bruinwalk keeps failing me. tung was HORRIBLE this quarter. i would not recommend this class one bit.

Either something big changed after the pandemic or the old reviews are bait. Granted, this class is packed with material and is part of the notorious 1 series. He tries to cover most of it, and goes a lot in depth behind the derivations of formulas/principles you'll use. However, he often rushes material in the last few minutes of lecture. The discussion worksheets have little relevancy to the material covered in the most recent lectures. (The TAs don't even know what has and has not been covered during disc. sections). The exams are nothing like what Kudu problems are, despite him encouraging students to study off those questions. I wish there were more practice questions he would cover in class instead of the theory.

Tung changed the exams from kudu to paper and pencil right before a few days of the first midterm. I did all the kudu homework problems, however, like the others have said, the kudu homework questions are not good preparation for the exams at all. I took Physics 1B with Corbin and got a better grade in that class than in this one. Even though I felt comfortable with the material covered in class and the lectures were fun, the exams were downright horrible. It does not help that they account for 80% of the grade (20% for each midterm and 40% for final). Avoid this class if you care about your GPA.

TLDR: if you want a really high-quality, interesting physics class, and a professor who truly cares, but you don’t mind getting a lower grade, take this class.

I got As and A-‘s in the other physics 1 series classes, so I was pretty surprised to receive this grade. In general, Nathan Tung is very kind and cares deeply about student learning. His lectures are beyond entertaining, and I don’t even like physics that much. However, I felt this class was not very forgiving. None of the midterms were dropped, the TAs were not helpful at all, and the questions on the exams felt sort of unpredictable. However, there was a chance to get 3% extra credit which was nice. Furthermore, I cannot emphasize what a wonderful lecturer and kind professor Tung was. Overall, I enjoyed this class the most out of all my physics classes, despite getting the worst grade in it. (He did tell us in the beginning that he would try to keep the class average gpa pretty low as the physics department was requiring it, which kind of sucks.)

I took the course over the summer, where homework and extra credit assignments were done on Kudu. The exams, also on Kudu, consisted of multiple-choice questions with some short-answer items. There was no partial credit for multiple-choice questions, and the entire course, including exams, was online without a camera requirement. None of the exam questions were available elsewhere online—I think he wrote them all himself.

Exams were held weekly, though he canceled one in week 5 and adjusted the grading scheme accordingly. Class averages never exceeded 75%, typically staying around the mid-60s, yet he didn’t curve the grades at all. While he seemed knowledgeable and, in fairness, putting in the effort could help improve your grade, it was frustrating that, despite low averages and the potential for a curve, he ultimately chose not to adjust grades.

Honestly a completely manageable summer course. Tung's lectures were super engaging and I personally loved in-depth explanations on why things work. He did rearrange our class scheduling a bit as he started teaching at another institution midway through our course, but since lectures were recorded it wasn't a big deal. He did cut into office hours a lot, which is disappointing. Homework was generally easy (8-15 questions) and had unlimited attempts. The weekly quizzes were pretty decent although hard to predict exactly what types of questions we'd see. The averages were in the 60s and 70s. The extra credit was kind of irrelevant but do it anyways. Tung was pretty forthright when it came to what topics would be on the final, but there was definitely a lack of practice material given. Overall solid class if you're decent at physics because although interesting, you're pretty much on your own.

I specifically took this class to avoid taking Simpson during A sesh, and all I can say is that it was probably not worth it. I'm not sure whether he's different during the summer, but this class was very strange. First of all, Tung decided to cancel one of our classes and just tack on an extra 25 minutes to other classes because he was teaching at a CC. I'm like 90% sure this is not in fact legal, as class should occur at the designated time on the syllabus as well as on myucla.

In addition, lecture was almost completely useless. He spent maybe a week on complex numbers, which was interesting but not on the exam, which sucks during a summer class when you only have 6 weeks to learn material that is difficult to master in 10 weeks. He rarely went over problems, and when he did, they were usually very rudimentary. The textbook he uses sucks, and it barely explains anything. I taught myself almost entirely from the University Physics textbook.

Apparently, during the regular school year, if you complete over 65% of the homework you get extra credit. This was not the case for us as extra credit was extra work and graded on completion. I had better exam scores than extra credit scores, so it did not help me at all. Also, he completely did not understand the questions that I asked about the homework. Sometimes I had a conceptual question, and he would just solve the problem. The one time I genuinely needed help solving the problem, he didn't solve it, despite saying it wasn't a topic he was putting on the exam.

He randomly decided not to put AC circuits on the final, which I didn't really find fair for students who were the best at that specific topic. As far as the exams, multiple choice exams do not belong in math/physics, in my opinion, as it allows for rampant cheating since there is no proctoring in online classes. I get that it's easier to grade, but it meant getting zero credit for small mistakes.

Lastly, I'm not sure what exactly happened, but a lot of people complained about the way he curved grades. I think he ended up curving more at the end because too many people complained. He also deleted the canvas site almost immediately after the end of class.

Overall, I would not recommend taking this class over the summer with Tung.

this class was so hard. For summer it was an online 6 week class, with homework assignments and weekly kudu quizzes and an online final at the end (because of the hurricane quizzes 2 and 3, and 4 and 5 ended up being combined). Lectures were streamed on YouTube live and Tung is more focused on derivations than showing how to solve problems (although to be fair this has been my experience with all the UCLA physics profs I've had). The kudu quizzes were so hard not necessarily because the questions themselves were super hard but because they were a time crunch (I suspect to prevent people from cheating), so if you made a mistake in one of the questions you would not have a lot of time to go back and redo it. The final was also difficult and nothing like the kudu homework assignments or quiz questions. Class got up curved pretty heavily at the end, and Tung still had his policy of 65% required homework and anything extra is extra credit though so I can't complain too much. if you like physics you should be fine

I enjoyed Tung's lectures. Material is definitely difficult, but if you are attentive in lecture and keep up with all of the practice problems it isn't too bad.

For Summer, it was all online and Tung streamed his lectures on YouTube, which I liked. For me personally, the material of this course was pretty interesting, probably because I'm EE. But it was also because his lectures were clear and his teaching style was very engaging for me. We had weekly Quizzes which were generally easy, if you watched the lectures and did practice/HW problems. Most of the HW was easy. The final exam was fair as well. It was like watching a streamer everyday, he has an intro video and everything.