Overall Samani is a great man. It's hard to like a physics class and looking back at it this was probably one of my favorite classes at UCLA, content wise. But, a few thoughts. The jump between in class problems and the questions on problem sets is huge. Homework was worth 50% of the grade, which may justify this. If this format continues definitely find a group to work with and the time to dedicate to it - it's doable, but you don't want to waste the easy points. The midterms and final were comparable in difficulty to those problem sets, but felt doable because we received problem set solutions, so could study from them. Nonetheless, I felt like I knew nothing while taking them, and only realized I was ok when I got the grades back. Samani is overall passionate about physics which is visible in every lecture, and he genuinely cares about students, but may seem intimidating.

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Professor Samani is one of the coolest professors I've ever had, in terms of his humor/relatability as well as his ability to teach physics in such an understandable and structured way. He introduces each of his lectures with goals and builds up to the big concepts, allowing for a much better holistic understanding. In terms of class structure, there are PSets due almost every week, which take a lot of time, but I enjoyed some parts of them to be honest. The midterms were 24 hrs for us in Spring 2020, and were very doable! I highly recommend taking this class – it was not only great for my GPA lol but also in terms of my understanding towards 1B material/physics intuition in general!

Really nice guy, really engaging. Really hard work (in a fun way, like solving a puzzle). Forgot about tests, but it seems like everyone did pretty good. Also has some good elevator music intro / breaks.

Professor Samani is probably one of the best professors at UCLA. I took 1B with him during Spring Quarter, the first quarter to start online, and it didn't feel like I missed a lot by not being in a classroom. He made sure to go over every topic thoroughly and used a blackboard to draw/write everything during the lectures. He made sure to allocate time for questions multiple times during the lecture, made the class engaging and explained things extremely well. At least for me, the material of 1B was not the easiest to understand and grasp completely, but Professor Samani really helped in making sure we understood what was going on. The homework problemsets were difficult, and if you can form study groups I highly recommend doing so. They take a while to figure out (I'd recommend doing them in the span of 2-3 days if you have the time since they take a few hours at least) but give you more insight on the topic that is covered during lecture that week, and helped prepare for the midterms and the final. The midterms were very difficult: They took hours ranging into the double digits and very heavily relied on how well you understood each and every aspect of the topics covered. Even then, the answers posted afterwards were very thorough and left almost no room for doubts and extra questions. The final ended up being optional for us, and was much more manageable since we were given a 3 hour time frame. He is very passionate about Physics and very understanding of his students, and if you can take him for 1B I highly recommend you do so. He's one of those professors that really wants you to succeed and makes it worth the difficulty of the material.

Samani was very engaging in lectures, but what he taught was at a much simpler level than what his exams asked of us. That being said, both midterms were very difficult, and I did not even finish the final during the three hour time period. I don't feel like his slides or homework accurately prepared us for the storms that were his exams.

I took this class when it was online so it may have been different, but here is the outline for how Professor Samani ran Physics 5B.

No midterms or finals- HOWEVER, there were weekly quizzes (noncumulative, but is helpful to know previous stuff) that he gave us 1.5 hours for.
They were honestly a bit difficult, but as long as you attend his lectures and do the worksheet, it should be fine. He said himself that he wanted students to feel challenged, but was still able to get it in the end, which he succeeded since that was exactly how I felt. There is also partial credit. I honestly loved this system of constant review, and it was less stressful during midterms and final seasons

no lectures-HOWEVER, he would post a recorded lecture that covers the whole week's material at the beginning of the week. They are on average 2 hours long, but is actually shorter if you speed up the parts where he writes. Instead of lecture, he would hold sessions where he showed us practice problems. These were very helpful for understanding the material and the quizzes, and THEY WERE SUPER INTERESTING.

Everything is recorded and posted so very flexible
We can start the quizzes whenever we want in a 24 hour period, but there is a 90 min time limit,

Overall, Professor Samani was amazing, he really cares about student learning, and is a wonderful lecturer. I honestly enjoyed this class quite a bit because of him, despite not liking Physics in general. Take him if you want to learn!

Samani is a great lecturer and he is clearly passionate about what he teaches. The format of the class was we had 1 long lecture video for the entire week posted on Monday, with live problem-solving sessions on Wednesday and Friday. Instead of a midterm and final, we had weekly quizzes. The quizzes were moderately difficult, and we had adequate time to complete them. I liked the quizzes overall since they were a bit lower stakes than a big exam.

My gripes with the class:
Some of the labs are not fun and very frustrating, but that's out of Samani's control. Hopefully it's only because we had to do the experiments at home.
We had a final group project that was worth 30% of our grade, but it had no clear guidelines/expectations. I thought it was gonna be pretty chill, but I felt the grading was quite harsh and there were no justifications given for why points were taken off. It dropped my grade more than 5% and almost screwed me over.

Samani is a great teacher and passionate but his quizzes/final were a lot more difficult than what he taught. I always found myself to be confident with what he lectured but the quizzes did not reflect what we were taught- they were always obscure algebraic derivations rather than physics problems. This course definitely took the majority of my time due to the weekly quizzes and don't even get me started on my STACK of flashcards of equations we had to memorize for the final. He was not accomodating at all honestly and expected life science students to make physics their whole life. If he adjusted his exams to reflect lecture material perhaps I'd be more positive but I won't lie this course was super stressful.

Honestly the BEST professor I've ever had at UCLA. A very understanding guy. Spring 2020 was a terrible time to be studying but Samani made the quarter way better. If you're looking for a wholesome class, look no further. Just take this class. WARNING though, the homework he gives is quite heavy and requires a lot of time to complete (with some exceptions here and there). If you're taking 5 or more classes, i strongly advise against taking this class. The questions he gives are not too difficult, they are mostly doable, you just have to put a lot of thought into it. All said, I don't think there's many profs like Samani and again, if you're looking for a WHOLESOME class, THIS IS IT