Terrible class with a draconic grading policy. Points are taken off at random and your experience is solely determined by your TA. The professor is an a**hole and never shows up at all. Take this over the summer or when you have easy classes as it will eat up all your time.

This class is the worst class and the professor does not even make a appearance why is he even listed as a professor for this class. Why is he allowed to disguise this class as two units. This class is single handedly the worst class that anybody needs to take. This class should be taken out as requirement because it is waste of time both because of its content and the way the professor designed its structure. Horrible class

This is an annoying requirment for engineering students. Start your labs early and look at old ones to succeed. Lab is somewhat intersting but the reports are tedious and graded exessively hard.

Everything said before me is true; this class absolutely blows. Every engineering major has to suck it up and take this course, which is horrible, but there are some pros. First, there’s no new material, and the labs are really easy, even fun at times. You’ll become a pro at Excel! However, it still sucks. Curving a 20 person class is horrible, and the lab reports take an excruciating amount of time. Points are deducted seemingly at random! However, they’re not random, as they’re almost all for good reason, even if they’re nitpicky, such as not centering an image completely. However, they’re good tips for making really nice lab reports by the time you’re done. I wrote 75 pages for my reports for this class (single spaced), with the last lab coming in at 20 pages, and almost every one coming in at 10+ pages. I hope you like formatting really easy, tedious work in a beautiful manner!

As for my personal experience, this class wasn't THAT bad. I mean, sure the reports sucked, but they're not difficult, they're just time consuming. Plus, I really liked my TA. He was pretty cool, and would basically just tell us what to do in labs whenever we got stuck. He just seemed like a cool dude, and luckily, I was in one of his favorite groups, so he seemed to go a little easier on grading with my group (or my group just tried really hard). Did I really learn something? No, not really, but lab classes are supposed to be applications of material you already learned, so I had no problem with that. Plus, as long as you read the text before hand, the labs are really quick, probably an hour tops (the last labs take the full 3 hours though). So yeah, it sucks considering it's 2 units and you put so much work into it, but like a lot of classes at UCLA, it's very TA dependent. So just hope you get a good TA, that's really it. Is my perspective skewed because I got an A+ in the class? Yes, absolutely. But all of these reviews are skewed accordingly. So take everything with a grain of salt, and listen to all of these really long reviews from people who really want to give a full impression, like me! Thanks!

TIPS FOR SUCCESS!
Go to office hours and become friends with your TA. Grading is subjective, and if your TA likes you, then sometimes they let some of these small things slip by, which is good, because these small points differentiate your grade from your classmates’. Take this class at an absolute horrible time, either really late at night or at an odd quarter. Basically, think of the section that won’t have all of the try hards. Also, only take this class with one of your friends so that you can compare lab reports and have someone to do the horrible labs with, but don’t have too many friends because you want the curve to be in your favor (OR stack the class with your slacker friends lol). It’s also a lot easier to do this class in the summer when you have less commitments, and even though there’s a three day deadline for each lab report, I always finished in one or two days, and there was almost always an extension. TLDR suck up to your TA so they grade you nicely and hope you get a lab full of students who don’t care and will have their points deducted. Best of luck! Sorry you have to go through this! Also, I don’t know if this is right or not, but get a TA with the most sections. That way, you won’t be competing against 20 people, but 40 or 60 people. It’s a lot easier to do well when you have more people to bump you up in percentile. I’m not sure if this affects the overall grading distribution, but try anything that works in your favor!

This class is ass.

Objectively worst class I've ever taken in my life. The TA grades you on things you possibly can't know (ie centering charts, or your text is too large, or your lab report has gaps that are too large). You almost feel bad cause it's the terrible professor making the TA grade so harshly. Overall, this class is spitting in the face of UCLA's physics department and should be reevaluated/removed entirely. You will not learn anything.

I am still wondering why this class still exists in UCLA. It is a joke. Professor never shows up and tells TAs to do whatever they want. That means, they could deduct tons of points from your carefully-arranged, scrutinized, pages-long lab reports, and you cannot even argue with them because they are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Although many of the times they act ridiculous. And if you are lucky enough to have a TA like the one I got, who could not even clearly express her ideas and doesn't reply to your email until deadline passes, there you go. I LITERALLY DID NOT LEARN ANYTHING USEFUL EXCEPT FOR SOME PATHETIC FORMATS AND EXCEL SKILLS. Good luck. I'd certainly celebrate if the physics department takes down this class. Shame on you, a physics lab but has nothing to do with real physics.

The professor is a sick sociopath. The lab reports which may well be over 20 pages are due the third day from each lab (at least in summer). I was knocked out by heat stroke and had a nosebleed, consequently I submitted a report 1 day late. The TA wanted to give me at least some partial points, but the professor instructed her to give me a 0 even though I had a verifiable doctor's note.

Oh, he also instructed the TA to bring the average of my section down because this section was, and I quote, "scoring too well".

Perfect example of why monopolies are bad. With only one professor teaching this course that's requisite for many, he can do absolutely anything he likes. There's no standard to compare him against, no alternatives, no threat to his reign.

I have taken tough classes (heck I even enjoyed many), I have also taken bad professors, but this class is downright UNFAIR. Everything the other reviews say is true. Word for word. If anything, probably it's only getting worse. But if you're reading this you probably don't have a choice, do you? Lol, goodluck

I lost 10 points in my report due to a pretty silly "mistake" (they can define anything to be a mistake to create an artificial curve) .
Had to drop because this class was ruining my quarter.

Retook it, made sure to correct that mistake. -10 again:-
Why did you do it this way? You were supposed to do this *exactly how I did it last quarter*

Fuck this class, fuck the TAs, fuck the professor (who never shows up btw). Hope this class comes under the probe of academic senate and he pays heavily for it

This class is a blemish on the academic standards of UCLA