Prof Gruner is not a good teacher at all. His thick accent is a problem, but more so is his complete lack of teaching skills. I've never taken a physics class where a chalkboard was unnecessary... Gruner seemed to be allergic to chalk, and instead tried to demonstrate concepts by using his hands and the pen he was holding, all while still seated. He also used his laser pointer a lot on his powerpoint slides for no reason. The only good thing about this class is that the midterms and final aren't very difficult. You get a cheat sheet for each midterm, and we got three pages of cheat sheets for our final. He really wants to test your understanding of basic concepts... he doesn't throw anything too complicated onto his exams. You can do well in this class without a ton of effort. I attended less than 50% of the lectures and zero discussions, instead relying mostly on the book & homework problems. You need to be able to teach yourself because Gruner won't teach you a thing.

The reason you'll be enrolling in this class is not because of how great of a professor he is, because he sucks. The reason you'll be taking this class is because his exams are fairly easy (reuses old exams questions sometimes which can be found at various locations) and because if you have a great TA then you'll do well. If you can, get Devin and GO TO HIS OFFICE HOURS. Devin is the reason I did well in this class.

Professor Gruner is not a good teacher, in any sort of way. Between the accent and the mumbling, I had a hard time following ANYTHING he was saying. The few times I did go to lecture, I tried desperately to take notes but ended up leaving with an empty page. That being said, I would recommend him as a professor because his class was definitely doable. Everyone says that 6B is the hardest material of the 6 series, but I did a hell of a lot better in 6B than I did in 6A. His lectures follow a PPT slide that is essentially copied from the text anyway, so as long as you read the chapter and do the homework you're fine. Having the answer key also helps a lot. Make sure to attend discussion. My TA, Devin, was a great asset.

Gruner's exams are pretty easy. I got a perfect score on the first midterm, and I did above average on the second exam. He'll never ask a super complex question, so as long as you know how to do the basic problem types, you'll probably do fine.

Worst professor I've had here.

He put on his syllabus a certain percent homework and lab points. I was told by my TA after the class was through that he didn't include these in the final grade. Basically WebAssign and going to the two hour labs wasn't even factored in the grading.

He says that he curves around a B+ meaning that the average will become a B+. That's bull. Honestly, I was way above the average in this class (generally 50/90 or so) and I didn't wind up with an A in the class.

I had the most amazing TA, Scott, who tried his best to try to get the grades graded fairly and the way that he said he would, but Gruner wouldn't change any of the grades. Also, my final came second of the two classes he taught my quarter. I saw the other test. Our test was RIDICULOUSLY harder than their test. If you take him try to take the final that comes first because I suspect this isn't a rare occurrence with him.

Just don't take him, seriously. If you don't have a choice though here are some things.

-Don't bother with lecture
-I didn't read, didn't find it useful, did better than my friends who did read. I looked over the slides he posted and learned from that.
-I hear Swartwood is the shit, I didn't use it, but I'd recommend it from what I hear
-Occasionally he will use a problem straight off the homework, put those on the cheat sheet(s) that you're given for the tests

First off, I recommend taking this guy, not because he's a good professor, but because his class wasn't hard. 6B material is supposed to be the most difficult of the physics classes, and I got an A in this class and didn't do as well in 6A. His tests are VERY fair. They are never the crazy advanced problems, but are always the doable ones. Also, definitely sign up for SWARTWOOD with john! He does the best review sessions.

Going to lecture is absolutely pointless. He literally just puts the equations from the book straight onto the slides in the same order as the text book. Plus he is very boring and has an accent and just rolls through the lecture and doesn't care about his students. I literally never went to class except for the first day, and I got an A+ on the final, so lecture is not necessary. You just have to read the textbook!

Webassign is really easy, especially if you have the solutions manual. 2 midterms, 1 final. Doable. Definitely take him for 6B, WAY easier than arisaka and corbin. Good luck!

In short...

Professor: nice guy, hard to understand
Lecture: pop in once a week to figure out where you are in the course
Book: READ!
TA: GO!
Webassign: hate it, but grit your teeth and do it
Exams: 3 questions per midterm, 6 on the final. 30 pts per question

Details....

This class wasn't hard, but it was the most unlucky class I had. Whoever grades the 3rd question on both of the midterms grades really hard. I got almost/full marks on the first two questions, and then always 4 or 5 pts on the last 30 pt question; and both times was because I copied the formula wrong. (Do not miscopy your formulas) Right before the final, I ended up 5 points below the average despite getting almost the same grade on both midterms. (One came out 10 pts below the curve and the second came out 5 pts above it.) I think I got the same grade on the final, because I ended up with a B in the class, but I not sure because the only grade on MyUCLA is the class grade.
The homework was confusing. Every two problems were exactly the same, the net worth of each homework is different, and the due date keeps changing. I completely missed the due date of one homework because i mis-remembered its due date, and I'm sure that hurt my final grade too.
Overall... you really need to pay attention to the details in this class.

what everyone is saying is pretty true. he sucks at teaching and yea Webassign was down before the final so I had to do random problems from the book to study.

HOWEVER, everyone is complaining that they had to rely on the book to do well! OF COURSE YOU DO. you ALWAYS have to read the book for physics. only idiots dont read the book. you dont need textbooks for chem or ls, but you DO need it for physics. even if gruner were a good lecturer, i still would have read the book. it literally has an example of every type of problem possible (there is always a limited amount of types of questions that can be asked in physics).

and the grading was super fair. who cares that its not graded by the TA's. i literally bsed one entire problem on the second midterm and got a 26/30 for that question. the midterms and final were all normal difficulty, and they had no curveballs.

gruner is a really funny guy too. while his lectures were confusing, he is still a nice guy.

im actually glad that his class was entirely book-based. i was able to skip class with no problems. got an A+. i personally love the serway textbook and have no problems learning from it...i can see where frustration can arise if people arent used to teaching themselves things.

Let's talk about useless lectures. I almost never went to class, he literally reads off the lecture slides, which are in turn copied from the book. He basically gives a summary of the book chapters in class, in a manner no living soul can understand. So, you pretty much are on your own. You will have to learn from the TA, and from the book. He is never available, even the TA complained about not being able to contact him, don't even try to email him. He is apparently much more focused on his research than on teaching physics.

In short, an utterly useless professor. How can a professor get by with such poor communication skills? Based on how he presented the material in our course, I couldn't even tell if he had a physics background. That's just sad for a physics professor.

Got an A+ but would have gotten an F if I didn't take AP Physics.

I am not here to berate this professor, as of now my grade is A-. So now that's set straight, let's dissect every single mistake he's made as a professor.

1) He does not show up to lectures before most midterms and finals. Instead, his TA's dutifully does "demonstrations" but rewriting some of the same old equations onto the blackboard, and mumbling incoherence sentences to a 200 person class.

2) He curved at B+'s for the 2 midterms. However, he does not show you the final exam grade, nor the curve/mean/median for the final exam! He just slams you with a "naked" grade on my.ucla. Not only is this lack of transparency in grading and decision-making infuriating, but this quarter many students' grades were suspiciously lower (some by a LOT) than what the students predicted. Now you might say that all students want to argue for higher grades. But this time there's a good hoard of students emailing TA's because they do not understand why they got a particular grade. So if it's a trend, most likely this lazy professor did something wrong.

3) Webassign was "down" for more than 2 weeks towards the end of the quarter. Fortunately, it was after most students submitted their homework. I usually would have paid no attention to this fairly common internet error. However, this incident coupled with the suspicious and mysterious final grades lead me and many other students to wonder just how the heck this professor graded us? I wonder if he even included hw grades at all!

By the way, he curved at a B+ for both midterms. But for the final, he doesn't tell us. And also, the many times the TA's do not even grade most of our tests. The tests are shipped off somewhere to a mysterious person/people to be graded. And have you ever heard of undergrad paid graders? They cost less that TA's and often are upper-classmen who grade lowerclass men's tests. So I bet that's how our classes final exams were graded (our TA told us he didn't grade certain pages of the test).

Overall, this class is doable if you find a good tutor or read the book well. Another note is that Gruner tests from the book a LOT. He even once put one of those textbook "example problems" on the test and just changed up the numbers. I learned much more from reading the book and doing as many problems as I can (from the book) than from lecture. But be careful because this guy is really LAZY and does NOT care about students. Therefore, if any glitch goes wrong with your grade or you need to find someone to clarify something suspicious... good luck there!