Professor Regan is a great lecturer and makes his passion for physics (as well as his hatred for arbitrary constants and units) very evident. He'll clarify a lot of the language and fluff that cloud the overarching concepts behind basic stat + quantum mech. Things may feel a bit confusing in the beginning but once you reach the end of the quarter it should click.

The problem sets are generally doable with what you learn in lecture and he's pretty generous with extensions if you guys ask. Make sure you really understand the homework well because he can (will) use similar (identical) problems in the midterms/final. Pay especially close attention to the problems your TAs emphasize in discussion or office hours and you'll do well on the exams.

TLDR: Lectures > textbook. Put effort in problem sets. c = 1. The Planck and Boltzmann constants, among others, are sacrilegious.

I feel that Regan has a lower rating than he deserves because his exams are difficult. He really does care about students doing well in the class, which is why he curves so much.

HOMEWORK: Some questions are hard, some are just plug and chug. I really like the questions Regan writes, and I wish he wrote more of the homework questions because they usually take a while, but I come out of it with a deeper understanding of the topic of the question. They were graded on correctness, but I feel they graded pretty easily, and the TAs were nice with regrades.

EXAMS: Honestly, they were all reasonable in my opinion. There were definitely difficult questions, but a lot of the problems were straight off the homework, or straight from a derivation he does in lecture that he makes sure we know is important, so make sure you understand those. Also, when I say some questions are straight off the homework, I don't mean the plug and chug problems. I mean the problems that really get us to think about the concepts at a deep level. Sometimes, he will even tell us that a certain topic is definitely going to be on a midterm/final.

OFFICE HOURS: Sometimes they're helpful and sometimes they're not. He will go over homework problems if you ask him about them, or at least get you started on them.

COURSE CONTENT: Although I personally didn't hate how Regan structured his class, it isn't for everyone. His lectures focus more on what he thinks is important for a physicist to know, which I actually like. However, his homework is mainly questions from the textbook, and he often doesn't talk about the content covered in the homework until the lecture on the day the homework is due. Because of this, the homework is often self-taught. The tradeoff is that you are able to learn certain things that other professors would not have taught. For example, I don't think statistical mechanics is usually covered in this course, but Regan talked about it for 2ish weeks before we did any quantum. Regan also curves the class at the end rather than each test, so it's hard to tell what grade you have during the quarter. This is a big factor of stress for students, but I feel that Regan acknowledged that this quarter and is trying to make easier tests now so the averages aren't super low.

Overall, I would recommend Regan because he is a very entertaining person, and he does care about students learning the content.

I think this professor has unrealistic expectations for what should come obvious to students. I think the materials in the class (textbook, homework, aside essays, tests, etc..) are fair and help one learn what they are supposed to for this class. This class was very fast paced in content but also had a manageable workload. Although I found prof. to be a very entertaining lecturer and great at explaining concepts, I found myself uncomfortable asking any questions for the fear that they might be seen as trivial or obvious. I would have appreciated more explanation for where many of his lecture derivations come from.

Regan was very passionate about the content in the class which showed during lecture but lectures themselves weren’t helpful. Sometimes there would be a nugget of good information in one of the derivations which would help on a homework problem but the homework problems were mostly self taught. Don’t bother going to office hours, he can be really helpful when on track but most of the time it was just a hang out. The two midterms were nearly the same as the homework and the notecards were helpful. The final was brutal and the highest score was a 35%; it was not in any way similar to content we found in class. Overall my advice would be to read the chapters before you do th homework. Don’t be stressed by the first 3 weeks of the class, it’s supposed to be overwhelming. The last 3 weeks were a breeze because everything interconnected and the first 3 weeks finally made sense. I only got a B because I wrote an equation wrong on my notecard but otherwise I think I would have probably gotten an A- . I think beside the mishaps, Regan was pretty fair and reasonable.

Most difficult and stressful class I've ever taken, and it doesn't need to be, so avoid this professor if you can. Saddly he was a really entertaining lecturer, I actually enjoyed class, he also told jokes, always tried his best to answer questions, and held lots of office hours. But that doesnt make up for the fact that I thought I was gonna fail most of the quater. I walked out of both midterms and the final thinking I could have studied weeks more and not been able to get a 60%. The average grade on both midterms was around 50%, but if you stay around the average (I was below by a few percent both times) and turn in all your homework, you might be okay besides the anxiety and depression. I still don't understand how I got a B-, honestly, the curve must have been crazy. If you are a quick study, extemely knowledgable on all physics, and phenominal on creative problem solving, you might be one of the f***ers who can get an A, otherwise you're in for a wild ride.