Tung is an okay physics professor. His lectures are very conceptual which is helpful to learning physics for people who have never taken physics before but he doesn't focus much on advanced problem-solving review during lectures nor does he give out any practice exams. I would say that going to the lecture was kind of useless but he gave us extra credit randomly through Kudu questions (kind of like clicker questions). TBH, his Nathan's Notes was a LIFESAVER for this class. You basically do not have to go to lecture and just read his Nathan's Notes which were most of the time an exact transcript of his lectures or just abridged versions. Use the Nathan's Notes as a study guide! His exams were multiple choice and short answer. I would say his exams are pretty difficult compared to the homework and problems in lecture/notes but there are a lot of similarities so it was not entirely too bad. The only thing that was difficult was that he would oftentimes give us problems where we had to come up with a symbolic answer without numbers so it is really important to understand the concepts and algebra behind things. As a person who has never taken physics before, this class is definitely doable but you need to study, review, and make sure to stay on top of things! I would say compared to the other physics professors here Tung is not a bad choice at all!

NOTE: I took AP Physics 1 in high school, which covers the material in Physics 5A (and goes a bit beyond 5A material). Thus, your mileage may vary, especially if you've never taken a physics class harder than high school physics before.

Overall, I'd say Dr. Tung did a pretty good job at teaching 5A. The lectures in class were somewhat helpful, and the physical demonstrations played a large part in anchoring my understanding of the material. However, I'd say that the biggest source of help is going to come from your TA's- they're the ones that make the practice problems that will save you on the MT's and finals, and they're the ones you're going to be requesting help from (I'm of the opinion that Dr. Tung is generally somewhat cold when it comes to student interaction, based on my limited attempts to converse with him about course material- again, YMMV).

Oh, and the extra credit- he gives extra credit for participation in lecture via Kudu, and he gives you EC for homework if you do more than 65% of the assigned problems (according to him, the EC roughly equates to 2-3% if you max it out). It is annoying that you have to buy software to do the HW and whatnot, but at least you're getting some extra credit out of it.

I will say that the lab portion is rather... poorly organized. It really isn't the lab TA's fault-I think my lab TA (at least) did well with what he had. Rather, the main problem was that the lab was often ahead of the lecture by a lecture or two- that meant that we had to spend extra time reading in order to finish the prelabs (which could get real annoying if we had no idea what to do).

This is BY FAR the WORST class I have taken at UCLA. I took AP physics in high school and it was a breeze but Tung managed to suck all the life out of physics. He is hands down the worst professor at UCLA! His test are completely unreasonable, the lecture don’t cover ANYTHING, you literally learn NEGATIVE F-ING information by going to class.

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.

If you're looking for a professor who does his best to engage students with the material, is clear and thorough with delivering course content, provides extra credit opportunities, and is accommodating, take Tung's class. It was a great introduction to Physics (I never took it in highschool), and his quirky sense of humor doesn't hurt either. I want to clarify that his class was not "an easy A"- I had to do and redo homework, go to office hours, and really practice to have a chance at doing well. If you do the homework and don't skip lectures, you'll be fine.

idk why this man is praised as a god. if u have never taken physics before this will be an incredibly hard class good luck m8

Disclaimer: I took physics 1A before taking this class, as well as mechanics from honors physics in high school, so take my judgment on the relative easiness of the class with a grain of salt if you don't have that background.

Overall, I think Tung was a really reasonable professor, and he's really good at explaining physics in a terms that make sense to someone who hasn't studied physics in depth before -- like, he understands that it's 5A and we're all just life science majors trying to fulfill a requirement and takes that into account in his teaching. His lectures were pretty engaging too, he always added in things that weren't just him going through slides (went through equations, showed videos of experiments or sometimes did them in the classroom).

About grading: very reasonable, I think. We had readings and practice problems for each unit on Kudu (a program which I literally hate, but only because I find the user interface to be just The Worst), and we only had to do 65% of the practice problems and the rest that we completed after that were extra credit. There were worksheets in discussion but attendance wasn't taken so you could do them on your own if you wanted. Midterm and final were alright, different than the stuff in class but still applied the same concepts in the same way.

Oh where to start? I saw this professors seemingly great reviews on bruinwalk and was very excited to have him for c sesh physics… boy was I wrong. That class was such a mess! His lectures were really a waste of time, and unorganized. He taught nothing of substance and provides no resources. Let me be the first to say I’m fine with bad professors so long as they give the necessary resources to succeed. This man is neither a good professor nor does he give any extra resources to his students. And on the topic of students… this man is so narcissistic and apathetic towards his students. He repeatedly referred to us as his “audience.” I doubt he learned a single kids name. When he was approached with questions he usually was rather unhelpful and condescending.

The biggest blunder of this course, though, were his tests. You see Tung’s tests are multiple choice and he really doesn’t allow for partial credit on much, meaning a lot of your grade comes down to a few questions. They are also on this godforsaken website called kudu, which we had major tech problems with. He was absent for our midterm, ultimately messed up calculating grades, and as a result canceled midterm scores and made our 12 question final exam the only test grade of the entire class.

Above all this, he really was a bad teacher. He confused people more than he helped them the more he went on, and often approached problems in the most conceptually difficult ways to grasp. I was lucky to have had experience in physics, otherwise I feel this class would have been more of a challenge. I found myself often explaining problems to peers, as the professors explanations and instruction was too rudimentary to cover the homework/ quizzes. Just don’t bother with him - not worth it at all.

I'm retaking this class with a different professor right now because I was unable to finish the first time due to personal issues. I'm coming back to say that, after taking this class with a different prof (Rombes), I think that the way Tung teaches makes the course a lot harder than it needs to be. His lectures were engaging for the most part, and he was good at explaining things clearly, but I think he tried to teach concepts in a way that was too in-depth for an intro physics course. There are a lot of things in my old notes from this course that haven't even been mentioned in the one I'm taking now because they're not necessary to understand the curriculum.

If you like physics and want a deep, integrated understanding of the different concepts in 5A, then this might be the professor for you. Otherwise, I found that other profs like Rombes make their courses a little more beginner friendly.

Tung is a great professor! He speaks in a manner that is very straight-forward and clear. He's able to break down concepts well and gives relevant examples. He cares very much about the students, his tests are fair and similar to the homework and in-class questions. He gives us review sessions before the midterms, which are exactly like the tests. You just need to do the homework and go to his review sessions in order to do well on the class.