Professor
Alvine Kamaha
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Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Professor Kamaha is very kind and genuinely cares about her students' success. I'm sure you'll probably start reading this review thinking, "You got an A+, what do you have to talk about?" Well, the majority of the reviews under Professor Kamaha seem to be worse than she deserves, and I feel that part of it surely must be due to the nature of the content that she teaches. Physics is hard; honestly, she doesn't deserve the blatant rudeness that many of my classmates express towards her. Professor Kamaha gives you an equation sheet and calculator for her exams. Some teachers only give you one or the other, or none at all. Biggest tip for her exams: Look at the practice tests. You don't even have to solve the questions; just look at the solutions and make sure you understand how you get from the question and the answer because she very often copies her questions for her exams verbatim from the practice exams, sometimes without even changing the numbers. At the end of the day, Professor Kamaha by no means unreasonable, and she genuinely wants you to succeed. The second midterm had 2 of the 3 questions directly from the practice exams, and she also gives points when she feels that the exam average is too low. She gives some supplementary assignments that serve as extra credit if you need it, and it's actually a substantial amount for quite a few people—I encourage you to do it even if you think you don't need it! You can do well in this class if you're diligent and try your best. Mechanics is straightforward conceptually: push an object, and it moves. Just be glad it isn't Corbin... or 1B... or heaven forbid 1B AND Corbin...
Fall 2024 - Professor Kamaha is very kind and genuinely cares about her students' success. I'm sure you'll probably start reading this review thinking, "You got an A+, what do you have to talk about?" Well, the majority of the reviews under Professor Kamaha seem to be worse than she deserves, and I feel that part of it surely must be due to the nature of the content that she teaches. Physics is hard; honestly, she doesn't deserve the blatant rudeness that many of my classmates express towards her. Professor Kamaha gives you an equation sheet and calculator for her exams. Some teachers only give you one or the other, or none at all. Biggest tip for her exams: Look at the practice tests. You don't even have to solve the questions; just look at the solutions and make sure you understand how you get from the question and the answer because she very often copies her questions for her exams verbatim from the practice exams, sometimes without even changing the numbers. At the end of the day, Professor Kamaha by no means unreasonable, and she genuinely wants you to succeed. The second midterm had 2 of the 3 questions directly from the practice exams, and she also gives points when she feels that the exam average is too low. She gives some supplementary assignments that serve as extra credit if you need it, and it's actually a substantial amount for quite a few people—I encourage you to do it even if you think you don't need it! You can do well in this class if you're diligent and try your best. Mechanics is straightforward conceptually: push an object, and it moves. Just be glad it isn't Corbin... or 1B... or heaven forbid 1B AND Corbin...
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - The exams were pretty fair; the homework, not so much. There were often questions that tested knowledge or skills that weren't even mentioned in class, and that you basically wouldn't be able to do unless you went to office hours. During this quarter, the professor also introduced in-class worksheets. These were frustrating for several reasons. First, they often had questions we were not at the time equipped to answer. For example, when we just started talking about Feynman diagrams, we had a worksheet asking us to draw a bunch of them, and some could only be done with the strong force -- which isn't covered until several more weeks into the quarter. Second, a lot of class time was devoted to going over these worksheets, which is honestly more suited towards discussion section. (To be fair, ours was at 8 am so maybe nobody showed up and the professor still wanted us to get practice -- but then, the discussion section worksheets were uploaded so we still could have chosen to look at them in our own time.) Third, the professor expected us to hand the worksheets in to her by hand at the end of lecture, but almost always her lectures would go at least five minutes overtime, which was a problem for anyone with a class or other commitment immediately after the class. I emailed her with my concern, and she said she'd try to do better, but never did. So, I had a friend turn in my worksheet (which I completed myself) for me so that I could leave on time, and she emailed me accusing me of cheating (even though I've emailed her about my situation and she's the one who refuses to accommodate it). She was overall really unfriendly there, which made me hesitant to reach out to her about other class related issues. Lectures were recorded, but only the audio (which is a way to appreciate that the professor incorporated visuals a lot, wrote on the board, etc, although slides were also used and uploaded). The homework was graded pretty harshly, but that depends on the grader (I've gotten points docked for answers that were very similar to what students got full marks for in previous quarters). There is also considerable class time and homework devoted to Feynman calculus, which is considered a graduate level topic and should not appear on any exams.
Winter 2024 - The exams were pretty fair; the homework, not so much. There were often questions that tested knowledge or skills that weren't even mentioned in class, and that you basically wouldn't be able to do unless you went to office hours. During this quarter, the professor also introduced in-class worksheets. These were frustrating for several reasons. First, they often had questions we were not at the time equipped to answer. For example, when we just started talking about Feynman diagrams, we had a worksheet asking us to draw a bunch of them, and some could only be done with the strong force -- which isn't covered until several more weeks into the quarter. Second, a lot of class time was devoted to going over these worksheets, which is honestly more suited towards discussion section. (To be fair, ours was at 8 am so maybe nobody showed up and the professor still wanted us to get practice -- but then, the discussion section worksheets were uploaded so we still could have chosen to look at them in our own time.) Third, the professor expected us to hand the worksheets in to her by hand at the end of lecture, but almost always her lectures would go at least five minutes overtime, which was a problem for anyone with a class or other commitment immediately after the class. I emailed her with my concern, and she said she'd try to do better, but never did. So, I had a friend turn in my worksheet (which I completed myself) for me so that I could leave on time, and she emailed me accusing me of cheating (even though I've emailed her about my situation and she's the one who refuses to accommodate it). She was overall really unfriendly there, which made me hesitant to reach out to her about other class related issues. Lectures were recorded, but only the audio (which is a way to appreciate that the professor incorporated visuals a lot, wrote on the board, etc, although slides were also used and uploaded). The homework was graded pretty harshly, but that depends on the grader (I've gotten points docked for answers that were very similar to what students got full marks for in previous quarters). There is also considerable class time and homework devoted to Feynman calculus, which is considered a graduate level topic and should not appear on any exams.
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