Ok, so here's the breakdown. I go to about 50% of the lectures and I got an A in the class. The class isn't easy. In fact, I never understood a single thing he said in class. He has a little bit of an accent but it's not the reason why you dont understand. Well, the material is hard but he goes over some of the most useless things in lecture and you just end up sitting there going "what are you talking about?" I think the main problem is the fact that he can't convey his msg well. However, this professor is VERY concerned with his student's learning and is really nice about it. He takes time to go over things in office hours and you'll be able to understand materials then. Now, there are couple of reasons why I ended up with an A without knowing anything. First, he offered 25 extra credit points on each of his midterms and some extra credit points on his final. Now that's pretty much 1/4 of your grade boost. So I went into the final with 115% so that makes the final a little bit better. Except, the final was hard as hell and it screwed over the class alot. Second reason, his tests are pretty much identical to his practice midterms/finals. So if you understand the concept, then it's cool. Overall, I like the professor but if you are a slow learner, dont take this professor.

I've purposely elected to write this review before grades are out. When I took this class (Spring 2007), it was Professor Wang's first time teaching a class in the US, ever. That said, it was a different experience than would be probable otherwise.

The good: He tries really hard to teach the material. The professor went out of his way to put together demonstrations, powerpoints, and other materials for furthering students' understanding. For the part on interference, he even put together a macro'd Excel file and sent it to the students, allowing them to plug in various numbers and see how it affected a graph of the interference. Additionally, exams are graded on time, homework is fair in quantity and quality, and sample exams are given a week in advance (which for the two midterms, were extremely similar to the actual exams). The average in the class was very high (~80s) until the final, which was fairly difficult (albeit doable), and which was definitely a step above the midterms in terms of problem solving and theory.

The bad: Having little experience teaching prior to this class often means that the professor is spends an inordinate amount of time on material which is less than useful; deriving equations, answering people's questions about simple material at great length (and wasting a lot of time doing so) which they honestly should just learn on their own, and discussing theory which is beyond the scope of the exams, which no one really understands. This time would be better spent doing a problem of medium difficulty and explaining the theory step by step. I am sure that having been his first time teaching, future quarters will be more effective. Additionally, I leave this class having learned a significant amount more than in my previous physics class (with a certain Astronomy professor), possibly due to the extensive amount of self-teaching I had to do.

Professor Wang teaches an easy class, but doesn't do a very good job of it. He doesn't speak english too well, so he is hard to understand in lecture and can't clearly explain things. Lecture attendance was pretty low by mid-quarter. However, this is his only weak point. He is very nice, and wants all his students to do well. You get a lot of e-mails with supplementary materials and announcements, and he is usually available in his office, especially around exam time. He was very helpful the one time that I went to OH. He gives out practice exams one week before each of the tests, and posts solutions online. His tests are pretty much exactly like the practice tests, except with one or two things changed. The midterms were worth 100 points but had 125 possible, so like everyone got an A. The final was a little harder. All in all, a good professor, but you'll have to go to OH if you really want to learn the material.

Get Anthony Hall as your TA if you take any physics classes too, he rocks.