This review is for PHYS 5C. Arisaka is an interesting character, to say the least. You won't understand a word he's saying, and neither will you understand a bit of his lectures. Luckily, the info that's covered is in the textbook, so read it and you should be good. He'll expect you to know and use mild calculus (despite it not being required for this class). He says that his weekly worksheets are in the same style as the questions on the test - this is completely accurate. The subject matter of the questions are remarkably similar and the difficulty is about the same. If you can flawlessly complete the worksheets, then you should have nothing to worry about on the tests.

He seems to *really* like astronomy and philosophical things, cause he taught the class extra quickly just so he could use the 9th and 10th weeks to talk about the things that he wants to talk about. Expect stuff like the history of the universe from the big bang to its death, the rise of life, and how human beings process the world around them. I'm certain that it's interesting, it's just not really relevant to the course. Oh, and expect those subjects to be on the final.

His final has a multiple choice section. He releases a "practice" multiple choice question sheet for you to practice. I put "practice" in quotation marks because in fact, the multiple choice questions on the final are just straight up pulled from that "practice" sheet. So make sure you know the answers to those questions and you should be able to ace that section.

This class was such a nightmare. This review is for Physics 5B (the new physics series). I chose to take Arisaka's physics class because of his high reviews on Bruinwalk. He is an overhyped professor and I realized that students gave him such great reviews in the previous quarters because he was an easy professor in that his midterms and final were very similar (if not identical) to the practice exams he gave. This has changed with the new series. He gave us incredibly long exams that were different from the sample exams he gave us and misled us.

This professor cannot teach at all. Going to lecture was completely pointless because he directly read off his powerpoint slides. It was even difficult to understand what he was saying because of his accent. His lectures would also go off topic at times. He would frequently talk about 1) the meaning of "life", 2) his research on C. elegans, 3) how he himself developed the new physics series, 3) irrelevant things such as his favorite pianists. I learned nothing in this class from him.

I think the part that I hated most about this class was the professor's lack of concern for his students' learning and progress in the class. He would constantly talk about how many of his students want to be doctors but not many actually succeed because they instead "memorize" rather than learn. He was very degrading; after we got our midterm scores back, he would post pictures of students' work on certain exam problems and criticize what they did wrong, and also posted the names and scores of the top 10 students in the class. A few of my friends went to his office hours to discuss their grades and progress with him, and they came out of his office crying.

Mastering Physics homework was a bunch of busy work and if you got below 95% on your homework, you would have to do an additional Follow Up homework assignment. The homework was nothing like his exams. His midterm/final review sessions were completely useless. He would go over the solutions for the sample exams, but get confused over his own exam questions and brush off students' questions. The TAs I had this quarter were not very helpful; however, the lab TAs were actually useful because they helped me understand the concepts and taught better than Arisaka could ever teach.

The best advice I have for you if you take his class is to study on your own by reading the book and taking your own notes, and also doing his sample exams. Work with classmates! Also try to get as many points on your homework and lab portions of the grade because you will need those points as padding for your grade. He hardly curves in the end (there was no curve for grades in the A and B range, and only a small curve for those with grades below those).

This is a review for Physics 5B:
As previously mentioned, I can see why Dr. Arisaka had great reviews previously in the 6 series courses...he gave exams very similar to practice exams and homework, cracked a couple jokes, and everyone did well and everything was all hunky dory and wonderful. Be warned, however, that this is no longer the case with him in teaching the new 5 series. I agree to some extent that the point of any exam is to test student knowledge, not memory, and the exam should be tailored to be different enough that students need to have an understanding of the material, but not so different that it introduces new concepts and throws students off so much that exam averages are well below failing. Moreover, he takes it upon himself to assert himself as a medical school admissions officer and gauges which students will become doctors and which will become EFFECTIVE doctors, based on his INEFFECTIVE exams. No professor should feel comfortable enough to belittle and discourage his students from their career paths when he knows they are well into pursuing their pre-health career degrees. Trying to teach yourself material from the textbook is also ineffective unfortunately, because he does not follow the book's style at all. To put things into perspective, physics (at least at the undergraduate, lower-division, life science level), is applied math, yet I can count the number of times (on one hand) that I've needed to pick up a calculator to solve a problem on his exams. Put simply, if you have another professor choice, please take them and do not be fooled by the outdated reviews below. In the meantime, I hope Dr. Arisaka realizes his objectives in designing this series are not being carried out. I appreciate his efforts in trying to make physics more applicable to life sciences majors, but he is just taking the wrong approach in doing it.

This review is for Physics 5B or the new Physics 5 sequence.

I have not the slightest clue where Arisaka garnered all these overwhelming positive reviews because honestly they are NOT TRUE. I was actually excited to take this class because of all the great reviews Arisaka and his class had, however, the entire experience was absolutely horrible. Let me tell you why. This is a long review, but I promise you, it’s worth reading if you are considering taking this class.

First and foremost, Arisaka DOES NOT CARE TO TEACH. He literally reads off his power point slides and points at things with his laser pointer. Instead of actually picking up a piece of chalk to show the class how to solve a problem, he spent 90% of the time doing demonstrations. This one time, he literally had us watching a video of his “favorite pianist” playing the piano for a good 35 minute during a 50 minute lecture when instead he should have been showing us how to approach and solve problems relating to sound waves. What’s unfortunate about this you may ask? Well he will go ahead and expect you to be a virtuoso in whatever concept he “tought” the class, which means he will go ahead and put said concept on the exams. Truth be told, I can count the times he actually picked up a piece of chalk to solve problems on the blackboard on one hand, and I won’t be using all 5 fingers. I learned more from Shana Shaked who was a guest lecturer for a day than I did from weeks of Arisaka.

Second of all he prides himself in spearheading the new physics 5 sequence, yet he himself HAD NO IDEA when it came to the direction by which he wanted to take the course. Initially he told the class that M1 would be based on the Mastering Physics homework assignments, so there goes the class studying the MP homework. Then he told the class that M1 would be based on the study guide that he gave out. So there goes the class studying the study guide. Boom! The result are in for M1 and the average was 70/110+ which translates roughly to a borderline D-/F! The average for M2 was roughly the same.

Third, his exams are unreasonably long. If I recall correctly, both M1 and M2 were 10-15 pages, and final was even longer. I wont say too much on the final given that it was probably the only exam that had a decent length for the time given. M1 and M2, however, were way too long for the given 50 minutes.

Fourth (Not going to say anything about his accent because you get used to it after a while), I did not feel as though he was genuinely concerned about helping struggling students improve. I myself happened to be one of those students, and after Arisaka kindly encouraged students to visit his OH to discuss ways to improve. Let me tell you, it did not take long for Arisaka to make me feel so invalidated and unsure about myself. He will literally pull up your exam score and make you feel so unsure of yourself instead of encouraging you. And yes, I know very well that he is not paid to coddle, but when telling a student that they will be an incompetent physician relative to other students based on exam performance is absolutely out of line and unprofessional! To add insult to injury, Arisaka had the audacity to scold me for coming to visit him at the time he CLEARLY stated during class that he will be available to conduct office hours. This man is unbelievable. I know this is an isolated incident, but Arisaka was not shy about invalidating students on a macro level as well. He took it upon himself to always show the ACTUAL names of the students who did very well on the exams. I have never had a professor do this ever.

Lastly, this is not so much about Arisaka himself, or the lecture, but more about the lab. Oh my goodness, talk about disorganization! I was really hoping that they would have taken some of the collective feedback they received last quarter for 5A, but they really did not. The labs feel very unorganized and once again, half the time my classmates and I were absolutely lost and had no idea what was going on. This is easily rectified by having ACTUAL WRITTEN PROCEDURES. Our TA and LA would literally walk around in figure 8’s around the classroom going from table to table answering questions.

I know this is a long review, and it may be different from other reviews, but it is a TRUTHFUL review of my own and some of my fellow classmates’ experiences with Arisaka and the class overall. I would absolutely NOT RECOMMEND that anyone take this class unless you want to hate physics even more. Truly, I was very upset because I was really excited about the concepts that we were going to be learning in this class, but frankly, Arisaka made the course unbearable. Please do yourself a favor and take this class with Shana Shaked instead.

I took Physics 5B with Professor Arisaka. Before I begin, I think the man is WAY too overhyped. I came in thinking this guy was going to be the best professor ever after reading all these reviews, but he was alright. To this day, I still don't understand 20% of the things he says because of his heavy accent. His "review" sessions aren't that great either unless you can't complete the previous midterms. By the way, he used to reuse almost the exact same midterms, which is probably why people really liked him. He stated that he would not reuse midterms and finals anymore. The guy is also obsessed with really long exams for some reason. I barely had time to finish all 3 of his exams (2 midterms and 1 final). His "curve" doesn't really help either. I was 1% from an A-, and I still didn't get it after he "curved". I don't hate the guy, but I also don't like him. This is my honest review, especially after going in very optimistic. Don't be fooled by the other reviews. Overall, I did not like this class and I felt like I didn't learn much too.

middle column: cumulative percentage of students
right column: percentage of students in that grade category.

A+ 11.0% 11.0%
A 24.2% 13.2%
A- 38.3% 14.0%
------------------------------------
B+ 54.0% 15.7%
B+ 72.2% 18.2%
B- 82.1% 9.9%
------------------------------------
C+ 90.6% 8.5%
C 96.4% 5.8%
C- 99.4% 3.0%
------------------------------------
F 100% 0.6%

distribution for 6C winter 2015

Prof. Arisaka has a strong Japanese accent, but you eventually get used to it when listening to his lectures. The course material for 6C isn't all that hard and I find that it is easier for me to read his slides at home to learn rather than take a bunch of notes during lecture (I still watch the podcasts though). He is also very concerned with students' learning. He wants to make sure that everybody in the class knows what is going on and understands the physical principles he is teaching. The only pitfall of his teaching is that he tends to go too fast and doesn't have enough time to explain how to do certain problems for homework or the exams. Another criticism is that his exams are LONG. I know that I don't work very fast, but I wasn't able to finish both of the midterms, and I barely finished the entire final exam after 3 hours of non-stop working. His grading distribution is really fair, but there is hardly a curve. It seems that his "curve" follows a nearly straight scale. I got a 90 as my course total, which came out to an A- (which is expected). The only good thing is that he does a lot of outside review sessions to make sure as many people as possible are above an 80 so they get a B or higher. It is also nice that you don't really need to use the textbook as much as previous physics 6 classes.

His exams are pretty easy. I don't see why they even bother to fit in Modern Physics into 6C. I understand that the 6 series is for Biological Science majors and the Modern Physics part is for us to get an idea of how medical diagnostic equipment works. There just isn't enough time spent on each topic for you to even remotely grasp the concept. But whatever, the last physics monkey is off my back after this class.

I am so glad I had Arisaka!! He really made the class doable for me--unlike my 6A professor who made my life a living nightmare.

Not only is he always enthusiastic and excited to teach the class, but he really wants to make sure everyone understands the material. He believes that everyone has the ability to do well. Arisaka also goes out of his way to assist in the learning process, with summary notes, practice exams, old exams, and he even dedicates many hours to review sessions.

Yes, he has an accent, which at first i thought was going to be impossible to get past. But i really got used to it after a bit. And also--he knows he has an accent so he usually speaks a bit slower with more emphasis (which i prefer to a professor who speeds through things with perfect english).

Everyone should seriously take Arisaka!!
I'm in 6C now with a different professor, but I miss Arisaka's class and fun spirit already.