Professor
Smadar Naoz
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2016 - Despite getting an A in this class, I feel very unprepared for future classes involving this subject matter. Being an electrical engineering major, I really needed to understand the material. However, Naoz mostly did derivations of physics theory which left me, along with the majority of the class, extremely confused. They were completely unnecessary and did little to help teach us. Because of all the time spent on derivations, she fell behind the other classes in terms of material covered. We only covered SHM, electric field, electric force, electric potential, and capacitance. The other classes covered that as well as resistors and thermodynamics to name a few. These are things we need to know. The tests were pretty easy though. They were basically what the problem sets she posted were. Honestly, you could probably do well by just reading the book and doing the homework. Going to lecture will not help.
Spring 2016 - Despite getting an A in this class, I feel very unprepared for future classes involving this subject matter. Being an electrical engineering major, I really needed to understand the material. However, Naoz mostly did derivations of physics theory which left me, along with the majority of the class, extremely confused. They were completely unnecessary and did little to help teach us. Because of all the time spent on derivations, she fell behind the other classes in terms of material covered. We only covered SHM, electric field, electric force, electric potential, and capacitance. The other classes covered that as well as resistors and thermodynamics to name a few. These are things we need to know. The tests were pretty easy though. They were basically what the problem sets she posted were. Honestly, you could probably do well by just reading the book and doing the homework. Going to lecture will not help.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - Professor Naoz was a great teacher. She is sweet and emphasizes that you don't need to be a genius or have some sort of "physics intuition" to solve physics problems. There were participation quizzes, homework, two midterms, and a final. The participation quizzes were just graded for completition and to make sure you're actually showing up to class. The homework was very fair based on what was learned in lecture, and the deadlines are usually about a week. I thought that the midterms were easy, they touched on the main concepts of the homework such as the lagrangian and central potential. The final was fair, however it was very long. Just study the homework and the practice final exams and you should be fine. The exams were all take home this quarter, and you had about 4 days to complete them. If they were in person I think that they would have been a little too much work to complete in an hour, but for take home they were great. There is an optional Mathematica component to this class, which offers 15% extra credit. I would recommend anyone to take this class, as the labs were fair and didn't take up too much time. Also, I think Mathematica is a valuable skill, and Corbin was a great professor, so I think it's worth it if it fits with your schedule. The only problem that I had with Naoz was that she would walk around and ask everybody who they were working with for the in-class problems. I would have preferred if she would just let us work and we would go over it as a class at the end. This is pretty much just nitpicking though. Overall Naoz was a great professor and I'm taking her again for 105B!
Winter 2022 - Professor Naoz was a great teacher. She is sweet and emphasizes that you don't need to be a genius or have some sort of "physics intuition" to solve physics problems. There were participation quizzes, homework, two midterms, and a final. The participation quizzes were just graded for completition and to make sure you're actually showing up to class. The homework was very fair based on what was learned in lecture, and the deadlines are usually about a week. I thought that the midterms were easy, they touched on the main concepts of the homework such as the lagrangian and central potential. The final was fair, however it was very long. Just study the homework and the practice final exams and you should be fine. The exams were all take home this quarter, and you had about 4 days to complete them. If they were in person I think that they would have been a little too much work to complete in an hour, but for take home they were great. There is an optional Mathematica component to this class, which offers 15% extra credit. I would recommend anyone to take this class, as the labs were fair and didn't take up too much time. Also, I think Mathematica is a valuable skill, and Corbin was a great professor, so I think it's worth it if it fits with your schedule. The only problem that I had with Naoz was that she would walk around and ask everybody who they were working with for the in-class problems. I would have preferred if she would just let us work and we would go over it as a class at the end. This is pretty much just nitpicking though. Overall Naoz was a great professor and I'm taking her again for 105B!
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2025 - Prof. Naoz is the GOAT. I didn't know what to expect for Physics 105B judging from my humdrum 105A experience with another professor, but she completely changed my perception of an ideal physics class and actually showed what this physics is used for. Firstly, she is a very engaging lecturer who actively encourages participation, learning, work, and collaboration from us. Not in a forceful or demanding way, but actually a genuine teacher who strategically gets people involved with multitudes of extra credit opportunities, participation quizzes without punishing answers, and rewards people for paying attention and correcting her mistakes by throwing chocolates. She occasionally cracks funny jokes, lots of pop culture references (which are getting stale, much to her chagrin), most importantly, cares about her students' learning. Heck, she cites studies about the best ways of teaching students and accommodates for peoples' conflicting midterms by extending homework deadlines! Furthermore, she oozes with passion for physics, as she gives presentations showing the applications of the physic we are covering and often relates it to astrophysics, which is her main field of study (and also totally my thing). Her class is so lively with these things, it's so much more different that any other (upper) physics class I had. I imagine Naoz has spent an ungodly amount of time and effort into meticulously planning how she would teach this class. She has been teaching this class for multiple years and apparently this quarter is the last time she would do that, so god fricking damn please give her an award and let her keep teaching 105A and 105B! Naoz's homework and example problems are quite challenging and I personally had to rely on office hours to figure these out. Naoz's office hours for homework help and concept clarifications are helpful; instead of straight up giving the answer, she really makes you learn by making you do the work yourself while nudging you along the way. I do wish she offered more office hours or extended them, because I found her more helpful than the TA. All of these did help prepare me for her exams, which turn out quite straightforward compared to her homework; she has even said that herself, just to eliminate any exam stress.
Spring 2025 - Prof. Naoz is the GOAT. I didn't know what to expect for Physics 105B judging from my humdrum 105A experience with another professor, but she completely changed my perception of an ideal physics class and actually showed what this physics is used for. Firstly, she is a very engaging lecturer who actively encourages participation, learning, work, and collaboration from us. Not in a forceful or demanding way, but actually a genuine teacher who strategically gets people involved with multitudes of extra credit opportunities, participation quizzes without punishing answers, and rewards people for paying attention and correcting her mistakes by throwing chocolates. She occasionally cracks funny jokes, lots of pop culture references (which are getting stale, much to her chagrin), most importantly, cares about her students' learning. Heck, she cites studies about the best ways of teaching students and accommodates for peoples' conflicting midterms by extending homework deadlines! Furthermore, she oozes with passion for physics, as she gives presentations showing the applications of the physic we are covering and often relates it to astrophysics, which is her main field of study (and also totally my thing). Her class is so lively with these things, it's so much more different that any other (upper) physics class I had. I imagine Naoz has spent an ungodly amount of time and effort into meticulously planning how she would teach this class. She has been teaching this class for multiple years and apparently this quarter is the last time she would do that, so god fricking damn please give her an award and let her keep teaching 105A and 105B! Naoz's homework and example problems are quite challenging and I personally had to rely on office hours to figure these out. Naoz's office hours for homework help and concept clarifications are helpful; instead of straight up giving the answer, she really makes you learn by making you do the work yourself while nudging you along the way. I do wish she offered more office hours or extended them, because I found her more helpful than the TA. All of these did help prepare me for her exams, which turn out quite straightforward compared to her homework; she has even said that herself, just to eliminate any exam stress.
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