PHYSICS 5A
Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Mechanics and Energy
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour; laboratory, two hours. Requisites: Life Sciences 30A, 30B, or Mathematics 3A, 3B, 3C (3C may be taken concurrently). Statics and dynamics of forces, motion, energy, including thermal energy, with applications to biological and biochemical systems. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - Rombes is okay. He's an okay lecturer but I found myself fighting for my life to stay awake in lecture. Professor usually just reads off his slides but I learn better in person so I made sure to go. 5A content was so uninteresting to me so I found it hard to study/pay attention in this class. Exams were fair but I found the final to be harder. One thing I will say is that he is really responsive to his students. He had a really hard problem on our first midterm and after everyone told him how difficult it was he made the TAs grade it really fairly. Since I didn't find the first midterm too difficult I didn't study as hard as for the second one and my grade reflected it. It does suck that even missing partial points on problems can significantly drop your grade. He also doesn't round so if you're at a 89.9 you're fucked.
Winter 2022 - Rombes is okay. He's an okay lecturer but I found myself fighting for my life to stay awake in lecture. Professor usually just reads off his slides but I learn better in person so I made sure to go. 5A content was so uninteresting to me so I found it hard to study/pay attention in this class. Exams were fair but I found the final to be harder. One thing I will say is that he is really responsive to his students. He had a really hard problem on our first midterm and after everyone told him how difficult it was he made the TAs grade it really fairly. Since I didn't find the first midterm too difficult I didn't study as hard as for the second one and my grade reflected it. It does suck that even missing partial points on problems can significantly drop your grade. He also doesn't round so if you're at a 89.9 you're fucked.
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Professor Sakai graded our class on a straight scale, where an 85% is an A-, 80% is B+, and so on. Grades were made up of labs (15%), midterm 1/participation grade (25%), midterm 2/participation grade (25%), final exam (50%). One midterm grade can be replaced with your participation grade which is made up of pre-lecture assignments, homework, clickers, and discussion sections. It's not too hard to get full points on the participation grade, but if you are confident in physics you could just gamble on doing well on the midterms and avoid doing a lot of busy work. The two midterms are free response, 50 mins long, and in class. I found them to be very straight forward, and Prof Sakai's practice problems and the LA's review worksheets were helpful for the exams. The final was harder in my opinion. It was about twice as long as the midterms, with a multiple choice section and free response questions. The multiple choice questions wasn't too bad, but I found the free response to be a lot more challenging and had questions I had no idea how to solve. Prof Sakai is a pretty bad lecturer since she gets confused in class and would often ask the students if she was doing a problem correctly. She's a nice person and easygoing, but sooo disorganized. I didn't take physics in high school and I got really frustrated bc of how confusing she is. However, I did well in the class by doing a lot of practice problems and going over lecture slides. If you are confident in your ability to learn material without much guidance from a professor, I would recommend taking Sakai since her tests and grading scheme are reasonable.
Fall 2019 - Professor Sakai graded our class on a straight scale, where an 85% is an A-, 80% is B+, and so on. Grades were made up of labs (15%), midterm 1/participation grade (25%), midterm 2/participation grade (25%), final exam (50%). One midterm grade can be replaced with your participation grade which is made up of pre-lecture assignments, homework, clickers, and discussion sections. It's not too hard to get full points on the participation grade, but if you are confident in physics you could just gamble on doing well on the midterms and avoid doing a lot of busy work. The two midterms are free response, 50 mins long, and in class. I found them to be very straight forward, and Prof Sakai's practice problems and the LA's review worksheets were helpful for the exams. The final was harder in my opinion. It was about twice as long as the midterms, with a multiple choice section and free response questions. The multiple choice questions wasn't too bad, but I found the free response to be a lot more challenging and had questions I had no idea how to solve. Prof Sakai is a pretty bad lecturer since she gets confused in class and would often ask the students if she was doing a problem correctly. She's a nice person and easygoing, but sooo disorganized. I didn't take physics in high school and I got really frustrated bc of how confusing she is. However, I did well in the class by doing a lot of practice problems and going over lecture slides. If you are confident in your ability to learn material without much guidance from a professor, I would recommend taking Sakai since her tests and grading scheme are reasonable.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2019 - Everyone will tell you that Samani is a great professor, and this is true. He is an enthusiastic and engaging lecturer, but his exams are SO difficult. They are not straightforward at all, very conceptual based (kind of reminds me of AP exams). If you're looking for an easy time and simple exams where you can plug in numbers into formulas -- this is not it. Also, he requires you to use a lot of "common sense" during exams and estimate values such as mass, height, velocity etc. of objects. As someone who had never taken physics before, this was a challenging class. Unless you are very confident about your physics understanding, this class will be tough.
Fall 2019 - Everyone will tell you that Samani is a great professor, and this is true. He is an enthusiastic and engaging lecturer, but his exams are SO difficult. They are not straightforward at all, very conceptual based (kind of reminds me of AP exams). If you're looking for an easy time and simple exams where you can plug in numbers into formulas -- this is not it. Also, he requires you to use a lot of "common sense" during exams and estimate values such as mass, height, velocity etc. of objects. As someone who had never taken physics before, this was a challenging class. Unless you are very confident about your physics understanding, this class will be tough.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - SCHRIVER IS A UCLA TREASURE. this quarter, he started teaching us during week 4 due to professor changes but he was extremely understanding and attentive to all of his students. you can genuinely tell how much he cares about his students. each friday he'd dedicate 2 hours for office hours and was always willing to answer questions after lecture, and his midterms and final reflected that. there was no overcomplicated conceptual question or very tedious conversions. he is very straightforward and to the point, which i absolutely loved. i hated physics in high school but this course was really fun for me and i recommend 5a with him!! do not be afraid of this class!
Fall 2024 - SCHRIVER IS A UCLA TREASURE. this quarter, he started teaching us during week 4 due to professor changes but he was extremely understanding and attentive to all of his students. you can genuinely tell how much he cares about his students. each friday he'd dedicate 2 hours for office hours and was always willing to answer questions after lecture, and his midterms and final reflected that. there was no overcomplicated conceptual question or very tedious conversions. he is very straightforward and to the point, which i absolutely loved. i hated physics in high school but this course was really fun for me and i recommend 5a with him!! do not be afraid of this class!
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2020 - Dr. Tung was one of the best professors I've had at UCLA! I had a very poor experience with physics in high school and was very nervous coming into 5A, but Tung broke down the material in a way that was really easy to understand. He mostly goes over concepts in lecture with little emphasis on "plugging and chugging." He really cares about his students and was very accommodating for the current situation. He did his lectures via YouTube for spring quarter (COVID). You need to be able to solve problems on exams without numbers, which can be slightly confusing, but after the first midterm it becomes a little easier. The best advice I can give you is to GO TO HIS REVIEW SESSIONS! They really make the exams a lot easier and help you with the reasoning behind a lot of the questions. Make sure you understand how things are derived instead of just memorizing them. I'd say the biggest pain in this class was Mastering Physics, but he only required us to do 65% of the problems and the rest was extra credit. Extra credit was also provided through TopHat, typically with 1 point for attempting the question and 1 point for getting it right. Don't be worried by reviews from his other classes, overall I'd say this was a great class and Tung is a very clear instructor.
Spring 2020 - Dr. Tung was one of the best professors I've had at UCLA! I had a very poor experience with physics in high school and was very nervous coming into 5A, but Tung broke down the material in a way that was really easy to understand. He mostly goes over concepts in lecture with little emphasis on "plugging and chugging." He really cares about his students and was very accommodating for the current situation. He did his lectures via YouTube for spring quarter (COVID). You need to be able to solve problems on exams without numbers, which can be slightly confusing, but after the first midterm it becomes a little easier. The best advice I can give you is to GO TO HIS REVIEW SESSIONS! They really make the exams a lot easier and help you with the reasoning behind a lot of the questions. Make sure you understand how things are derived instead of just memorizing them. I'd say the biggest pain in this class was Mastering Physics, but he only required us to do 65% of the problems and the rest was extra credit. Extra credit was also provided through TopHat, typically with 1 point for attempting the question and 1 point for getting it right. Don't be worried by reviews from his other classes, overall I'd say this was a great class and Tung is a very clear instructor.
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