I love Corbin, and chose to take him again for 1C. He's literally Jeff Bridges. Super laid back and fun, but also an incredible lecturer. He explains concepts better than anyone else, and takes the time to make sure you understand everything fully. That being said, his tests are incredibly difficult; I got a 17% on the second midterm. He frames exams as "an opportunity to learn from your mistakes," and purposefully makes it nearly impossible to do well. Everyone does poorly on them though so it'll be fine; my 17% got me a B. I highly highly highly recommend taking Corbin for every class you possibly can.

Like all reviews say, Corbin knows what he's talking about. Great lecturer as well, and often funny. His midterms were tight on time, so you have to be prepared because you don't have much time to waste remembering equations and stuff. The final was a lot longer, but more time per question which allowed for more thinking. Overall, his exams are very difficult, although there are parts which are straightforward, so make sure you don't miss those. I didn't think I did well at all, but I ended up with a B, so not too bad.

Cool professor, lovable homie.

This guy destroys my interest in physics. Don't take him.

Corbin is that professor everyone tells you to take because he gives you a great, solid foundation in physics, and he's a fantastic lecturer.

Unfortunately, I didn't really like his lecturing style and felt that he was a big arrogant at times. Nevertheless, he does cover a lot of material and make it all make sense in some ways, but never enough for midterms and finals.

It's expected to get low scores on midterms and finals, but honestly if you know a few things pretty well, you're guaranteed to average. But I felt that 90% of students (me included) were essentially trained to aim for partial credit and not really care about getting actual answers right.

Overall not a terrible instructor but just not the right professor for me. Nothing against Corbin or students who like him.

Seriously one of the best professors I've ever had. Genuinely interested in student learning and very approachable. Make sure you go to his office hours.

This man is the best physics professor I ever met, and I am glad to see every review on this page so far agrees with me.

I took Corbin after having inadvertently sat through his 1B lecture by mistake during Winter (when I was still in 1A), and realizing he was the man I wanted for 1B. Why? Well, for a start, his lectures are phenomenal. That's a bland qualifier, though, so let me be more specific: this man is not afraid of using his head. He does not shy away from mathematics proper (something I have seen far too many otherwise well-meaning professors do, not realizing just how detrimental it is in the long run), and does not believe that a physicist is a human calculator (something I gladly welcome; physics is not arithmetic or ridiculous computation, and anybody who thinks it is is severely mistaken).

In that vein, you will rarely, if ever, see him perform a calculation. What Corbin specializes in, and what makes him superior to many other professors, are derivations. Nor will these be ordinary derivations. For his final lecture in Spring, Corbin went so far as to derive the exact rate of precession for a charged sphere oscillating at an angular velocity around its axis in a magnetic field (which sounds complicated at first, but Corbin roots it completely in everything you've learnt over the quarter, so that when you see it, you'll kick yourself for not having thought of it sooner.)

Here's a list of what makes his classes unique:

1) He knows more than the book. He is not one of those professors who copies things wholesale from the text and proceeds to do exactly what's in it. Corbin teaches upper divs as well as graduate classes, and in his younger days worked at FermiLab, only the world's premier particle physics institute after CERN, and he brings all that knowledge to bear on the 1 series. He will correct the book on several occasions, teach you advanced stuff, and he will - I promise you this - make you like it, in part because he can actually make you understand and use it by yourself without too much help.

2) Corbin advocates self-sufficiency. He is one of those teachers who will go well and beyond the call of duty to make sure you understand what you're doing (he once let a struggling student actually bunk in his office in the days before the final to avoid distractions from studying), but his main intent and goal is to get you to the point where you could surpass even him. When discussing how to prepare for his midterms, he will ask you to go over your notes, and derive the equations firsthand for yourself. (I went even further, and came up with my own problems - it's really good practice, and will help you loads). He believes in this so much he even made the homework strictly optional: a lot of hard questions, and they're all upto you to do them - Corbin will grade you on the finals and the midterms only. Corbin also believes mathematics was invented for physics, and so it's physical intuition you need to hone - understand what's going on, and the math will work itself out, is what he always says.

3) Corbin is not, contrary to what everybody on this page claims, hard. If you actually go through his old midterms, you will be a little surprised to find they are all actually pretty straightforward - a standard Corbin problem merits no more than three lines of a solution (and if you think I'm joking, the solutions he hands out actually are just that long - that they also make complete sense simultaneously is simply proof that the difficulty of Corbin's problems are exaggerated).

What makes Corbin legendary for his midterms are a combination of factors: the time limit (fifty minutes is just not enough to solve three Corbin questions), the fact that they test more than one concept (including quite a bit of your math - Corbin is particularly fond of Taylor series, and will have you employ them where you can), that he likes pushing you into unfamiliar ground (on his final, he asked us about semiconductor devices, something which we had never covered) while making you realise just how much of it is actually familiar (on the same question, he asked us nothing about semiconductors, but only gave us certain properties and asked us to work out directly from these properties the effect it would have on the rest of the circuit), and finally, that they're just completely new. It takes skill to solve a completely new problem, one you couldn't have imagined in your wildest dreams, in just fifty minutes. By way of comparison, if all you've ever learned is Euclidean geometry and trigonometry, you're going to have no clue what to do when you have to solve for things on the surface of a sphere, even though everything about such a problem can be solved using Euclidean geometry and trigonometry (no joke, that's how Carl Gauss, the greatest mathematician who ever lived, did it at the tender age of sixteen). Simply put, Corbin is different, not hard, and won't have you go through the material you've already covered and memorized and could do in your sleep if he can help it.

4) Corbin is awesome at teaching. There simply is no other way to put it. Corbin is a man who likes stories, and for his part is an incredibly talented raconteur: no class goes by without him at least once bursting into some episode from his life that will make you laugh, and simultaneously cherish what he's teaching you. He makes those equations come to life, mainly because he is quite literally deriving them right there (no notes, occasionally from memory, but mostly just making things up as he goes along), and by telling you these amazing stories about the objects his equations describe that will make you in parts gasp, flinch and simply be left spellbound. There is magic to these objects, not rote - a certain splendor and sheer grandeur that many other professors seem to leave out. For this one ability alone, I rank Corbin above every teacher you might possibly meet in the Physics department.

5) He cares about his students. He is one of the few professors who holds office hours four out of five days of the week, responds to every email promptly and with incredible detail, tries to get to know them all, will never short-serve you on information, and will always, always, respond to your questions. Speak up in his classes; it's good for you.

6) His demo days are epic. Do not miss a single one: he showcases really cool stuff, and will do things you thought they only did in Hollywood.

7) Office hours are special. You can ask for help on homework problems if you want, but he likes using them to go beyond the stuff in the classroom. Expect to see problems beyond the standard of the textbook, and sometimes several days ahead of his own lectures. Also, pipe up with good questions.

And that's really all you need to know. Your only problem may be that Corbin is immensely popular - lines stretch from his office to the entrance of the building sometimes, and his office hours are packed with people, making it hard to get a one-on-one session with him. He also knows when he has a really good TA with him. This TA will be your lifeline. Also, he - rarely, but still there - makes statements that sound confusing and mystical ('Energy is conserved, except when it's not!'), and - still more rarely, but nevertheless - this can get in the way of seeing what he means, for a short while. Lastly, Corbin is a ribald man: don't be put off if he curses or describes how he comes to create midterm problems in a haze of drunken bleariness. That's just the way he is: a man of personality.

I had Corbin for 1A, 1B, and 1C. He's easily one of the best instructors I've ever had at UCLA.

Take Corbin if you REALLY want to learn physics. If you're looking for an easy A that can be obtained by memorizing a ton of equations and spitting them out on a test, then you should look elsewhere.

His tests tend to have low averages, but they really test if you know the material well or not. They tend to test deeper concepts, instead of just facts or simplistic examples. For instance, his lecture might discuss a simple mass on a spring for oscillations. The homework might ask about two springs attached to a mass. While his exam will go the next step, and ask about the movement of charge in an RLC circuit. While initially one would think that a circuit has nothing to do with mass and springs, upon further analysis the charge is oscillating in the circuit.

His lectures are pretty good. He's reasonably entertaining; he makes a few puns here and there with varying humor rating. He introduces the material in a pretty logical fashion and he's pretty enthusiastic about the material. But most importantly he actually does the derivations on the spot. (Although occasionally he refers to his notes). He'll describe his thought processes out loud which makes it easier to understand what an equation actually means. Other instructors I've had do some textbook-like derivation with some lame examples that don't really give a good taste what an equation means, and what it can do.

He's got OH 4 times a week if you are confused. They're pretty helpful, as he'll try and sort out misconceptions you may have, and he'll also give out some other cool examples that are actually pretty interesting/pragmatic. Corbin is also pretty chill by nature, so it shouldn't be too difficult to ask him questions. Even if it's really really stupid (read: trivial), because I've asked him a boatload of "stupid" questions.

If you're an EE, you should really take this guy's 1B course. It'll actually teach you electrostatics pretty damn well if you put the time and effort into it. So much so, that EE1 becomes a "joke" compared to 1B.

As far as grades go, Corbin is one of the more difficult instructors at UCLA, but he's also not draconic in his grading policy. He's pretty fair, and understands that sometimes people have crappy testing days. He does give a reasonable amount of As/Bs out (and not too many Cs and lower). As long as you're doing 1 standard deviation+ on all the exams, you should be in the range for an A. (Don't quote me on that). The Final Exam counts the most for the class- if you haven't been doing well on the midterms, then you should be prepping yourself to murder the Final as even with poor midterm scores you can still get an A.

For reference, I managed to get an A in 1A,B,C and I can assure you that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed haha. (Although I think I was lucky in 1C) So it IS possible!

TL;DR
Classic dilemma that a college student faces: do I want an easy A, or do I actually want to learn the material? If you really want to learn, but still want a decent chance at an A (it's not really free) then take Corbin.

Also, for entertainment purposes, you should ask him about the Color Conspiracy of Muppets.

Take him, take him, take him. I had Corbin for 1A and 1B, and he's easily one of the best teachers I've ever had. Yes, his class is hard. Yes, his tests regularly have averages in the ballpark of 30/90. But you should still take his class. Why? You'll learn. Corbin forces you to actually learn physics, so memorizing formulas and plug-and-chugging won't get you anywhere. He'll help you figure out how to approach problems, and how to really think about the concepts behind what you're doing.

Choosing whether or not to enroll in Corbin's class really boils down to why you're in college. Are you here to take easy classes and get straight A's, or are you here to challenge yourself to the point where you can get the most out of your time here? That was a shamelessly condescending question, but that's how I see it. I don't have the greatest grades, but I've made sure to take some of the best teachers I can at UCLA. And honestly, if you put the time into this class, you can definitely get an A. I didn't study as much as I should have because I focused on other classes, and I got a B in 1A, and a B+ in 1B.

On a completely unrelated-to-grades note, Corbin is super chill and nice, looks like Jeff Bridges, and would be a great person to drink whiskey with if the legal drinking age was 18.

Corbin is an amazing professor who actually teaches you the material and makes you think about how to solve a problem, as opposed to other professors who give you problems straight out of the textbook. Yes, his tests will make you feel like you failed miserably, but don't worry, he gives A LOT of partial credit and curves massively. I scored 1 standard deviation above average on every test and ended up with an A.