By far the hardest class I've taken at UCLA yet. Coming in with zero background knowledge in physics made for an extremely tough time in this class, which was likely exacerbated by my lack of proactivity (not doing discussion worksheets and not going to office hours when I probably needed to). If you put in consistent work from the beginning to the end though, you'll have a much easier time than I did.

Lectures: Tung will introduce the concept and the theory, derive the equation, do a couple of simple practice problems, and tie it all up neatly with a demonstration at the end of class. However, you need to put in much more work beyond the lecture to actually understand the material at the level you need for exams. Lectures provide the intro, the rest of the work is up to you. Not mandatory but he very occasionally (maybe 4 times) does in-class extra credit questions on Kudu
Discussions: TAs would assign worksheets and go over select problems from those worksheets during discussion. Shoutout to Andrew, who was a wonderful TA. Not mandatory but definitely recommended.
Homework: Tung would assign Kudu questions as homework that had an official due date at the end of the quarter. 6ish units with 25 - 30 questions per unit. The questions were pretty straightforward but it was very easy to get stuck working on your own. Do not wait until the last minute to do them.
Exams: I heard from others that Tung uses his past exam questions very frequently, so for people with access to an organization's test bank, the tests might not be so bad, but the level of knowledge required for the exam was so deep that it was insane. Exam questions far surpassed the difficulty of practice questions gone over in lecture and Kudu questions. The ones that were the closest were the discussion worksheets from the TAs, so the best form of preparation is to do those worksheets before going to discussions.
Grading Scheme (what I remember of it): 15% for each of the two midterms, 30% for the final, and 3% extra credit to the OVERALL GRADE if you complete all the Kudu homework questions

I would never take this class with Tung again, but if you've got a background in physics or are prepared to put the work in, you won't have a hard time getting an A.

I LOST MY 4.0 TO TUNG.

Overall, two midterms are easy enough to get partial credit in / do well. There's 3% worth extra credit as well. BUT, the professor gives no practice problems in class and lectures are just deriving stuff, so it's hard to actually learn if you're never taken good physics in high school.

The final was the worst exam I've ever taken. I got lulled into a false sense of security by how easy the midterms were, but the final was really difficult. Bro's a known GPA killer. Good luck out there.

Tung is a great conceptual lecturer who utilizes engaging in-class demonstrations that helped me understand the principles of physics as someone who had never taken a physics course before this one. However, I felt like this was then completely lost on the exams, where the magnitude and depth of the questions went far beyond any of the supplementary materials covered in class or on Kudu (which he is aware of and states in the syllabus). I would say his exam questions most closely mimic the ones covered in discussion, but I felt the lecture did not adequately prepare me to approach that level of physics problem solving. He allows a cheat sheet for both midterms and the final, which I relied on heavily to be successful in this course. I think Tung is a solid choice of professor if you have prior experience with physics and can focus on the more complex problem solving, but I felt I was constantly juggling new fundamental concepts with applications and a demand for a deeper understanding of the material.

Tung is an okay physics professor. His lectures are very conceptual which is helpful to learning physics for people who have never taken physics before but he doesn't focus much on advanced problem-solving review during lectures nor does he give out any practice exams. I would say that going to the lecture was kind of useless but he gave us extra credit randomly through Kudu questions (kind of like clicker questions). TBH, his Nathan's Notes was a LIFESAVER for this class. You basically do not have to go to lecture and just read his Nathan's Notes which were most of the time an exact transcript of his lectures or just abridged versions. Use the Nathan's Notes as a study guide! His exams were multiple choice and short answer. I would say his exams are pretty difficult compared to the homework and problems in lecture/notes but there are a lot of similarities so it was not entirely too bad. The only thing that was difficult was that he would oftentimes give us problems where we had to come up with a symbolic answer without numbers so it is really important to understand the concepts and algebra behind things. As a person who has never taken physics before, this class is definitely doable but you need to study, review, and make sure to stay on top of things! I would say compared to the other physics professors here Tung is not a bad choice at all!

NOTE: I took AP Physics 1 in high school, which covers the material in Physics 5A (and goes a bit beyond 5A material). Thus, your mileage may vary, especially if you've never taken a physics class harder than high school physics before.

Overall, I'd say Dr. Tung did a pretty good job at teaching 5A. The lectures in class were somewhat helpful, and the physical demonstrations played a large part in anchoring my understanding of the material. However, I'd say that the biggest source of help is going to come from your TA's- they're the ones that make the practice problems that will save you on the MT's and finals, and they're the ones you're going to be requesting help from (I'm of the opinion that Dr. Tung is generally somewhat cold when it comes to student interaction, based on my limited attempts to converse with him about course material- again, YMMV).

Oh, and the extra credit- he gives extra credit for participation in lecture via Kudu, and he gives you EC for homework if you do more than 65% of the assigned problems (according to him, the EC roughly equates to 2-3% if you max it out). It is annoying that you have to buy software to do the HW and whatnot, but at least you're getting some extra credit out of it.

I will say that the lab portion is rather... poorly organized. It really isn't the lab TA's fault-I think my lab TA (at least) did well with what he had. Rather, the main problem was that the lab was often ahead of the lecture by a lecture or two- that meant that we had to spend extra time reading in order to finish the prelabs (which could get real annoying if we had no idea what to do).

This is BY FAR the WORST class I have taken at UCLA. I took AP physics in high school and it was a breeze but Tung managed to suck all the life out of physics. He is hands down the worst professor at UCLA! His test are completely unreasonable, the lecture don’t cover ANYTHING, you literally learn NEGATIVE F-ING information by going to class.

If you are someone who needs solid practice problems before taking an exam, do not take this class with Professor Tung! He throws you out to the wolves for every exam. The only thing he does during lecture is demos and equation derivation. He uses Kudu, a site where you take every exam and do every homework assignment on. The only saving grace is the extra credit, where he adds 3% of your grade at the end of the quarter. But genuinely, I wanted to die because of this class, and going into every exam I just accepted my fate because I knew that nothing he taught was going to be on it. And, I was right.

If you're looking for a professor who does his best to engage students with the material, is clear and thorough with delivering course content, provides extra credit opportunities, and is accommodating, take Tung's class. It was a great introduction to Physics (I never took it in highschool), and his quirky sense of humor doesn't hurt either. I want to clarify that his class was not "an easy A"- I had to do and redo homework, go to office hours, and really practice to have a chance at doing well. If you do the homework and don't skip lectures, you'll be fine.

idk why this man is praised as a god. if u have never taken physics before this will be an incredibly hard class good luck m8

Disclaimer: I took physics 1A before taking this class, as well as mechanics from honors physics in high school, so take my judgment on the relative easiness of the class with a grain of salt if you don't have that background.

Overall, I think Tung was a really reasonable professor, and he's really good at explaining physics in a terms that make sense to someone who hasn't studied physics in depth before -- like, he understands that it's 5A and we're all just life science majors trying to fulfill a requirement and takes that into account in his teaching. His lectures were pretty engaging too, he always added in things that weren't just him going through slides (went through equations, showed videos of experiments or sometimes did them in the classroom).

About grading: very reasonable, I think. We had readings and practice problems for each unit on Kudu (a program which I literally hate, but only because I find the user interface to be just The Worst), and we only had to do 65% of the practice problems and the rest that we completed after that were extra credit. There were worksheets in discussion but attendance wasn't taken so you could do them on your own if you wanted. Midterm and final were alright, different than the stuff in class but still applied the same concepts in the same way.