I thought this was a pretty fair class! Niemann very clearly cares about his students and how much you're learning, which I really appreciated and don't always see in my lower division courses.

I thought he was pretty clear in his lectures, the hard part for me is staying engaged as the quarter goes on. Bruincast is helpful for that. He goes through a lot of examples in class, especially some that are nearly the same as what you see on the homework and exams, so definitely try to take them!

He used an interesting grading scheme where the two midterms were worth one "unit" each and the final was worth two "units." Your score on the best 3 out of 4 made up of 75% of your total grade. So he's pretty forgiving if you have to miss a midterm or bomb it. You have a chance at making it up later.

I thought the midterms were pretty doable, but other folks have told me they're on the more challenging side. The first midterm was a little bit too long (I scribbled out an answer on the last question in the last two minutes of class), and he shortened the second midterm after hearing feedback from students. He's super understanding!

Homework and lab are the rest of your grade. They're pretty par for the course if you've taken other physics 5 classes. He uses Kudu instead of Mastering Physics, which I liked a lot better. He's able to write his own questions or something? It's a lot less infuriating than Mastering Physics homework.

Overall, a pretty fair class! The class feels disjointed because there are so many disparate topics in one course, but that's more a problem with the curriculum than this individual class itself. Not my favorite but also not my least favorite. I had a really heavy fall quarter and left this class on the backburner only to do weekly homework and study right before tests and did perfectly well!

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Dr Niemann is one of the best science profs I've had here at ucla! He comes off as very stoic but he really cares about his student & tries his best to help us learn. He makes himself available for soooo many office hours & I recommend going to them because he's really helpful with working out problems. When I took it, the first midterm was difficult & I didn't finish it, but a lot of people didn't finish that midterm & he took that into account & made the second midterm much easier.

For each midterm you're allowed a flashcard for equations & for the final you're allowed a page of paper. The Kudu homework is like mastering physics but better for learning imo. His exam questions are very similar to the practice exams he puts out & the discussion worksheets, & I recommend getting tests from the test bank. And often he'll say what types of questions end up on the exam, either in class or in office hours. For the final he told us explicitly how many problems & which type were each.