First major gripe: Monday's pre-recorded lectures, which are scheduled for 50 minutes on MyUCLA, would sometimes last TWO AND A HALF HOURS; the first week he put in the effort to edit it and condense it down, but then he just gave up and uploaded them at ridiculously long length.

Quizzes: instead of midterms and such, we had weekly timed quizzes on gradescope. Having one every week got overwhelming at times, and they were quite challenging themselves. Difficulty was similar to 5A tests I had with Prof Tung.

Overall not a bad class. These were my only real struggles. A is definitely doable. Samani is a good lecturer and nice person.

Samani is the single best Professor/Teacher I have EVER had. He is a wonderful person and I felt like I had a lot to learn from him, both in terms of Physics and life. He is incredibly down to earth, easy to talk to, and wonderfully clear in his lectures. Going to class was a treat.

100000% I would take another class with him.

BEST PROFESSOR I HAVE HAD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. PERIOD. (u better take him)

TAKE PHYSICS 5A WITH SAMANI! I guarantee you that this will be the one of the best classes you will take, and that Samani will probably be one of the best professors you will ever have.

Samani is very straightforward, gives plenty of examples, and explains topics very thoroughly. As someone who did not take Physics (let alone AP Physics) in high school, Samani did an excellent job at creating an environment in which I can succeed.

The exams are pretty tough, but its because they are meant to gauge whether or not you are LEARNING the material, not MEMORIZING it. The midterms and the final will depict scenarios that are not addressed in lecture, but will build off of the topics and concepts addressed during lecture.

Discussion sections are actually quite helpful, and the worksheets drive you to think of different physical scenarios. (Shoutout to Teresa for being such a great TA)

The labs also do a good job at reinforcing lecture, including how to appropriately use equations to solve for unknown quantities.

Overall, a great (but difficult) class with an awesome professor. 10/10 would recommend. Yuh.

I'm conflicted about this class with Samani. I really enjoy physics so I did not put much effort into the class and still did fine, but I'm not sure I really enjoy the way everything is set up. I liked the group tests for the review purpose, but I absolutely hated that I scored higher on my individual portions and my group basically just relied on me to do the test, thus everyone gets a grade bump except for the people that did really well. Mastering physics was not helpful for homework, honestly just chegg the answers and save yourself the time. I think Samani does a really good job at making the concepts accessible to everyone, but I really miss the mathematical sense and rigor to physics the way he teaches lacks. I feel like I didn't really learn much new or gain some great understanding from the way he teaches, but just relied on my background. In regards to his tests, I do not think they were killer hard: they were fair but we are all used to being babied in other LS classes. They require you to know what is going on and don't leave a ton of room for complete guesswork, but reward you immensely for the process and place little value on getting the actual answer so so long as you vaguely know what to do you will get a large amount of partial credit. I think he provides a lot of opportunities for practice and extra problems. Overall I think he is easy and more than fair, but he takes a lot of the joy and fun out of it by removing the portions that make physics really logical. (we legit never even saw vector brackets like pls samani bring back some of the math)

I thought this class was great! Prof Samani was very accomodating throughout the quarter, and he made his policies very clear from the start. Although I disagree with them (ex. no equation sheet), he was clear from the first day, so people shouldn't be upset about it on the very the last day of class. To be honest, us LS majors couldn't give a rat's ass about physics and learning these equations, but they aren't even that bad to memorize. At most, it was just a minor inconvenience for the final exam if you did not study. As a professor, Samani was great at explaining tricky concepts. He took constant feedback about what the class wanted to do for the quizzes, and he was pretty considerate about student's needs. I switched out of Lancaster's 5B into Samani's 5B and my god was it the best decision I ever made. You can't go wrong with this prof.

You definitely need to work hard in this class to understand the concepts. Instead of a Monday lecture, we have 24-hr timed weekly quizzes over the content we learned. No midterms at all! No homework! I really appreciated this approach as I thought it was way less stressful. The quizzes themselves were pretty straightforward. If you pay attention to his lectures, he pretty much goes over examples that are very similar to the ones of the quizzes. He gives an optional practice packet of questions every week, but I didn't find them helpful while studying. The best thing to do to prepare for the quizzes and finals is to look over the discussion worksheets and the examples he goes over in class.

One thing I wish Samani did differently though was the way he structured his content videos. Instead of Monday lecture, we would have the weekly quizzes. Samani would post a pretty lengthy content video that goes over all of the content for the week, and he spends class time on Wed and Fri talking about specific example questions relating to that week's content. I really liked this format because we got to see what kind of questions he would ask us. However, the content videos would often be 2hrs long, which sucked. Again, the lack of an equation sheet sucked, but it was at most just a minor inconvenience.

Most of the people complaining in these reviews either didn't show up to class, didn't watch his content videos, or just didn't know how to study for his quizzes. Newsflash: Physics is tough! A prof can only do so much for your grade, and there is a very small minority that will use the lack of an equation sheet to justify why they couldn't do well throughout the entire course. His lectuers are more than sufficient to be prepared for the quizzes, which I felt were pretty straightforward. Great class, and if I had to take it again, I would take it with Samani.

Samani overall was a great Professor, in that I learned alot from what he taught, and the way he lectured made me interested in physics. However, do not take this class if you want an essay A. He invests alot of time in this class including posting well-made demos simulations and weekly content videos. The videos were a little long but weren't horrible if you watched at double speed. The weekly quizzes were pretty manageable assuming you went to class and watched the content video. However, they were closed notes so that definitely made them more difficult. While the class isn't easy if you put in the time and work you can defiantly succeed. If you actually want to learn physics would definitely take this class.

He made this class hard again

I think professor Samani is the greatest physics professor I've ever met. Other than teaching physics concepts, he really cares about students' needs. He changed the quiz duration to be much longer than usual in order to reduce students' anxiety on unsuccessful gradescope submission. The difficulty of quizzes and the final is reasonable as long as you follow the lectures carefully and do most of the practice pracket problems. Also, go to his office hour which is really useful! To be honest, as a math major, I spend 60-70% of my time on this physics course, but I think it's worth it. I really enjoy this course because I can feel Samani's passion when teaching it. I'll definitely enroll in other courses of Samani in the future if I had a chance. Take his class if you really want to learn sth!

Samani is a great professor. He is passionate about the subject and has thorough explanations. Many of the people writing poor reviews here likely never showed up to class and/or refused to study for the final.
Surprise! Physics is hard... but as somebody who has had actually bad physics professors in the past I can assure you this is the guy to take. If you show up to class and study for just 15 minutes a week outside of class, you will do great on every quiz and the final. Plus, there are no midterms, which means less stress on you when all your other professors are breathing down your neck weeks 4-7. Look at the grade distribution.