Michael Shaevitz

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.

I strongly second that person who said Shaevitz does not deserve his silver nugget. Don't get me wrong, he seems like a decent enough person but he cannot teach to save his life. It's to the point where when I stopped going to class and reading his crappy handwritten notes and terrible textbook I actually started doing better in the class. I didn't take any AP Physics courses in high school so this is all fresh and new to me and let me tell you this class is NOT beginner-friendly at all. Khan Academy will be your friend and get ready to do everything and I do mean everything on your own. Shaevitz cannot teach. His lectures are confusing streams of consciousness that makes it feel like you're listening to some old guy try to see if he remembers physics for himself versus any sort of actual instruction.

I received an A+ first semester and an A second semester and here's my secret: I studied for all the quizzes and I did all the homework. You have a quiz every week, and since there are so many quizzes most people trivialize them. However, the quizzes are 35% of your entire grade so doing well in the quizzes is key to getting a good grade. Also, the homework is very important. If you can do most of the homework problems, then you will definitely do well on the test (Also, the quiz is usually almost identical to a homework problem). First semester is fairly basic and covers most of what high school physics courses cover in addition to a few new topics. The exams first semester are also simple: the midterm and the final are nearly identical to the practice tests. Second semester is definetely tougher. First semester my 98% in the class translated into an A, but second semester I did much worse (92% in the quizzes, 86 % on the midterm, and 75% on the final) and got an A. The key to succeeding second semester is, again, doing your homework. If you are doing badly on the quizzes (which I was initially) I suggest you go to the weekly recitation sections (these are optional but help you do the homework). When test time comes I strongly suggest looking at the practice test.

A straightfoward lecturer, doesn't make exciting revelations not covered in teh textbook, but explains fairly well and his examples are succinct. He enjoys his toys, especially all the tops he gets to bring in for demonstrations. His arrogance shows through sometimes in snide remarks about the intelligence of the class, but definitely a likeable guy overall. The TA, on the other hand, seems like an a stuck up... but at least he willingly solves homework problems for you in recitation.

Shaevitz is a good professor. He teaches out of the book quite a lot, but he does explain things well and his lectures are interesting and easy to follow. He's also very funny; he seems to always laugh at whatever he is doing, which is hilarious, if you ask me. Breifly, he is understandable and competent.

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…

He truly is a friendly and lovely man...but he is quite boring. The content is not too hard, but his explanations make it super difficult to understand. Going to office hours was a must for me. That said, once you are able to learn the material, the quizzes were fair. Midterm was really easy. The final was absolutely brutal.

No, no, no, no, no. Do NOT do this to yourself, no matter how easy someone tells you the honors class is. As time went on, it became more and more apparent that this course's description is completely false. It is not for students who want to have some calculus in their physics; the class is catered toward students who have a strong physics background from high school. I'd go so far as to say that this class assumes that you already know mostly everything and is merely an opportunity for kids who took AP Physics to demonstrate that they haven't forgotten anything. The rest of us just sit back and suffer. The worst part is that you don't really understand that you are suffering until the end of the semester. The quizzes are deceiving in their simplicity, the midterm is ok...but then comes the final. With 8 questions worth 200 points, even getting every question mostly right results in a mediocre grade. This class allows those who already know physics to freshen up and dominate, while everyone else writhes in agony. And just wait until the second semester, where all of a sudden nothing makes sense, and nothing is adequately explained. It's pretty sad when you can't even do the tests with the answer key in front of you because you lack the knowledge of some basic concept. Unless you have done physics before, this is what your experience will be---best case scenario: You spend at…

A mediocre professor, nothing special, nothing horrendous. The one problem is that he's usually a bit sloppy with the equations he puts on the board, so take a little more care when you're taking notes. Also, the practice exams were a bit less effective for having a couple of wrong formulae and errors in the solution set.

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…