PHYSICS 1B
Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Oscillations, Waves, Electric and Magnetic Fields
Description: Lecture/demonstration, four hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: course 1A, Mathematics 31B, 32A. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 32B. Fluid mechanics, oscillation, mechanical waves, and sound. Electric charge, field and potential, capacitors, and dielectrics. Currents and resistance, direct-current circuits. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
5 of 6
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Most Helpful Review
I cannot say Professor Saltzberg is one of the greatest professors at Physics Department but I cannot say he is a bad professor either. I would say he is an average professor overall. I definitely can tell that he did the best he can to give an excellent education in physics from his efforts both in lectures and outside lectures. Every teacher has strengths and weaknesses. His strengths are he definitely cares about students learning especially for those who also care about learning the beauty of Physics (you know some of us only care about getting good grades without really learning the materials) Go to his office hours and ask questions if you don't understand his lectures. He would be more than willing to guide you step by step until you really understand. In terms of his tests, they are very straightforward. Just do his homeworks and you will do fine in his midterms and final. His weaknesses are lectures often are not clear and always confusing to me, but some students may think he explains well, so it really is relative. But comparing to Prof. Whitten, he is much better!! At least not boring because of his demonstrations. Those who had Prof. Whitten should know this. Overall, I would recommend him for Physics 1B. Remember, go to his office hours if you don't understand. He would explain to you much better than in lectures!
I cannot say Professor Saltzberg is one of the greatest professors at Physics Department but I cannot say he is a bad professor either. I would say he is an average professor overall. I definitely can tell that he did the best he can to give an excellent education in physics from his efforts both in lectures and outside lectures. Every teacher has strengths and weaknesses. His strengths are he definitely cares about students learning especially for those who also care about learning the beauty of Physics (you know some of us only care about getting good grades without really learning the materials) Go to his office hours and ask questions if you don't understand his lectures. He would be more than willing to guide you step by step until you really understand. In terms of his tests, they are very straightforward. Just do his homeworks and you will do fine in his midterms and final. His weaknesses are lectures often are not clear and always confusing to me, but some students may think he explains well, so it really is relative. But comparing to Prof. Whitten, he is much better!! At least not boring because of his demonstrations. Those who had Prof. Whitten should know this. Overall, I would recommend him for Physics 1B. Remember, go to his office hours if you don't understand. He would explain to you much better than in lectures!
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Picture an ideal professor. One that plays music before lectures and during breaks, one that is understanding of all current situations (especially considering this quarter occurred during a global pandemic and a massive racial movement) and one that delivers engaging lectures filled with analogies that help one grasp a conceptual understanding of the material and clearly understand theories through nicely drawn diagrams and thought experiments. This is precisely what Professor Samani is. A professor of such high caliber that he should be teaching every class at UCLA (no cap). Professor Samani is an extremely down-to-earth professor that hosts useful office hours where he would literally spend as much time as needed to address your concerns and actually try his best to answer his students' diverse set of questions. It is unfortunate he isn't teaching 1C next quarter because this man is a gem. I truly started to like even the gorey calculus bits of 1B because Samani made it fun. His grading scheme is also very reasonable. The class is not curved but rather scaled where 50% of your grade are his problem sets. These problem sets are extremely hard but collaboration is encouraged and the TAs and Professor Samani provide a lot of support via Campuswire. Also, they are graded mostly for accuracy. An A is roughly 93% but very achievable since the midterms and final exams are based off of the problem set content and thus quite doable. I only have one small critique for Professor Samani: he does not do complex enough examples in lectures sometimes (unlike Corbin) which left me lost trying to approach his difficult problem sets and made the class time consuming since I would have to read OpenStax (a free online textbook he follows). Nonetheless, this man is a godsend and I highly recommend all freshmen take him if possible for a lower div class! He really made online classes so enjoyable that I stayed up till 3 am to attend his lectures live (being located outside of the US).
Spring 2020 - Picture an ideal professor. One that plays music before lectures and during breaks, one that is understanding of all current situations (especially considering this quarter occurred during a global pandemic and a massive racial movement) and one that delivers engaging lectures filled with analogies that help one grasp a conceptual understanding of the material and clearly understand theories through nicely drawn diagrams and thought experiments. This is precisely what Professor Samani is. A professor of such high caliber that he should be teaching every class at UCLA (no cap). Professor Samani is an extremely down-to-earth professor that hosts useful office hours where he would literally spend as much time as needed to address your concerns and actually try his best to answer his students' diverse set of questions. It is unfortunate he isn't teaching 1C next quarter because this man is a gem. I truly started to like even the gorey calculus bits of 1B because Samani made it fun. His grading scheme is also very reasonable. The class is not curved but rather scaled where 50% of your grade are his problem sets. These problem sets are extremely hard but collaboration is encouraged and the TAs and Professor Samani provide a lot of support via Campuswire. Also, they are graded mostly for accuracy. An A is roughly 93% but very achievable since the midterms and final exams are based off of the problem set content and thus quite doable. I only have one small critique for Professor Samani: he does not do complex enough examples in lectures sometimes (unlike Corbin) which left me lost trying to approach his difficult problem sets and made the class time consuming since I would have to read OpenStax (a free online textbook he follows). Nonetheless, this man is a godsend and I highly recommend all freshmen take him if possible for a lower div class! He really made online classes so enjoyable that I stayed up till 3 am to attend his lectures live (being located outside of the US).
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2015 - It was probably the very first time of him giving lectures to a large class. He always writes down the outline for each class at the beginning of each lecture, then goes directly to introduce, derive, and explain various concepts and formulas. Professor Shadkhoo is not a big fan of calculation, so most of his lectures are derivation-based. He covered lots of formula and concepts in each class, which I found hard to keep up with. The pace might be common for all the Physics 1 series. The first midterm was a disaster. I believed many first year students in the first quarter suffered from the transition from computation to derivation. The raw average was less than 50%. ☹ Professor sent an email asking us the reasons for failing the exam. ☹ The second one was better. But the final again was a disaster to me. Out of the six problems I finished only 1 with confidence. The HWs from Mastering Physics is a waste of time. I spent more time in figuring out how to type in an equation and check the numbers than actually solving the problem. The problems in the textbook are more helpful for practice.
Fall 2015 - It was probably the very first time of him giving lectures to a large class. He always writes down the outline for each class at the beginning of each lecture, then goes directly to introduce, derive, and explain various concepts and formulas. Professor Shadkhoo is not a big fan of calculation, so most of his lectures are derivation-based. He covered lots of formula and concepts in each class, which I found hard to keep up with. The pace might be common for all the Physics 1 series. The first midterm was a disaster. I believed many first year students in the first quarter suffered from the transition from computation to derivation. The raw average was less than 50%. ☹ Professor sent an email asking us the reasons for failing the exam. ☹ The second one was better. But the final again was a disaster to me. Out of the six problems I finished only 1 with confidence. The HWs from Mastering Physics is a waste of time. I spent more time in figuring out how to type in an equation and check the numbers than actually solving the problem. The problems in the textbook are more helpful for practice.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Seeing her previous 5C reviews, I was nervous to take this class, but I think this professor has significantly improved since that one disastrous quarter. Take this class if you are either trying to just fulfil the physics requirement (like me), or are horrendously awful at physics (also me lol). They are definitely a professors that is on the student's side. For example, discussion worksheets were worth 10% of the class, and were graded only by completion, and although the homework were on mastering physics, if you went to their office hours they would help and tell you the answer. They also offers up to 25% of your midterm grades back if you correct your work, and again just going to their office hours would tell you how to get to the answer. All of these things helped me get an A-, which I am honestly so happy with considering that for both midterms I scored the mean score. tbh since their lectures were at 8am, I would just read the textbook and her notes to self study, although the lectures were recorded (which is great compared to corbin). The few lectures I did go to though, I did understand what was going on and I think they were explaining things fine (but I'm probably not the best to judge since I snoozed my alarm too much to make it to many classes). Their notes are a great resource, and they did not have errors as compared to her 5C class. They would also post summary sheets of useful formulas for the week's content. The midterms and the final were quite fair, as the questions were not too challenging but also not too simple - just study the material and you should perform fine. They are also super helpful and accommodating in exams: open to answering questions, and they even went out of the lecture hall to find a calculator for someone who forgot theirs for the test. Our TA told us that they was actively getting help from other professors to improve their teaching and classes, and I think it definitely showed in how they organised the class this quarter. I think if you took their class in the future, it will get better.
Spring 2024 - Seeing her previous 5C reviews, I was nervous to take this class, but I think this professor has significantly improved since that one disastrous quarter. Take this class if you are either trying to just fulfil the physics requirement (like me), or are horrendously awful at physics (also me lol). They are definitely a professors that is on the student's side. For example, discussion worksheets were worth 10% of the class, and were graded only by completion, and although the homework were on mastering physics, if you went to their office hours they would help and tell you the answer. They also offers up to 25% of your midterm grades back if you correct your work, and again just going to their office hours would tell you how to get to the answer. All of these things helped me get an A-, which I am honestly so happy with considering that for both midterms I scored the mean score. tbh since their lectures were at 8am, I would just read the textbook and her notes to self study, although the lectures were recorded (which is great compared to corbin). The few lectures I did go to though, I did understand what was going on and I think they were explaining things fine (but I'm probably not the best to judge since I snoozed my alarm too much to make it to many classes). Their notes are a great resource, and they did not have errors as compared to her 5C class. They would also post summary sheets of useful formulas for the week's content. The midterms and the final were quite fair, as the questions were not too challenging but also not too simple - just study the material and you should perform fine. They are also super helpful and accommodating in exams: open to answering questions, and they even went out of the lecture hall to find a calculator for someone who forgot theirs for the test. Our TA told us that they was actively getting help from other professors to improve their teaching and classes, and I think it definitely showed in how they organised the class this quarter. I think if you took their class in the future, it will get better.
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Most Helpful Review
I beg to differ. I was in the top 5% of the class out of 168 people, and still she refused to give me an A! After all, she said in class that she is a proponent of grade deflation in UCLA. So unless you have no intentions of getting an A or if you are sure you will get the HIGHEST score in the class, please don't take physics with her. You won't be sorry until you get your final MyUCLA score.
I beg to differ. I was in the top 5% of the class out of 168 people, and still she refused to give me an A! After all, she said in class that she is a proponent of grade deflation in UCLA. So unless you have no intentions of getting an A or if you are sure you will get the HIGHEST score in the class, please don't take physics with her. You won't be sorry until you get your final MyUCLA score.
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - I get why people who like physics are giving him good ratings because Professor Vassiliev is very nice and wants us to understand maths and much more than what is necessary for this course. And I would agree if it wasn't for what he did at the end of the quarter... Vassiliev saw that our median grade was 101.75/100 for our 3rd exam and guess what, my man decided to increase the maximum score to 145 so that our median for this exam is 70% (so that it is equal to the median of the first 2 exams) No matter how well we perform, he just has to curve us to get a grade as bad as the grade we got in the past. I don't think this is reasonable at all.
Winter 2021 - I get why people who like physics are giving him good ratings because Professor Vassiliev is very nice and wants us to understand maths and much more than what is necessary for this course. And I would agree if it wasn't for what he did at the end of the quarter... Vassiliev saw that our median grade was 101.75/100 for our 3rd exam and guess what, my man decided to increase the maximum score to 145 so that our median for this exam is 70% (so that it is equal to the median of the first 2 exams) No matter how well we perform, he just has to curve us to get a grade as bad as the grade we got in the past. I don't think this is reasonable at all.
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