Naoz is a very caring and fair professor. But, she is not a very good lecturer. She likes to do a lot of proofs on the board but skips a lot of steps or context in between, leaving me too bogged down by math to learn the actual physics behind it. You will have to self study and go to your TA's office hours to understand what is happening in this class.

However, she is very fair with her tests and she makes it clear what she expects. She does not test on concepts just recently taught and provides practice problems so you know what type of questions to expect. I would take another class with her solely because she is very careful with the level of difficulty of her tests to make them doable, and easier, than the problem sets.

Also, don't procrastinate the mathematica labs. Actually try to do them weekly. You don't NEED to go to the lab sessions as long as you study the virtual labs well. They are free points that many people won't even end up doing cause they wait till the end.

Great professor, really cares about students. Very interesting class, is a little hard to read her handwriting but tests are really easy and most people get very good grades. shes great.

I was really intimidated by this class (first upper division physics class moment), but having Smadar as my professor made the entire experience much better. She emphasizes a really good mindset towards physics - that struggling doesn't mean you're failing, that nobody is born with an inherent ability to do physics, that "intuition" is learned and something anybody can do.

You can tell that she truly cares about her students and their success. I couldn't make her office hour time, but sent an email with questions about lecture one day, and she took the time to not only answer my email, but discuss the questions during the next lecture.

The homework felt fair - I always could tell exactly how it was connected to the material we learned in class - but it also took a large amount of time each week. I really, really recommend working on the problem sets with other people from your class. Bouncing ideas off of others and working together was the only way I made it through some of those later week homework sets.

The midterms & final were also very fair, with no trick questions. The optional mathematica lab does require some extra time commitment, but the 15% extra credit was heavenly.

Overall, highly recommend this class with Prof Naoz!

Professor Naoz is the best professor I have had at UCLA. She is not only a great person who genuinely cares about her students learning but she also has very planned out lectures that are very clear and understandable with time for practice questions that keep everyone engaged and she really encouraged making friends in the class. The homework was very manageable and related to lectures and the tests were very similar to in class problems and practices she posted on line before. Overall, I definitely recommend taking a class with profesor naoz.

One of the best professors I've had here at UCLA. Professor Naoz is incredibly kind and has many interesting insights about mechanics that made this class super interesting to me. Her homework can be tough but she is more than happy to help in office hours, and if you understand it you should be more than ready to go for the exams, which are incredibly fair. I'd recommend taking a class with her 1000 times over.