I really loved 5A with Professor Sakai. I came in with no physics experience in High school, thinking I was going to struggle and fail. But instead, I really enjoyed the subject, Professor Sakai was very very sweet and clearly cared for the students. She answered questions throughout and after lecture, and how office hours specifically for students who had no physics experience. In my quarter she structured it as 4 exams, bi-weekly, the lowest score of which was dropped, so it helped relieve pressure because you didn't have one giant accumulative exam. I will say that the class overall is a lotttt of work. There are mastering physics homework and prelecture problems, discussion worksheets, and pre-lab and lab writeups on top of the tests. BUT if you try to do all the work sincerely, then it will really boost your scores on the tests because you'll have to understand the material. Also, pre-lab and discussion are completion based, and mastering physics gives you three tries on everything so its super easy to get 100s on those. I would say you should do a lot of conceptual prep, and use variables as much as possible while practicing, because often on tests she doesn't give you numbers, so practicing with variables means you won't be thrown off by this on exams. I think Sakai is a great professor who really helped me understand a subject I had no prior knowledge of and was quite intimidated by!

Professor Sakai graded our class on a straight scale, where an 85% is an A-, 80% is B+, and so on. Grades were made up of labs (15%), midterm 1/participation grade (25%), midterm 2/participation grade (25%), final exam (50%). One midterm grade can be replaced with your participation grade which is made up of pre-lecture assignments, homework, clickers, and discussion sections. It's not too hard to get full points on the participation grade, but if you are confident in physics you could just gamble on doing well on the midterms and avoid doing a lot of busy work.

The two midterms are free response, 50 mins long, and in class. I found them to be very straight forward, and Prof Sakai's practice problems and the LA's review worksheets were helpful for the exams. The final was harder in my opinion. It was about twice as long as the midterms, with a multiple choice section and free response questions. The multiple choice questions wasn't too bad, but I found the free response to be a lot more challenging and had questions I had no idea how to solve.

Prof Sakai is a pretty bad lecturer since she gets confused in class and would often ask the students if she was doing a problem correctly. She's a nice person and easygoing, but sooo disorganized. I didn't take physics in high school and I got really frustrated bc of how confusing she is. However, I did well in the class by doing a lot of practice problems and going over lecture slides. If you are confident in your ability to learn material without much guidance from a professor, I would recommend taking Sakai since her tests and grading scheme are reasonable.

Like many others, I came into the physics series with no previous experience in high school, so I was pretty nervous. However, Dr. Sakai's class is very easy even with no prior knowledge. She can be a little disorganized during lectures, and sometimes her math will be incorrect unless you point it out. Despite this, I was pretty grateful to have taken 5A with her. Her exams (there are 5) are pretty much the same difficulty as the practice exams, but they are by no means carbon-copy questions. You still have to have a good grasp of the concepts and math, but it's completely doable. Having an exam every 2 weeks might not sound very appealing, but they're not cumulative, which takes some of the pressure off. This was a class I was able to have on the back-burner while taking CHEM 14D and an upper div, so you will be okay!! Sakai herself is very sweet and friendly, so don't be afraid to go to her OHs if you don't understand concepts.

I was rather nervous about starting the 5 series because I had a hard time in AP Physics during high school. But having that extra background actually made 5A a lot easer for me. Sakai is super nice and a decent lecturer. She's unorganized at times but she definitely cares about her students. Our grade consisted of four 1-hour tests (no additional midterm or final), weekly discussion worksheets, labs, and homework on Mastering Physics. For tests, we got 24 hours to do a one hour test. They weren't too difficult in my opinion and the amount of time given helps a lot. We were also allowed to drop one test which was really nice of her. The labs are rather time consuming and pretty annoying but not too bad once you get used to the tracking app. Workload is minimal. Homework is graded on accuracy and some problems are challenging but she allows 3 tries for you to get the correct answer. Overall, it's a doable class. Sakai not super engaging as a lecturer but will teach you what you need to know.

Dr. Sakai makes sure that concepts are well understood during class time, working through a lot of problems during lecture. At times, it may feel like she over-explained stuff, but it became super helpful when mastering the concepts themselves.

Sakai is a very nice professor and cares about her students. For Fall, she allowed us to drop one of our midterms because she wanted us to learn rather than worry about grades all the time. The workload is a lot because there are labs, homework, and discussion, but it wasn't terrible as long as you organize your time well. Some of the homework was difficult, but there are similar problems in the textbook and examples that help! She was also really nice and had additional OH for those without physics experience. I found that her midterms were really fair since they were 24 hours and open notes and they reflected the homework but much more conceptual. A lot of my peers found themselves getting points taken off for not showing their work entirely, so make sure to show all steps to get full credit and you'll be fine! She is honestly one of the better Physics 5A professors and I recommend her!

Sakai was a decent lecturer but there is a limit to how engaging she can get using the textbook's slides. If you go to her during office hours shes much more engaging and willing to help out. The labs for this class are just annoying but you can easily fish the answers from your TAs/LAs. As for the class itself, she really tried to make the tests fair and they are very easy if you prepare. The tests are pretty similar to the practice questions she gives. The discussions are cool, you do a worksheet, check answers and leave. You can get out in like 20 minutes early if you time. Clickers btw, pretty annoying.

Physics itself is a hard topic, so this class is definitely not a walk in the park. Sakai is very enthusiastic about the topic, but sometimes she tends to confuse herself in lecture and doesn't seem to pace herself well. However, she does her best to make herself available to students and help them. She also holds very useful problem solving sessions, so even though the lectures might be confusing, there are plenty of ways to get help on understanding the material. The midterms and the final were fair, and did not contain anything surprising. I enjoyed this class!

Professor Sakai was a very nice lady, but a bad professor (at least for me). She gets so confused that eventually she starts giving chocolate if you correct her. For someone who did not take physics in high school this was a terrible class, because not even her could figure her own problems sometimes. I'm sure that if you feel comfortable in physics she's fine.

Sakai is a somewhat disorganized lecturer, but I did find that the clicker questions from lecture were helpful for exams. Both of the midterms were very straightforward and not too difficult, but I found the final to be a huge jump in difficulty. I got an A+ on both midterms but a D on the final, which brought my overall grade down quite a bit.

The labs are graded on completion and are very simple. There was a pre-lab (due 1 hour before lab) and post-lab (due 48 hours after lab) for every section, both turned in through Gradescope. In discussion sections, we got a worksheet every week that was only available if you attended section, and were due at the end of the week on Gradescope. The worksheets are also graded on completion. There were also weekly homework assignments (15-20 problems) and pre-lecture assignments on MasteringPhysics, so you need the online textbook access code.

Overall, this class isn't bad at all as long as you keep up with understanding the homework. The only difficult part of the class was the final, in my opinion.