Let me be clear, Dr. Bauer is who you should take physics with if you have struggled in the past. He makes everything simple in his lectures, and then it is up to you to practice. The material is not too bad, and weekly quizzes (8) are challenging but not anything unfair by any means.

A lot of people were unhappy this quarter that he assigned a paper due on finals week along with our regular final, but other than that, the workload is not much besides studying. He is a chill dude, take him if you can!

Dr. Bauer is extremely helpful and accommodating as a professor! He always asked for input from the class and wanted students to succeed. He's very active on Campuswire by answering questions and makes lectures easy to understand. The quizzes and final were fair and similar to the homework and practice problems we were assigned. I had a stronger conceptual understanding of the topics than I did in high school because Dr. Bauer explained them very clearly. Even if you don't enjoy physics, the class is very doable. I highly recommend taking 5A with Bauer!

I hated physics in high school but Bauer made it very manageable. He was super accommodating to everyone's requests and overall he's just a really great guy. Definitely recommend him for any physics class!

If you need to take this class, take it with Professor Bauer! The class consisted of weekly mastering homework assignments, weekly labs (no pre-labs!), four quizzes with the lowest being dropped, one midterm, and the final. All of his lectures were recorded beforehand but he would livestream them on zoom and allow us to ask questions in the chat which he would answer while lecture was playing which I thought was really efficient. His lectures are straightforward and easy to understand. If you have any questions, Bauer was extremely active on campuswire as was the rest of the class and we would usually get responses in around an hour. The quizzes were also very straightforward if you had been paying attention in class and following the homework. He didn't use any numbers and we had to write out answers in terms of variables which ended up being really nice due to the home-testing situation; we were less likely to make dumb calculator mistakes. Lastly, Bauer gave us an optional final which was really nice and he scaled the rest of the class to be worth more if you opted out (he even made the last homework extra credit). Even though I didn't take the final, I have never learned more in a single class. All in all, Bauer was such a caring professor and I 100% recommend him if you want to learn and do well.

Thanks to COVID I never had to see Nick in person, because trust me I would not get near a 6ft radius of this man (not even just because of the social distancing guidelines). This man is rude. He grades unfairly and honestly lets hope he never ends up being your TA because he will just count you off points for absolutely nothing. I hope he does not intend on being any sort of teacher in the future because not only can he not teach, but hes not approachable. He was my TA and honestly made discussion sections far more confusing than they are supposed to be. How, oh how, did UCLA allow you to be a TA. BUT:Do take Dr. Bauer, he was one of the kindest and most responsive professors I've ever had. Legend.

I actually took him for 5A summer 2020 session A (taking him for 5B rn as well) I thought he was amazing. He made physics clear. I absolutely hated physics from high school, and I attempted to take this class with another prof the quarter before for a week but that prof was ridiculously confusing. I'm so glad I dropped then and took it with Dr. Bauer. Not only did he make things super simple and clear, he was also extremely understanding given it was a pandemic. He always considered students request, and he did his best to accommodate. All you really had to do was put effort in and you could easily get an A with no problem.

Break down:

5 quizzes (lowest dropped) 20% (I found them super easy and similar to hw and textbook problems (literally if you just did the problems you were fine idk why other people always were tripping over his quizzes))
3 Free Responses 20% (lowest dropped) as long as you put effort in, you were given a 90% for sure, and if you got it correct then you would get 100
Mastering Physics HW 15% due every week the day before the quiz at 11:59pm (pretty easy not too bad max 2 hours a week)
Discussion 10% (you can miss 2 discussions) attendance is mandatory, worksheet graded on completion
Lab 15% lab is completely separate from dr. bauer, but shout out to JOSH!!! Best Ta ever, hella chill, hella understanding
Final Exam 20%, was definitely tougher than his quizzes, but still pretty decent, did take me the whole three hours tho

Selling high-scoring labs at a cheap price! Makes the class much more bearable. Email me at uclabruinslove@gmail.com

Bauer is a great professor and he made a hard subject super manageable. He's an easy grader and really generous with points.

I actually had Physics 4BL with David Bauer, but he is by far the best TA I've had for any physics class. Most of the time I sent him an email, he replied within the same day, sometimes within an hour. Also, his grading is actually fair and reasonable. For 4AL, I had Eric Kramer, who was nice enough but his grading was absurd. If you want a good grade on your lab with Kramer, you HAVE to finish it early, go to his office hours, and let him correct it for you. I had a conflict with his office hours, so I missed out on this one-on-one correction. I was only marked down on the actual content of my lab maybe once or twice; a majority of what I was marked down for was "incorrect line spacing" or "not enough tick marks on the graph". I ended up with a B- because Kramer didn't like the style of my reports. This is why Bauer is MUCH better. For one, he provided us with a style guide to follow, thus avoiding these issues in the first place. Also, whenever I asked him about the formatting issues, he response was typically "___ is what you should do, but I won't mark you down for something minor." Long story short, 4AL and 4BL are difficult classes, expect to spend about 8 hours a week on your lab report, but if you have a chance to take it with Bauer, do it.

Physics is really hard for me but Bauer was a good professor to take it with, everything was straightforward in his class and his quizzes and tests were appropriately difficult. I felt challenged but not stressed and I learned a lot more about physics.