are so random they sometimes use formulas out of our classroom and do not even fit the scope of the lesson it’s assigned with. He does not go over any problems so essentially you’re on your own to self teach that. The only thing he does is talk about the theoretical aspect of physics for hours and hours so that’s it. Worst Professor ever not worth it

Tung definitely is an engaging professor- he does a lot of cool demos in class, which I really enjoyed. He is also helpful- he answers questions during the 5 minute break/the end of class and is more than willing to help during his virtual office hours. Overall, I liked him, but the class is VERY content dense and moves extremely fast. Knowing what to focus on when studying for tests is a challenge, so staying on top of the kudu readings is key. He also offers ~3% extra credit for answering online questions in class and for doing more than the required amount of hw.

TLDR: Don't take the class, waste of time take a class with a bad prof and teach yourself since you will have to teach yourself in this class too

just don't that's my opinion. I came from horrible physics professors ie Freiman etc and yet he managed to be worse. He thinks he is a god at lecturing and because of that he justifies giving exams which are actually hell. For example the final and second midterm weren't evenly spaced out on the material at all. Like bro? For a cumulative final I expect the content to be spread out.

He is a mid lecturer at best. He goes way too much time going into derivations of formulas and teaches us barely any skills on learning how to solve a single physics problem. Don't worry though you can derive a formula though!! His discussion worksheets were irrelevant to the course where the TA's would be like "yea idk why he gave you this"

Don't even get me started on Kudu. This man straight up goes "my lectures accompany Kudu and Kudu accompanies my lectures" so now I have to read a terrible textbook ifykyk and deal with his derivation heavy lectures. At least with bad lecturers, you can teach yourself from the book. But nope not with this class!

The practice problems from Kudu and the discussion worksheets are nothing like the exams. But don't worry he won't give you a practice test because "Kudu is practice enough"

This man is the definition of ego issues too. He should not be a prof

Dr. Tung is a passionate lecturer and cares about learning, but this is a challenging and content-heavy course. Homework is not very time-consuming, but understanding the concepts beyond that can be. Something that helped me was attending his office hours. They were hosted over Zoom at a convenient time. The few times I attended, there were little to no people in attendance. He was very attentive to my questions and provided explanations from different angles than in lecture.

He also hosted a lengthy final review stream, which was so considerate! He gave a few hints about the final material, but ultimately the final was far beyond my abilities. It almost seemed a little unfair as the last unit was not tested evenly. Nonetheless, I believe he curved the final. To succeed on the tests, really understand the discussion questions and his "Nathan's Notes" pdf, not the homework! He often glosses over problems in lecture, so discussion questions are really the only place you'll see problems that he "likes." He often writes the discussion questions and relates them to what he wants you to know.

In terms of exam difficulty, I do believe Dr. Tung was just doing his best to satisfy the physics department policy (class mean must be around B-). However, he also tried to reward proof of understanding. He would even give points if we wrote out our thoughts in English, and mostly full credit if we just erred in computation. Also, 2-3% extra credit was available (which theoretically could bring the class mean to B).

If you are someone who needs solid practice problems before taking an exam, do not take this class with Professor Tung! He throws you out to the wolves for every exam. The only thing he does during lecture is demos and equation derivation. He uses Kudu, a site where you take every exam and do every homework assignment on. The only saving grace is the extra credit, where he adds 3% of your grade at the end of the quarter. But genuinely, I wanted to die because of this class, and going into every exam I just accepted my fate because I knew that nothing he taught was going to be on it. And, I was right.