I had Corbin for Physics 1A and I have to say, Kusenko is pretty comparable to his caliber in my opinion. Corbin has tougher tests and goes into the mechanics of physics really in depth, building up foundation, while Kusenko gives more demos for us to understand the concepts better and connect to the real world. As an engineer, this does help a lot. His style of clothing is on point, and I never dread lectures despite the class being 10am which is quite early for my sleep schedule.

I actually did not expect the grade I received, looking at Kusenko's grade distribution in the past, but probably it is because of so many people doing so well that he's more generous in giving out A's. For example, midterm 1 has a 90% average and midterm 2 has 77% average, and the final is 67% average which is significantly higher than previous years. I have to say I am humbled by the presence of so many intelligent people in the class of 2020 engineers. I personally know 7 people who also got an A+ so that is definitely more than 4% of the people who received that grade, and hence proved that this year's grade distribution is much much more generous.

This time around, unlike what the upperclassmen said about reusing questions from past midterms, almost all the questions are new. But do try out the past midterm questions if you want more practice; just don't be surprised about them not being on your midterm. However, don't worry because the midterm consists of questions that he usually covers in class as well as some topics covered in the questions on the homework, so study up on those.

If you truly have time, solve textbook problems and Wolfenstein, the book he recommends and has a PDF sent to us near the beginning of the quarter. I unfortunately did not so for those with busy schedules, this might work: study the lecture notes, pay attention to demos, do the homework ahead of time, ask questions to the professor and TA, attend discussion and pay attention there, ask for any clarifications, understand the quizzes. I personally did not solve extra problems but prepared the cheat sheet really well, since how do you have free time (let alone social life) if you also have CS35L, CS33, and Physics 4AL on your plate? Haha.

Going in to the class, the tough grading distribution for Spring 2016 kind of scared me. But the ride got so much better once I got into the flow of things. Much of what I am going to say has already been said, but I think that Kudu was a really good resource to use to complement the class. Midterms aren't bad, but there are some concepts that you might want to go further into (e.g. how conductors work) since they're not really covered in depth in lectures or the book. For the final, what I said above applies even more, for you really need to know the ins and outs of things to do well. Though you are allowed a cheat sheet for the exams, I really suggest doing as many different types of problems as you can (as Kusenko himself says), because that is what will truly help. I did the problems from the textbook, and I found that pretty effective. Sometimes, Kusenko may be hard to follow when he's deriving formulas of proving relatively complicated results, but once you get on Kudu and do problems, you'll understand the material more. As a bonus, the dude's pretty funny and has cool demos.

I think a lot of people walked out with A's this time compared to last year. We did historically better compared to previous years (with the final having an average of high 60's versus an average of mid 50's in the past and midterm 1 having an average of 90), and I do believe that Kusenko is willing to reward a good class by giving out more high grades. So don't be too deterred by the rather tough distribution for Spring 2016. Kusenko's pretty good, and I would take him again.

Kusenko is one of the best professors I've had at UCLA, his lectures are engaging and his jokes are funny. If you pay attention in class and do the homework well you can get a good grade.

I skipped out 1A thinking I will not do well in 1B but in actuality I did pretty well. Professor Kusenko does an extraordinary job in teaching the material: I felt lost coming in midterm 1 and scored below the mean (82%) and did better over time as he continued to explain concepts clearly.

His demos are very engaging, so snag a front seat and if you're late, just sit at the very bottom on the floor and watch the demos!

He allows us a cheat sheet so utilize that effectively; like the previous reviews mention, it is a great way to study and could save you if you put enough example problems.

The final was super tough but I did relatively well from my peers so that may be the reason why my grade was saved.

Kudu was a super effective tool as I can read the sections while I eat at BPlate or any of the dining halls, or if I am on Uber and have down time then I will just pull up Kudu and read ahead. The homework questions are semi challenging and it does help to master those questions going into the midterms. For the final, just try and get a hold of past finals if you can and practice Wolfenstein. Honestly; I didn't use it much but as long as you understand the material well, find other sample problems online if you prefer.

In class quizzes were really awesome since it's not an actual quiz per se, in the fact that you cannot talk or share answers; for these quizzes, you get a lot of time and you get to discuss answers with your friends and peers!!! It's only participation though, so if you are borderline he will factor that and the last HW assignment into whether or not you get bumped to the next letter grade.

Kusenko is a very good professor. I really enjoyed his class, and am very glad that I took him. Kusenko decided to use Kudu, an online textbook/HW/in-class quiz system. It had a decent amount of bugs and problems, but overall it was very convenient, and I am glad that it was used. The class has 20% MT1, 20% MT 2, 20% HW/in-class quizzes, and then 40% final. Overall, it’s pretty easy to do well in advance of the final. For MT1: Median was 112/120 (93%), mean was 107.4/120 (90%), and for MT2: Median 63.5/80 (79%) and Mean was 61.7 (77%). For HW, you had to get over 50% to get 100% on the HW assignment, and the in-class quizzes were participation only, so really, up until the final everyone does really really well. Of course, this class is curved, so as long as you do pretty okay on everything else, pretty much your grade depends on the final. The final was 6 questions, pretty difficult, with the median being 123/180 (68%), and the mean being 124.7/120 (69%), which is surprisingly high because everyone walked out of the exam feeling pretty defeated by the exam.

Overall, I am very glad that I took Kusenko. His lectures are always engaging, and he has really cool demonstrations of topics. He’s pretty good at explaining the phenomena behind these experiments, and I feel like I learn a lot taking his class. The midterms were also extremely fair and pretty easy. I think that it’s really generous of Kusenko to allow us to have an entire piece of paper (front and back) for a cheat sheet on every single exam. Honestly, it’s nice to not have to worry about memorizing formulas, and you can also put example problems on the paper that can potentially save you on an exam, although the final was still hard even after putting a lot of effort into the cheat sheet. Just a note, the cheat sheet takes an unexpectedly long amount of time to make if you want to really stack it with problems, so start early! . The process of going over everything and making these sheets is what really allows us to learn the material, so I think that it’s a good way to trick us into studying. Overall, I’d rate Kusenko highly for being a snazzy dresser, for having a good sense of humor, and for having cool demos. It’s a fun class that I always enjoy going to. He also always lets us out 30 minutes early, which is very nice, and we often spent like 20 minutes or so on the quizzes. There are so many plusses to his class! Fantastic! I’m really really glad that I took this class with him. I mean sure his final was pretty tough, but just do a ton of practice problems and it should turn out alright.

Professor Kusenko's an okay professor, better than most to be honest. His demonstrations are entertaining and he's quite humorous. His lectures, however, can get quite convoluted. He enjoys doing example problems and really get into the derivations, so you'll end up just copying his math barely trying to comprehend what he's doing so I would suggest to study up on the subject beforehand. His midterms are pretty easy and are often a variation of his in-class examples so the averages are pretty high, but his final is insanely difficult. I ended up guessing on half of it. However, the questions are not impossible, just very tricky. For instance, he ask about the oscillations of pouring mercury into a V-shaped tube so that requires application of both oscillation and pressure at the same time. Another question is integrating the electric field to find the electric potential of a charged non-conducting sphere with two cavities inside. Also another is to find the reacting force of a bucket of water when water is leaking out of it. I haven't done this but if I were to retake the class I would do all of the hard problems in the textbook and try to do trickier variations of these hard problems.

Overall, he's not a bad professor, perhaps even a good one compared to most professors at UCLA.

Kusenko is a snazzy dresser, has great demos, and allows cheat sheets for his exams. He did do a variation of clickers about halfway through the quarter using some software a friend of his developed... meaning there was no need to buy a $60 clicker. Not sure if he will continue doing that, but it worked fairly well (with a few bugs as it was new software).

Grading
HW/in-class questions: 20%
Midterm 1: 20%
Midterm 2: 20%
Final: 40%
About 1/3 of the class receives As, 1/3 Bs, 1/3 Cs, etc.

Homework is with Mastering Physics, so the questions aren't really what you see on exams, but maybe they work for you. Basically, workload is pretty chill. I recommend doing practice problems in the textbook or elsewhere so you know how to apply all the numerous formulas you derive/get in this class. The cheat sheet helps, but not if you have no idea how to use them.

The midterms and final were fair in terms of the questions, nothing really tricky or devious, but they were still hard. You got marked off for conceptual errors more than algebraic errors since he wants the physics to be right, but the math is more of a meh requirement. The averages on both midterms were fairly high (80s I think?) but the final had like 50% or lower average I believe. This is because some of the questions on the midterms were very familiar, and the final just covered a lot of material and was slightly trickier. It was fair though. Just hard.

Overall, this is a good class to take, definitely easier than Corbin, not too bad of a workload. Exams are totally doable, and he ended up curving in the end.

Easy A, good lecturer, lots of demos.

Ako is a great guy overall, really liked him. Has a great sense of humor and his laugh is A+. Lectures are interesting bc he does a bunch of demos. Not a super big fan of how he often times writes the derivation of a formula on the board and it's just a lot of integrals and math that just gets overwhelming. I feel like we did not get through a lot of material just because of how many demos he does. Additionally, we would have a lot of break time (2 hr class) and he often ended class early (which was p cool). He taught 2 lectures this quarter and you could go to either one. The midterms were easy (+80% mean) because they were very similar to his previous ones, but the final was difficult (55% mean). Would recommend if you're willing to do work in your own time and want to have a fun af prof, but did not find class incredibly helpful.

Awesome professor. He makes his lectures very entertaining and informative. One of the few physics professors who actually supplements his lectures with lots of interesting experiments instead of just writing equations on the board. Also, before the midterm and final, he would review a practice test posted online.
Highly recommend this professor.