I do agree with the other reviews that the tests were very rushed and that sometimes we would have to teach ourselves the concepts, but in all honesty this was something I expected, especially with COVID.

Prof. Lancaster gives us practice tests about a week before our exams which are pretty much the same as our exams, and he will solve them with us in office hours and post the notes for those who couldn't go. While this does help, often times his notes are all over the place and it will be difficult to understand them if you don't go to office hours.

The mastering physics, which is our homework, can take a while, and after a week or two you'll start to notice a trend which is that lectures teach you the basic concepts, the homework is significantly more difficult than the lectures (most of these questions are on slader, chegg, brainly, etc., with steps so you'll always be able to figure it out), and the discussion homework, which is most similar to our exams, are really difficult to work out alone in my opinion.

If you take this class with prof Lancaster (which a lot of people are bound to bc of how quickly 5a fills up) here are some tips:

- Do the discussion problems with a friend (it's better to do it with one person than a group of like 5 people because then it just gets overwhelming) and also do the practice exams with them
- After doing the practice exam write out a list of the steps you did to solve each part that you can refer to during the exam, and also write out a formula sheet
- Also look at what values you had to make up in the practice exams and make up a second set that you can use for the actual exams so that you don't waste time making them up.
- Always try to do the more difficult options in the discussion homework so that you can get used to it since these points help a lot in the tests (discussion homework is graded on completion not accuracy)
- as much as you might want to just read the slides, watch his lectures (I watch them at 2x speed) because he might write some things that aren't in the slides that can be helpful.

Overall, this class can be a lot, but it's definitely doable. While a lot of people complained (and they had a right to because he was not very accommodating) the average on both midterms was a high B, and I have a feeling the final will be the same. He gives you a lot of resources that you can use to practice, and those practice tests that he gives out will be the absolute best thing you can use. I'm putting out this review before we take the final but I have a feeling that a large portion of the class will have an A just based on our averages.

Mastering Physics: 5%
Discussion Sections: 5%
Labs: 15%
Midterm 1: 25%
Midterm 2: 25%
Final: 25%

Terrible set up during COVID. The whole class is pre-recorded, except the Labs. He reads off his slides 95% of the time and makes his tests like the discussion section problems. My TA also decided to have pre-recorded sections which didn't help because the discussion problems are nothing like the HW or slides that Lancaster goes over. A lot of students voiced their concerns about the way the class was set up at the beginning of the quarter and Lancaster dismissed all of them by saying that he set up the class according to "the recommendations of the Vice-Chancellor" and said that's why he couldn't record any of his office hour/test review sections and why he couldn't accommodate any students who couldn't take his exam during the 35 min time frame that he set. He wasn't accommodating at all and it made it difficult to attend his office hours (because of class conflicts) by setting them up at random times when it came to test review, and by having them at 4 PM every other day when the class was listed at being from 2-3 PM.

Taking this class during COVID has been the worst class I have taken so far at UCLA. There is a heavy load of homework per week, and much of it doesn't align with what we are learning in the lectures or shows up on the tests. The professor does host office hours and posts the notes taken during the session to the class, which is a helpful side of him. However, it doesn't account for how lengthy the assignments are and how off topic the homework tends to be. Side note: for those who have poor wireless connection (like I do), the lecture homework takes ages to load, so if you don't plan on fixing your wifi soon, not a good class to take at all. I have never felt the need to write a review on a class because they have all been fairly executed up until now. If you have a choice (I unfortunately didn't), do not take this class.

" how we dooooin' ... ? " - lancaster's white uncle voice before practically every lecture, followed by me promptly passing out 5 min into his usual monotone monstrosity of reading slides

Not having any physics background before this class, i was a bit anxious about this class even though the 5 series is known for being the easier physics series. Although it was Prof Lancaster's first time teaching it was relatively easy: a very easy first midterm in the 90s average followed by a mildly difficult second one that sent the average down the drain, then finally a rather easy final that ensured many to get As in the class (got stuck with a B+).

Homework is tedious but doable/easy to find answers online

Lecture aren't very helpful unless you're really itching to take a nap in the physics building - the slides and discussion problems are enough to do well in the exams.

yall please never take his class during covid - he really decided to screw w students during quarantine. he makes students choose the assumptions for exams and then docks like 5-10/100 points for each sign being incorrect. i thought this class was gonna be easy bc i read previous bruinwalk reviews but legit this class is such a horror.

Unfair grading amidst the pandemic made 5A a stressful class for me :(

Overall, DO NOT take Lancaster if you have the choice. I’ll give him credit for holding 3 sets of office hours during the week and solving practice tests that were very similar to the actual exams with us, but the disorganized and unaccommodating way Professor Lancaster ran this class during COVID-19 took a huge toll on my mental health. For context, I’m a sophomore and I’ve taken a decent number of classes at UCLA, so I’m not just unaccustomed to the level of difficulty at UCLA as another review suggests. While the other two Physics 5A professors gave 24 hours for midterms (and Professor Sakai even did an optional 24 hour final), Professor Lancaster subjected us to 35 MINUTE midterms and a 2 hour final. On top of that, the exams were graded based on the difficulty of your approach to solving the problem. This means that there were 2-4 different scenarios that you could choose to solve the problem (using a negative or positive angle, the object travels a straight path or must travel over a hill, etc.), and you can only get full points if you solve the most complex scenario correctly in 35 minutes. In addition, he will take 7-10 points off if you had a positive sign where there should’ve been a negative sign which equates to losing 7% of your grade for making a small error. Each midterm was only one question with three parts, but they were each worth 25% of our grade. The most painful part is that he makes those same sign errors and algebra mistakes when he solves the problems that he wrote himself in his office hours, but turns around and punishes students for making those mistakes when we have even less time to solve the problem than he does. In addition, Professor Lancaster was often not on the same page as his TAs about how to solve problems; I attended both my TA’s office hours and Professor Lancaster’s office hours, and I would frequently walk away with two different answers to the same problem which left me very confused as to what we were expected to do.
Homework also barely provides a cushion, as it is only worth 5% of your grade. Despite the fact that homework is worth such a small percentage, Professor Lancaster made 60 Mastering Physics problems due the day before our final and around 28 problems due during each of the previous weeks of the quarter. The Mastering Physics homework takes a decent amount of time to complete, because Professor Lancaster’s lectures were recorded lectures from the summer of him reading word-for-word off of the textbook company’s pre-prepared slides (which are nowhere near the difficulty of homework or exams) so you have to teach yourself. It is also impossible to earn 100% in the homework category, because Professor Lancaster set up Mastering Physics so that you lose points if you don’t get the answer correct on your first try. Meanwhile, the other Physics 5A professors gave their students unlimited attempts on Mastering Physics (and Professor Tung only required his students to complete 60% of the assigned homework to get 100% in that category). On top of Mastering Physics homework, we also had discussion homework to complete on our own time because the discussion sections were asynchronous. Again, there was a lack of communication between Professor Lancaster and his TAs, because some TAs graded the discussion homework for completion/effort while other TAs took points off if you didn’t get the answer correct. The only extra credit to make up for lost points was a laughable 0.3% if you reached Eagle status on Campuswire.
Students communicated our concerns to Professor Lancaster multiple times throughout the quarter, and he refused to consider simple suggestions such as changing how the homework was graded or allowing us 20 more minutes on our exams. To reiterate what another review said, I truly don’t understand how a professor could listen to his students communicate their struggles during a global pandemic and not make a single small adjustment to help them. Instead, he penalized students for submitting exams late due to internet issues, made international students take the exams at 4 AM, and expected students without a quiet home environment to complete the exams in 35 minutes.
If you do have to take a class with Lancaster, here are a few tips I have:
- If Charlie Hultgreen Mena is a TA, go to his office hours! Charlie is the best TA I’ve ever had at UCLA, and he deserves most of the credit for me getting an A in this class. He is very patient and caring, helpful in explaining how to solve the weekly discussion problems, and great at explaining the necessary information that isn’t taught in lecture.
- Attend as many office hours as you can. Professor Lancaster is somewhat helpful at explaining the practice exams, and he also frequently makes revisions to the practice exams after posting them so you need to be at his office hours to know about it. The TA office hours are the most helpful for learning physics concepts and problem solving strategies.
- When studying, time yourself while solving the practice exam so that you’re prepared for the time constraint on the real exam.

Professor Lancaster is an absolute joke of a physics professor. Out of all the classes I've taken at UCLA thus far, this course was by far the most poorly organized, poorly executed one I've ever experienced. It's disappointing to write this because I was excited to take his class this quarter since it seemed as though he was well regarded. While I appreciate that recorded lectures allow for flexibility under remote-learning circumstances, all Professor Lancaster does is read directly from the slides for 50 or so minutes. While that isn't inherently bad, it's not engaging in the slightest. Considering that we already don't meet for sections since they're asynchronous, you would hope that the professor would at the least make some effort to be more engaging in lecture, but alas. While engagement was an issue, the most criminal thing about this class was the structuring/format of graded material. I understand that grading schemes are determined at the discretion of the professor. A few differences in class structure from professor to professor are to be expected. However, when 2/3 professors give their students 24 hour exams and unlimited attempts on homework, you would expect that the third professor would offer something comparable to those feats. Nope. While other physics 5A students get 24 hour exams, those of us unfortunate enough to be taught by Lancaster are subjected to the living hell known as 35 minute midterms with the most vague, unclear grading rubrics possible. In addition, other physics professors make their hw credit/no-credit, but we lose points every time we attempt a question and don’t get the answer right at once. Regarding exams, the fact that we're penalized up to 7 points just for a small algebra mistake of a wrong sign on a test we only have 35 minutes to complete is criminal. 7 points deducted just for a wrong positive/negative sign drops your grade 7%. Even in the hardest of math classes, I've only ever been penalized 1-2 points max for a wrong sign as long as I had the rest of the answer right. I thought that exams were supposed to test our knowledge of physics principles, but the way these tests are designed, it's clear they're meant to be more punitive than anything. It's hilarious because when Lancaster solves the practice exams he gives us in office hours, not only does he take forever to solve them, it's usually us who has to correct him on multiple occasions for all the algebra mistakes and misinterpretations he makes himself. All the things he punishes us for messing up on an exam we're expected to take within 35 minutes are things that he regularly messes up on and has to be corrected for on a test he wrote himself, which makes it all the more laughable. The most heinous thing about Lancaster, beyond his unreasonable expectations and ineffective teaching style, is the fact that he doesn't care for his students' wellbeing in the slightest and refuses to compromise or make even small accommodations. Students reached out to him multiple times, both privately through e-mail and publicly in office hours, about how much they were struggling this quarter. Not everyone is privileged enough to have reliable internet or a quiet, private work space conducive to learning and taking high-pressure exams under unreasonable time limits. We didn't even ask for 24-hour exams. We just asked that we could have a full hour to solve our midterms and maybe an extra 15 minutes to submit, and he scoffed at even that. Instead of showing his students empathy or figuring out what he could do to make things easier for us during these "unprecedented times," he ridiculed us, didn't budge on anything, and told students that if they were struggling in the course, they could always choose to drop it. This class is administered so horribly in comparison to the other two Physics 5A courses that it's mind-boggling to think they're all the same course. It's depressing to know that if I had just chosen a different professor, I could've saved myself many hours of stress and self-doubt these past 10 weeks.

In conclusion, Justin Lancaster is not only a horrible professor, but a horrible person as well. I don't know how anyone could listen to the pleas and cries of his students for 10 straight weeks (admist a global pandemic) and not be moved to make even a single accommodation/adjustment in response. He is the worst professor I've ever had, and will likely forever be the worst professor I've ever had. If I could rate him negatively, I would. I truly can't name a single good thing he's done for us this quarter. All he's done is make life a living hell and I hope he's proud of himself for it <3 :)

This class was absolutely atrocious. The grading scheme is ridiculous. The professor looked at the mean grade for the midterms (NOT the median) and because they were high outliers, he assumed EVERYONE was doing great and would refuse to adjust anything about the class. Everything was so unnecessarily stressful, each exam was worth 25% of our grade (and each exam was 50 minutes, while the final was 2 hours but twice as long) meanwhile the stuff that truly took all the time (lab, hw, discussion worksheets) was worth the rest of the 25 % even though it took hours longer to do. Tests were graded ridiculously, with insane numbers of points taken off for the smallest error (like signs). He was unwilling to make accommodations. Some students had the worst situations during this class, and they were truly suffering during his exams. I really felt for them. He was a nice guy, I will give him that, but the benefits of this professor stop there. The only reason I was able to survive this class was because of the TAs, but if you got a bad TA then I don't even know how you did it.

PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. Justin Lancaster is an utterly incompetent professor. I was forced to take Lancaster for Physics 5A and Physics 5B because the other professors’ classes had filled, and I can say without a doubt that Lancaster is the worst professor I’ve ever had or will ever have at UCLA.
First, Lancaster chose to use pre-recorded lectures from Spring 2020 as our lectures for the Winter 2021 quarter. If you want to spend thousands of dollars of tuition on year-old lecture videos and have a professor give zero effort in return for all the work you put into a class, then Lancaster is your guy! In these pre-recorded lectures, Lancaster spends an hour reading word-for-word off the textbook company’s pre-prepared slides and rattling off equations and concepts without providing any explanation for where they came from. This made it very difficult to understand how to apply those concepts and equations, and it again demonstrates how Lancaster could not even put in the effort to make his own slides or prepare his own explanations.
Second, Lancaster made it very difficult to have a live interaction with him or get our questions answered during office hours. The quarter began with professor Lancaster’s office hours being held on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4 PM as stated in the syllabus, but they were suddenly changed in the middle of the quarter with no reason given to us to Tuesdays at 10 AM and Thursdays at 11 AM. Many students reached out to professor Lancaster to tell him that those new times conflicted with our other classes, but he decided to keep the new times because they worked better for him even though far fewer people were able to come to office hours after that. If you are fortunate enough to be able to attend office hours, Lancaster frequently makes mistakes when solving problems and has to be corrected by students.
Finally, the exams are extremely stressful and unpredictable. Lancaster decided that giving less time for exams would be best for remote learning, so he subjected us to 35 minute midterms and a 2 hour final. Lancaster made no accommodations for students who have Internet issues, do not have a quiet home environment, or are international students in a different time zone. In fact, in one of his last office hours sessions, he said that he would be deliberately giving international students a more difficult final exam. On top of that, Lancaster provides hardly any study material that is representative of what exams are like. The old tests and discussion worksheets are nowhere near the difficulty of his current exams and they sometimes do not even have the same topics as his current exams. On our second midterm and final for 5B, he tested us on topics such as tension, static equilibrium, and projectile motion that are literally 5A material! It is also impossible to earn 100% in the homework category to cushion your grade, because Professor Lancaster set up Mastering Physics so that you lose points if you don’t get the answer correct on your first try.
In conclusion, even if Lancaster improves when we return to in-person learning, his complete lack of effort or concern for students during a global pandemic speaks volumes about his true character as a person and his inadequacy as a professor.