I had to go to the hospital for heart problems because of this class, no joke. I ended up having heart palpitations from the amount of anxiety and stress I had throughout the quarter. It is definitely the hardest subject I've taken so far, but I think surviving triple V is a rite of passage for many students. I am now confident that I can survive any other physics course, except perhaps another class with Vladimir. However, this class will really reveal who are the strongest and hardest working students. In my personal case I learned where my weaknesses are when it came to studying and I am confident going ahead taking future physics courses.

I do not necessarily believe that you need to be super smart to survive this class, you just need to have a EXTREMELY high level of endurance and willpower for this class, especially towards the end of the quarter. His lectures are very good and clear but they are DENSE and move VERY fast. After two years of experience in UCLA, I found that silent lectures generally mean students are lost, and this occurred nearly every day in his class because he moves quickly. He covers nearly every word of the chapters he is supposed to cover and goes above and beyond that, especially when you get to special theory of relativity. The book is absolutely essential. He covered Marion/Thornton VERY closely, although he would occasionally use Taylor since it is very similar. He mentions Landau/Lifshitz in the beginning and he does utilize them here there and it is a beautiful book if you managed to learn how to work through it, although it is a graduate level text. You can find that one for free online. WHEN YOU GET TO SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY, HE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY USES LANDAU. The book is called"The Classical Theory of Fields", it is volume two in the course.

Here is how to survive this man. Seriously attempt every single extra credit question on the homework. This is quintessential to survive, so much so that if you had to do only one question it should be the extra credit question. When you get to later problem sets the amount of extra credit you can get is absolutely ridiculous. On one problem set I managed to get a 21/12 on it and throughout the course there was always at least one student that managed to get 200%'s on the sets. Mathematica can be up to 5%, so in my experience I managed to get about a full 10%+ extra credit to survive and jump up an entire letter grade based on his scheme.

The problem sets are fucking brutal. The first problem set is "easy" if you already know tensor calculus, but almost everyone certainly did not, so make sure to get help ASAP if you don't know summation notation yet. The next 8 problem sets are excruciatingly brutal and required significant help from the TA and classmates. We got lucky this quarter with Andrea who was a brilliant TA, but ideally you start working on them ASAP and work through the book. I would stay up till 4 AM probably twice a week working on the problem sets and then proceed to go to lecture and it did not do good things to my health. Make sure to check every book if the question is there. He pulls from Marion a lot but he also pulled a couple from Taylor and some questions were similar to Landau.

His tests are wild. He does not expect you to finish, you do not have time to think and he grades heavily on the curve, so on the exams you are actively competing against the rest of your classmates to be on top. He will tell you what is on the exams but to even get ONE question you need to REALLY understand the topic. I hope you got really good at practicing Lagrangian mechanics from 105A because those were the only questions I managed to get on the first two midterms. If he tells you "it will be similar to something on the problem set" it will be extremely similar and study the shit out of it. For the love of god, make sure to go to the final review session that he gives you at the end of the quarter. Our final exam was very similar to the stuff he was doing in that review session, although it didn't stop us from getting massacred on that test.

I can't even be mad at the guy because he is so nice. His grading scheme is ridiculously generous and he's always willing to try and make time to talk to you. I ended up meeting him outside of OH and class after doing extremely poorly on the first midterm and he was super helpful. I think my main problem with him is that he didn't make enough time for us outside of class and he is extremely busy. He only had 1 office hour a week and traveled frequently. Don't be discouraged, I did poorly in the beginning but still pulled through with an A+.

I get why people who like physics are giving him good ratings because Professor Vassiliev is very nice and wants us to understand maths and much more than what is necessary for this course.

And I would agree if it wasn't for what he did at the end of the quarter... Vassiliev saw that our median grade was 101.75/100 for our 3rd exam and guess what, my man decided to increase the maximum score to 145 so that our median for this exam is 70% (so that it is equal to the median of the first 2 exams)

No matter how well we perform, he just has to curve us to get a grade as bad as the grade we got in the past. I don't think this is reasonable at all.

To be honest. I taught myself this whole class with the university physics textbook. I also survived with the help of the physics department office hours.

Also, shout out to Paokuan chin for being the best physics 1b ta.

VVV is a really nice guy but often his lectures are not helpful because they have a ton of writing on them and are overwhelming. Go to lecture if you want, but I often felt mentally dead after each of his lectures. It does help to read the textbook before you go to lecture. He likes to go into the microscopic details in this class, and his lectures often focus on that. dont go to his office hours go to the ta. he won't really answer your question but rather explain the answer in a more difficult way or not understand it and give an answer you are not looking for.

Start the hw early. it. is . long. VVV assigns a ton of problems with multiple parts for homework.

prepare to get annihilated by his tests. they are hard... he has a nice curve on the grade distribution that is predetermined but he can (and did) downcurve tests if the entire class does too well. On tests he will often provide extra credit problems so that you can get more points, but the tests are long there are often 5 or 6 questions with multiple parts.

VVV was not fun. I watched all of his lectures but his understanding of physics is so deep that it honestly felt like he transcended reality and entered a world where all of the differential equations in physics were connected and beautiful. He's obsessed with showing derivations, but this is still an intro class and we don't have enough of a surface level understanding of the concept to even start to understand the derivations behind them.

The built in curve was nice, but then his idea to down curve the final after releasing the scores and getting all the students' hopes up was kinda messed up. It didn't affect me, but I feel bad for all my classmates who got destroyed by the 45 extra credit points being taken away.

I was spending at least two dedicated days a week just to finish the homework, because the homework was really difficult for me personally, but there was a lot of extra credit that really boosted my grade so I can't complain.

Lectures: Vladmir is one of the physics professors that loves going through derivations, math, and trying to bring extraneous topics into the class. This can be good if you plan on getting a deep understanding of physics, but for a lot of people who do not have a strong background or intend on taking much more physics, it can be very confusing. I started the quarter rereading slides and derivations and then I realized I really didn't need to and just started accepting things as true.
He was always trying to get students to ask questions, but lowkey I felt like most people were kinda too lost to ask most days. My brain started turning off after the first hour. He would sometimes go over similar questions to those on tests in lectures though, so they are still worth going to.

HW: Standard Pearson Mastering Physics problems. He usually has a decent amount of extra credit problems, making it pretty easy to get 120-140% on hw assignments.

Tests: Tend to be very long and not intended to be finished in the time allotted. They tend to be decently difficult and apply knowledge in a way that isn't very similar to the hw. On the flip side, there was a ludicrous amount of extra credit. There were always a few people that got >100% on tests and on the final it was technically possible to get 200% if I remember correctly. Tests averaged around 70-something%, which was a B+ for his grading scale.

Grading: Generous grading scheme, with 100-90 being an A, 90-80 A-, 80-70 B+, 70-60 B, etc.

Other notes: Moved final to last day of class which was annoying, but it seems like a lot of professors are doing something similar for COVID. If you haven't taken physics before, aim for getting as much partial credit as possible rather than trying to get 100% on every question you attempt.

Overall: This was the first class that scared me at UCLA, but would take again.

Vlad is a kind-hearted old man who is undoubtedly a genius but lacks a few basic but critical skills to make this class manageable. His accent is definitely a factor to consider because at 8am he is unintelligible without 110% focus, which I often could not muster. The real kicker however was that the slides and formula were PREWRITTEN AND NOT DERIVED LIVE. No other math or science class that I've taken has ever had every formula prewritten and not allowed students to derive along with the professor. This makes it extremely difficult to remain engaged - instead of following along with the lecture, we would have to copy down the lecture frantically while Vlad rambled in the background.
The demonstrations that supposedly make mechanics interesting were mediocre at best, although that had more to do with faulty equipment than it did with Vlad's teaching. The tests were difficult but also closely rooted in textbook problems and curved somewhat generously with extra credit opportunities, so in theory they should have been approachable to a well-prepared student. The worked out solutions to homework problems would make a huge difference - I found them in week 8 but they would have greatly enhanced my understanding if they had been outright provided instead of pirated independently.

Overall, as far as Physics 1A goes Professor VVV is certainly not the worst possible options. He means well and wants his students to succeed because he is passionate about physics. Unfortunately, his inability to deliver lectures in a meaningful or engaging way is his one downfall, but thanks to my AP physics background I was able to skate by.

Vladmir is both a great person and great teacher. Once you get past his heavy accent, he is a good lecturer. The class content is not very difficult especially if you took AP Physics. I will say his tests are very difficult and the class average are typically around 50% but if you pay attention in class and don't cheat on the homework its very manageable to get well above that. Vladmir's grading scale is very generous and he will most likely curve the exams tremendously.

Avoid VVV under any circumstances to save yourself from 10-week torture. His class would take 3 times the effort devoted to average physics courses.

decent professor, not very good at explaining though...

I know a lot of people are disgruntled by this class and his grading plans, but I'd like to offer a contrasting point of view. TLDR: Even though the lectures are confusing and mathematically rigorous, he doesn't expect advanced knowledge in tests and makes questions of a reasonable difficulty.

VVV loves Physics. He clearly has a passion that he wants to share with the class and does so by explaining the derivations behind various formulae we use. If you're a math or physics major, you'll enjoy learning about the theory and will be well prepared for a few advanced concepts. However, if this is your first look at these concepts and you don't enjoy differential equations, it will not be a fun quarter. Most first / second years don't have the background to appreciate the depth of the theory he goes into, which he is aware of. He keeps mentioning that some slides are geared towards advanced students, the topics of which only appear in extra credit questions.

The homework was reasonable. It took a lot longer than I expected (usually 7+ hours a week), but he gives a lot of extra credit on homework (my final homework score was 130%). The questions are based on the textbook mostly, with the EC questions usually requiring the concepts he taught in class. Even though EC is optional, I URGE YOU to do as much as you can to make up for bad scores elsewhere.

On the other hand, the exams were hard. The first two midterms were definitely challenging and beyond the homework questions we had previously covered. The final was slightly easier, but he curved it downwards because of student performance. I think that if he provided sample exam questions it would go a long way towards helping the class.

Lastly, his curve was really generous, which makes up for the hard quarter. 100% was A+, 90 was A, 80 was A- and so on. He curved the final to slightly more than a B+ average, which isn't unreasonable for a lower div physics course. All in all, be prepared to put in the work and spend hours struggling to understand, but getting a B+ or above is a reasonable goal. If you are mathematically inclined or good at 32A/B content, an A is definitely attainable!