PHYS V1202

weekly quizzes before class, 1 midterm, 1 final

Physics II is Physics II. You gotta put the work in, but Tuts is a very fair prof. If you are able to do the WileyPlus every week then you are in a great place. Also many exam problems are modeled on the WileyPlus.

The sweetest old man but age is reflected on his teaching (not in a good way). His lectures are just him reading off the same notes he has used for years where he gets confused on sometimes too. The attendance to his lectures is low and makes one drowsy, the same can be said about his recitation sections since they aren't graded. But, overall, the grading of his class is very lenient, and the content tested on is very fair as long as one reads and does the problems on the textbook.

Great prof! Super knowledgeable and good at explaining. Provides lots of opportunities for review and office hours. And will take small groups of students to FacHouse for lunch.

the other reviews sum this part up well. his grading is fine but the fact that the midterm/quizzes/final are relatively easy means that the means are unusually high, so it's harder to beat the curve. i could have done better in this class if i really tried (i got a b+ in the end, not a bad grade at all) but with a heavy workload outside the class and just generally feeling burnt out i didn't usually have it in me to teach myself all of the content each week. probably about 10-15 hours studying per week outside of class (but a very unproductive 10-15 hours) for the quizzes. it's very possible to do well in this class but if his lectures aren't doing it for you, i would suggest learning through youtube/khan academy. also, it's pretty similar to high school physics, so if you took ap physics and remember it decently you should be fine (no calc).

2 midterms, final, weekly homework assignments of 8-9 questions on WileyPlus, mandatory recitation attendance Either both midterms can count or one can be dropped at the expense that the final is worth more - both situations are calculated and you’re given the better outcome.

i don't know how people said he wasn't that bad. he's a nice enough person who absolutely cannot teach--he just reads off of his lecture slides for an hour and 15 minutes (which are awful, by the way; they're a mix of grainy hand-written equations, walls of text, and diagrams taken straight from the textbook in an illogical order) and occasionally includes a demo (which are usually fun). the weekly quizzes are hell (not difficult, but he doesn't teach well at all) and will be the bane of your existence for the semester (the fact that they're usually very similar to the homework makes them better, but still incredibly annoying, especially if you have a heavy courseload outside of this class). it shouldn't be a tough class, but it is. it's tough to make yourself go to class when he doesn't even do any derivations (the core of everything we learn!) and when you learn more in a 15 minute youtube video than the 2.5 hours of class per week (this is honestly how i taught myself the content). i wish i liked this class more than i did--physics 1 was great for me (grade-wise and prof-wise), and i've always been more interested in the physics 2 content so i should have liked it. this man just sucked all the joy out of physics. he was apparently better pre-covid, which explains the gold nugget. but i don't think shaevitz wrote a single thing on the chalkboard all semester--the class was j…

Professor Tuts has switched to a hybrid class where he posts videos on his Canvas page along with the actual class, where he briefly lectures for about one-third of it and then jumps to problem-solving for the remaining time. However, the class is so redundant that after the first week of class, I just watched the videos and never attended in-person for the rest of the semester. Maybe this was a lazy move on my part, but it turns out his test problems come directly from the WileyPlus homework assignments. Sometimes, the numbers were even the exact same. After the midterms, I’m pretty sure most of the class caught on and it led to a ridiculously high median for a physics final of around 85%. If he continues to do this, you can get a good grade with minimal effort. I stayed at home, watched the videos, did the homework, and studied very, very minimally and got an A. At the same time, if you do focus on the videos you can still sufficiently understand the material as Professor Tuts does cover a lot of concepts and problems far more difficult than anything you’ll see on the homework or tests. Or you can just memorize the homework, which, at least this semester, would have probably gotten you farther than a student that knows what they’re doing but wasn’t expecting the test to be copy and pasted from WileyPlus. It’s unfair, but an A is an A.

Grades were 30% quizzes (9 best out of 11), 30% midterm, 40% final. Anticipate around 15-20+ hours of studying per week if you didn't take AP Physics.

Professor Shaevitz is a great professor and his exams fairly reflect the problems in his lectures and homework, with a few tweaks. You can get an A / A+ by practicing the lecture and homework problems a couple of times instead of scouring the textbook or internet to anticipate more compound problems (which I had to do with my Physics I professor). Course, Prerequisites: The class isn't hard but it's compact, where you go through two chapters per week (Halliday Ch. 21-43). You should know precalculus, especially trig and simultaneous equations. Workload: Anticipate around 15-20+ hours of studying per week if you didn't take AP Physics. My studying consisted of reviewing for lectures (textbook, his posted lecture videos, and outside videos), weekly homework (~16 problems consisting of around ~8 problems per chapter not graded), and studying for quizzes and exams. I studied more for physics than I did for gen chem. Grades, Quizzes and Exams: Grades were 30% quizzes (9 best out of 11), 30% midterm, 40% final. For quizzes, median was usually 8/10 or 9/10 and upper quarter was 10/10, with median quiz scores improving (from 8 to 9) towards the middle and end of the semester. For the midterm and the final, median scores were around 73%, and upper quarter around 85%. You get relevant formulas for quizzes and an exam formula sheet for the midterm and final. I saw at least two exam quest…