My main motivation for writing this review is to address the student who wrote a negative review for Dorfman below. Dr. Dorfman has been the most inspirational professor I've ever had. You can tell he cares about students actually learning the material and your ability to apply concepts to new situations. If you truly love to learn and you love to challenge yourself then please take this class. Quite frankly, Dr. Dorfman is the smartest person I've ever met. Literally, he will answer your most challenging physics question without even thinking almost like a supercomputer. I've come to the conclusion that he knows everything there is to know about physics and I would not be surprised if he earns a nobel prize in the future. He is very organized and I have never seen him come to class late. He provides a lot of resources to help you master the concepts. To be honest, this class is hard. You have to put in the work to get a good grade. If all you care about is an easy A then avoid this class like the student who wrote the negative review below. The ideas I generated in this class and study habits I've developed have served me well in my other classes. Dr. Dorfman is the god of physics.

Dorfman is a pretty good teacher. The material we covered in 6B was difficult. His tests were hard and the curve reflected that. He doesn't directly curve based on the average, which seems to make it more generous. For most of the exams the cut off for a C was in the 30s Bs around 60 and As around 75, if I remember correctly. 25% of your grade also came from homework and labs. He gives you a lot of tries for each homework problem on Mastering Physics, so if you mess up you can keep trying again and get all of the points. He's kind and tries really hard to make sure the class understands concepts. The tests were very conceptual so know all the concepts and be ready to explain them. You get a notecard to bring in to each midterm and a sheet of paper on the final for formulas. The midterms were fair, but the final was killer. However, he had a grading scheme that dropped part of the final if you did better on the midterms or you could drop a midterm if you did better on the final. Overall, I would recommend taking him.

I couldn't select 5B to review, but I had him for 5B. Dorfman has good intentions, but honestly, his voice is so distracting that I can't even listen to him during lecture. He changes the volume every few other words and it's like he's shouting at the class. This gets very annoying as the quarter progresses. His lectures are disorganized in that he will write on one board, move to the other, but then move back to the first one so then your notes end up having to change too. I honestly had to self learn 5B because I could not focus during class with the way that he spoke. He tends to overexplain things and all it does is give headaches and lead to confusion.

If you want a sense of how bad of a professor he was, there were four physics 5c courses being taught in the spring, the two classes not taught by him filled up by 12PM on the first enrollment date while his remained mostly empty.

His exams are curved, but honestly, he isn't worth the trouble. Avoid if you can.

Do not take this class with this professor even if it's your last option. His exams are inexplicably difficult, and I would say to the point of impossible. Many students consistently complained about his exams failing to mirror what was taught during lecture, which, by the way, was a nightmare in and of itself. This professor cannot make the material accessible to students if his life depended on it. He's a genius in his profession, but he simply isn't able to relay this information in a student-friendly manner. Please, do yourselves a favor, and avoid this professor at all costs. Both I and a friend dropped this class week 9. We were utterly destroyed even considering both of us had taken AP Physics (Mechanics) during high school. Wrap.

The class is hard especially if you do not have physics background but if you do attend office hours he is much more clear than in class. He cares about his students but does sometimes fail to gauge his class but honestly one of my favorite professors for his willingness to help and his generosity.

Selling University physics for Life Sciences (update edition) Knight + Jones + field (like new) and the workbook (never used, brand new)
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