DISCLAIMER: I TOOK THIS CLASS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC! EXPERIENCE WILL BE QUITE DIFFERENT WHEN TAKING DURING A REGULAR QUARTER (e.g. YOU WON'T HAVE AN OPTIONAL FINAL LIKE US).

Prof. Ong is a mixed bag. He is a pretty effective lecturer, and he does encourage his students to come to office hours. He seems like a nice guy, but he's a bit passive aggressive. I don't know if he means to be passive aggressive or if that's just who he is, but going to office hours was not pleasant for me. He encourages students to "drop by" if they are in the Physics building and ask him questions if he is not busy, so I did that. There was another student in there. Even though this was part of his "unofficial" office hours that he promotes quite a bit in lecture, once I went in, he made a joke about how the other student there "at least emailed me first." Also, when I asked him a question, he told me "you should've learned this in 1C" and made a bigger deal about the question than I would've liked. Other than that, I've never had a problem with him. His exams are okay. Some questions are way too vague, however. I would've liked it better if he clarified exactly what he wants, but sometimes, he just asks things like "what changes" when some parameter is changed, and if you don't mention the exact things that he wanted, he takes off points. Overall, his exams are fair, though. He does assign homework that he doesn't usually finish covering material for, which I particularly didn't like. Maybe, he shouldn't assign homework during week 1 since the material isn't covered at all. Other than that, he's very decent. His lectures are pretty clear and since they were Bruincasted, even if I didn't follow all of it the first time, I could rewatch and figure out exactly what he did on the board. My TA was awesome, though. She was pretty shy, but if you asked her for help, she definitely helped. Her office hours were really helpful for me. Probably the best TA I've had for physics so far. Thank you so much, Fanyi!

Professor Ong is among one of my favorite professors in the physics department. His lectures are well structured and clearly conveyed. He is very nice and patient with his students. Physics 17 in general is a very interesting yet rather light-weight class because you get to introduced to all the cool ideas in modern physics without being required to dig too deep into them. At the end of the quarter Ong even spent a lecture talking about his research. Not a lot of professors do that, but I truly appreciate that because it gives students a taste of what it is like to work as a real physicist.

While he could have spent a little bit more time explaining the significance of his lectures at the beginning of the class, Professor Ong is pretty good. He is always willing and eager to see students during his office hours or whenever. Only exceptions are the frequent trips that he makes to go just about everywhere in the world and do cool physics stuff, which he loves to talk about.

Homework assignments are not bad, though he has a habit of assigning stuff before we learn it in class. Tests are very well written: they require some thinking beyond just plugging stuff into formulas, and he ends most problems with some kind of conceptual question that will test how well you actually understand what is going on. First midterm was a little too long for one hour, though the class is curved so that was not a huge problem.

Some minor qualms, but generally a great professor.