Nathan C Tung
Department of Physics
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4.5
Overall Rating
Based on 36 Users
Easiness 3.5 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 4.6 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.5 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 4.3 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
  • Engaging Lectures
  • Often Funny
  • Would Take Again
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
38.5%
32.1%
25.6%
19.2%
12.8%
6.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

77.2%
64.3%
51.4%
38.6%
25.7%
12.9%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (27)

2 of 3
2 of 3
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Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
March 18, 2021

Highly recommend Master Tung. Great lectures, fair exams. We had 4 shorter midterms instead of 2 midterms and a final, which I liked since we finished the last midterm done before finals week. His demos were definitely the highlight of this class though!

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Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 15, 2021

Dr Tung is a very clear lecturer, prerecorded so many cool demos for us to watch in class, and gave us extra credit for completing >65% of the homework. No surprises on the midterms, although the free response parts are slightly harder than lecture examples, it's still very reasonable. Definitely recommend his class!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 13, 2021

Professor was fantastic. Really thorough with his lectures and even provides a large list of notes that can help you study. You are given mastering physics to do throughout the quarter, with one due date at the end of the quarter. Midterms were very fair. There was no final (only 4 midterms). I would highly recommend Tung for any physics class you may take in the future!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
March 12, 2021

Professor Tung is wonderful! As someone who had zero physics experience prior to this course, Professor Tung did a great job of easing into the material and making concepts feel as intuitive as possible. This quarter he offered up to 5% extra credit on our final grade (!!) which could be earned by completing extra homework problems and in class participation. The amount of effort he puts into making class engaging shows how much he really cares about his students-- even though he has no idea what any of us look like, as he likes to joke. 10/10 recommend!!!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: N/A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 12, 2021

Professor Tung is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA so far. This is my 3rd time taking a mechanics class, and I wish Professor Tung had been the first person to teach me physics. He makes the subject material intuitive, he really cares about how his class impacts his students, and his enthusiasm makes a typically tough subject totally bearable. If UCLA doesn't hold onto this guy for as long as possible they're out of their minds. In conclusion, if you have the chance to take Professor Tung's class, there is basically no reason why you shouldn't go with him.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 12, 2021

I love Professor Tung! Take his class if you have the chance; he's a really great person and super passionate about physics.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
March 24, 2021

Professor Tung is definitely beyond my expectations. The 4 midterms each make up 22.5% of the grade, while the homework is 25% and the discussion worksheet is 5%. For the homework, you only need to complete 65% to receive full credits. Anything beyond that is extra credit. You can also receive extra credit points by answering tophat questions during live lectures for both completion and correctness, and you can receive up to 5% of extra credit in total. That is a huge amount especially given that the exams are neither cumulative nor hard (though very conceptual).
Tung's lectures are clear and well-paced. They are on youtube, and he responds to the chats quickly. There are more than enough extra credit points in homework to get the 5%, so it's perfectly fine if you do not want to pay for Tophat. The slides on Tophat are not important for the class, as you can find the summary of basic concepts in Tung's notes. The notes are really nicely written and compiled.
Homework does not penalize you at all for giving wrong answers, so it's a good way to practice without any pressure. Just make sure you practice the conceptual questions without numbers, because there won't be any numbers on the midterms.
Tung's class definitely made my winter quarter more enjoyable. I cannot expect anything more from this class. 11/10

Helpful?

2 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: C+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 8, 2025

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.

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: B+
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 2, 2025

You can tell that professor Tung cares about his students and cares about teaching. I feel like everything was covered well and the class felt fair. Demos were fun too. Only think I had an issue with is our final class grade was not transparent at all. Extra credit was determined by some weird formula, but we never did actually find out what we got on the final exam or from extra credit. Due to this, I did worse in the class than I anticipated. Overall would highly recommend though!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: A
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
April 1, 2025

I had such high hopes coming into this class, but my expectations were certainly not met. If you are looking to actually learn physics, you may want to consider a different professor, but if an A is all your searching for; this class is for you. It is clear to me that Tung is passionate about teaching, but not so much about physics (or at least 1A). Tung tried his best to make his lectures engaging and fun, but he often went on tangents about completely irrelevant topics (like atomic bombs, "artificial gravity," and neutron stars) for a large portion of lecture and then proceeded to rush through the derivations and lessons that we actually needed to know. The slides - which he is essentially reading off of - also sometimes had mistakes.

The discussion section and assigned homework were also extremely unhelpful. My TA was amazing, and obviously very knowledgable in 1A, but she had no guidance from the professor and the example problems she gave us looked nothing like the exam problems. KUDU is also terrible, so many mistakes in the questions and textbook and also nothing like the exams, I wasted so much time trying to understand the problems, just for them to not be relevant whatsoever. I even tried to ask for help on some of the KUDU problems and neither Tung or my TA were able to explain the answer, just because the KUDU problems were blatantly wrong.

One good thing about this class is that the exams are pretty fair. There was never a time crunch and Tung even added some repeated MCQ from previous midterms onto the final. I took AP Physics C in high school and I would say this course was certainly not as in-depth or involved as the AP version, but the tradeoff is that if you don't have AP Physics C experience, you may not be learning everything you need to know for future classes with Tung.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 18, 2021

Highly recommend Master Tung. Great lectures, fair exams. We had 4 shorter midterms instead of 2 midterms and a final, which I liked since we finished the last midterm done before finals week. His demos were definitely the highlight of this class though!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 15, 2021

Dr Tung is a very clear lecturer, prerecorded so many cool demos for us to watch in class, and gave us extra credit for completing >65% of the homework. No surprises on the midterms, although the free response parts are slightly harder than lecture examples, it's still very reasonable. Definitely recommend his class!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 13, 2021

Professor was fantastic. Really thorough with his lectures and even provides a large list of notes that can help you study. You are given mastering physics to do throughout the quarter, with one due date at the end of the quarter. Midterms were very fair. There was no final (only 4 midterms). I would highly recommend Tung for any physics class you may take in the future!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 12, 2021

Professor Tung is wonderful! As someone who had zero physics experience prior to this course, Professor Tung did a great job of easing into the material and making concepts feel as intuitive as possible. This quarter he offered up to 5% extra credit on our final grade (!!) which could be earned by completing extra homework problems and in class participation. The amount of effort he puts into making class engaging shows how much he really cares about his students-- even though he has no idea what any of us look like, as he likes to joke. 10/10 recommend!!!

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: N/A
March 12, 2021

Professor Tung is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA so far. This is my 3rd time taking a mechanics class, and I wish Professor Tung had been the first person to teach me physics. He makes the subject material intuitive, he really cares about how his class impacts his students, and his enthusiasm makes a typically tough subject totally bearable. If UCLA doesn't hold onto this guy for as long as possible they're out of their minds. In conclusion, if you have the chance to take Professor Tung's class, there is basically no reason why you shouldn't go with him.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A+
March 12, 2021

I love Professor Tung! Take his class if you have the chance; he's a really great person and super passionate about physics.

Helpful?

1 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Winter 2021
Grade: A
March 24, 2021

Professor Tung is definitely beyond my expectations. The 4 midterms each make up 22.5% of the grade, while the homework is 25% and the discussion worksheet is 5%. For the homework, you only need to complete 65% to receive full credits. Anything beyond that is extra credit. You can also receive extra credit points by answering tophat questions during live lectures for both completion and correctness, and you can receive up to 5% of extra credit in total. That is a huge amount especially given that the exams are neither cumulative nor hard (though very conceptual).
Tung's lectures are clear and well-paced. They are on youtube, and he responds to the chats quickly. There are more than enough extra credit points in homework to get the 5%, so it's perfectly fine if you do not want to pay for Tophat. The slides on Tophat are not important for the class, as you can find the summary of basic concepts in Tung's notes. The notes are really nicely written and compiled.
Homework does not penalize you at all for giving wrong answers, so it's a good way to practice without any pressure. Just make sure you practice the conceptual questions without numbers, because there won't be any numbers on the midterms.
Tung's class definitely made my winter quarter more enjoyable. I cannot expect anything more from this class. 11/10

Helpful?

2 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: C+
April 8, 2025

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.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: B+
April 2, 2025

You can tell that professor Tung cares about his students and cares about teaching. I feel like everything was covered well and the class felt fair. Demos were fun too. Only think I had an issue with is our final class grade was not transparent at all. Extra credit was determined by some weird formula, but we never did actually find out what we got on the final exam or from extra credit. Due to this, I did worse in the class than I anticipated. Overall would highly recommend though!

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Winter 2025
Grade: A
April 1, 2025

I had such high hopes coming into this class, but my expectations were certainly not met. If you are looking to actually learn physics, you may want to consider a different professor, but if an A is all your searching for; this class is for you. It is clear to me that Tung is passionate about teaching, but not so much about physics (or at least 1A). Tung tried his best to make his lectures engaging and fun, but he often went on tangents about completely irrelevant topics (like atomic bombs, "artificial gravity," and neutron stars) for a large portion of lecture and then proceeded to rush through the derivations and lessons that we actually needed to know. The slides - which he is essentially reading off of - also sometimes had mistakes.

The discussion section and assigned homework were also extremely unhelpful. My TA was amazing, and obviously very knowledgable in 1A, but she had no guidance from the professor and the example problems she gave us looked nothing like the exam problems. KUDU is also terrible, so many mistakes in the questions and textbook and also nothing like the exams, I wasted so much time trying to understand the problems, just for them to not be relevant whatsoever. I even tried to ask for help on some of the KUDU problems and neither Tung or my TA were able to explain the answer, just because the KUDU problems were blatantly wrong.

One good thing about this class is that the exams are pretty fair. There was never a time crunch and Tung even added some repeated MCQ from previous midterms onto the final. I took AP Physics C in high school and I would say this course was certainly not as in-depth or involved as the AP version, but the tradeoff is that if you don't have AP Physics C experience, you may not be learning everything you need to know for future classes with Tung.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
2 of 3
4.5
Overall Rating
Based on 36 Users
Easiness 3.5 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 4.6 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 3.5 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 4.3 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Gives Extra Credit
    (27)
  • Engaging Lectures
    (24)
  • Often Funny
    (24)
  • Would Take Again
    (24)
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