This class is hard.

Professor Niemann does not curve at all, though he did drop 1 more quiz than he said he would :)
Niemann is also pretty cool, he wouldn't hesitate to delete quiz questions that had typos and was on top of his email. When I got my final grade, I was confident it was what I earned. Plus, his "good morning class" every morning was very inexplicably uplifting.

The quizzes were my least favorite part of this class, as they could only be taken at 8am and often took 1-2 hours. Coffee helped. There was no midterm, so each quiz had the potential to shred your grade down to its last atom. Watch out! :(

Homework was fine, with minimal effort you can be get a 90%+ average if you've watched the lectures and have a calculator handy. It's a website by Pearson, though, so yuck :(

Discussion sheets graded by effort, not correctness, though some of them were HARD ASF and didn't enhance my understanding so much as induce confusion and panic :\

Final was more than fair content-wise: 24 hour window, open-note, but took ~8 hours of work to get an A just because of the number of questions :\

If you gotta take this class, just do it. It doesn't get better than this.

Decent professor when it comes to office hours and lectures, but he formatted the class horribly in terms of exams and grading.

The previous reviews are pretty weird and unhelpful, so I'll try my best to help out future bruins taking his class. Also, on a side note, this dude apparently has two bruinwalk pages, his name is Christoph Niemann, and an electrical engineer with the physics department. On his other page, there is a grading distribution for the class for you to look at if you need that stuff.

Anyways, he's probably the best physics lecturer I've had for electro-mag. He really focuses on making sure everyone has a conceptual, intuitive understanding of the material rather than a heavy math based one. Also, its lifesci physics so he can't really get that in depth. Most of the conceptual bits he goes over regard relationships. If you separate the capacitor, what happens to electric field? etc.

To succeed here, I strongly recommend attending lecture and paying fullest attention. This quarter his class was in 9am so it was quite a challenge, but he goes over a ton of examples of problems you might be encountering. Also, his powerpoint slides feature information that multiple choice questions will ask about, so pay extremely close detail to each slide, since I missed some details and got it wrong on a midterm. Finally, he uploads 3-4 practice tests before each one.

As for the tests themselves, they're kinda annoying. The midterms are only 30 points so every point is absolutely crucial. Succeed on them for a buffer.The first midterm was buttfuck easy, the second one not so much (but that's because I started skipped some lectures and fell asleep in others) , and the final seemed ok.

For homework, its masteringphysics (again, forever always). Labs are the same bullshit get it done and get out lab, although it depends on the TA's niceness.

I think the best part about his class are the sheer amount of demos he does. I think almost every single lecture featured a demo to showcase the concepts he was trying to teach, so that was a great help to visualize the relationships of stuff he will ask about.

In office hours, he was extremely helpful. I pestered him for detail past the course material and level of understanding and he was willing to help out.

He's also a pretty funny guy, although unintentionally. Or at least I thought so.

I also took his class online, his class, let me say was a lot of work!!! You are really going to have to put in the effort and mindset to be able to stay on track and focused and yes, you will have to go out of your way on learning the material. He tries his best to teach and he really does care about the class, it's just online learning is hard and this class is known to be difficult. Again, you put in the effort to stay on top of this class, you will do fine.

Overall this is one of the best 1B professors you'll get. He's super clear, and unlike other professors focuses more on making sure you understand the general concepts rather than doing lots of fancy derivations and theoretical calculations. Very akin to introductory AP Physics classes for most of the problems. The quizzes were a bit annoying and most points were lost on problems that he never really went over which was frustrating, but the rest of the problems were extremely straightforward: a mix of plug and chug questions as well as a few simple and general theoretical questions (which should be understood if you're doing the hwk and taking notes during lecture). Solid class overall.

Niemann is a great professor. He said his goal was to have us never read the textbook and just watch lectures, which was very helpful and saved lots of time. Instead of midterms he had 4 biweekly quizzes which made the class low-stress and studying for the quizzes wasn't overwhelming. All of the exams were very representative of what we'd learned, and didn't have curveballs or material outside what we covered.

I thought this was a pretty fair class! Niemann very clearly cares about his students and how much you're learning, which I really appreciated and don't always see in my lower division courses.

I thought he was pretty clear in his lectures, the hard part for me is staying engaged as the quarter goes on. Bruincast is helpful for that. He goes through a lot of examples in class, especially some that are nearly the same as what you see on the homework and exams, so definitely try to take them!

He used an interesting grading scheme where the two midterms were worth one "unit" each and the final was worth two "units." Your score on the best 3 out of 4 made up of 75% of your total grade. So he's pretty forgiving if you have to miss a midterm or bomb it. You have a chance at making it up later.

I thought the midterms were pretty doable, but other folks have told me they're on the more challenging side. The first midterm was a little bit too long (I scribbled out an answer on the last question in the last two minutes of class), and he shortened the second midterm after hearing feedback from students. He's super understanding!

Homework and lab are the rest of your grade. They're pretty par for the course if you've taken other physics 5 classes. He uses Kudu instead of Mastering Physics, which I liked a lot better. He's able to write his own questions or something? It's a lot less infuriating than Mastering Physics homework.

Overall, a pretty fair class! The class feels disjointed because there are so many disparate topics in one course, but that's more a problem with the curriculum than this individual class itself. Not my favorite but also not my least favorite. I had a really heavy fall quarter and left this class on the backburner only to do weekly homework and study right before tests and did perfectly well!

As someone who has always done bad in math classes and who got a C+ in Physics 5A, Niemann was the best decision I ever made! His class helped me thoroughly understand physics and I really like how he doesn't emphasize equations or derivations, but rather mostly tests you on conceptual problems. His midterms were relatively easy, I got an 89 and a 96. He lets you bring a 3 x 5 flashcard (front and back) to the midterms, which is really helpful! However, he doesn't give you any constants or equations so you need to make sure you write that all down. The final was definitely harder for me (I didn't really study due to other finals), so I got a 65 which ultimately dropped me down to a B+. Bummed about dropping the letter grade but definitely happy about the improvement from 5A. I would definitely recommend taking Niemann. I'm taking him again for 5C in the Fall and hoping to keep my A then!

Niemann taught this class well. The class consisted of asynchronous lectures, weekly HW, and a weekly discussion worksheet. There were no midterms, instead there were 4 quizzes. The difficulty of the quizzes and tests varied from pretty difficult to not that hard, with averages around a B+. The HW is pretty easy and the discussion worksheet is completion based. Niemann fixed broken questions on the quizzes quickly and his lectures were very clear. He doesn't waste time with things that don't show up, material on the lectures is almost always relevant. However, the material itself is pretty hard, especially if this is your 2nd physics class ever. Niemann is a solid choice, so if you have the opportunity to take his course, do it.

I took Physics 5B with Professor Niemann. Professor Niemann is a great professor who is direct in what he expects. His grading scheme is very generous in that you can drop a midterm of half a final. He doesn't look like it, but he is very understanding when it comes to grades and the concerns of students. His tests although a bit tricky sometimes are never unfair, though the first exam was long for the 50 minutes allotted. Overall, I really recommend Niemann. He has a very generous grading scheme, and I would take him again.