Michael Tuts

he's so great and super chill. just study the problem sets thoroughly and you are all set.

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 GOAT, SUPER KIND, REALLY KIND GUY, EASY GRADER

Such a sweet man. Big grandpa vibes. His lectures were dry at times but he really did a good job of explaining concepts and proving them thoroughly. He often cracked dad jokes that were super endearing. Weekly homework that keeps you on top of the material. If you do the homework assignments well (and do the practice exam), you will feel prepared going into the exams. He is extremely helpful and generous in office hours. Most people didn't utilize them, but when you go to them he will stay with you for hours to make sure you understand the concepts!

Though Tuts is a passionate teacher and tries to make every point clear, most of his attempts are futile since he only derives formulas and rarely goes through examples. Therefore, his lectures and exams are very different, and you end up teaching most of the topic to yourself by looking at solved examples. However, most of his exams include questions with calculus, which require more time since they are unique and haven't been encountered before. He covers too many topics and ends up not asking questions from most of them. The best way to study for exams would be to look at the main types of questions, though he tends to be unreliable and ask things like 'Newton's rings' on a final. Do not be fooled by the simplicity of the lectures; midterms and finals are usually very difficult.

Professor Tuts is a very clear and succinct lecturer who's lectures are worth going to for more clarity on the important concepts. He is excellent at explaining concepts, and usually covers all loopholes. Sometimes the lectures can be boring and its easy to forget the big picture while Tuts goes into details or while solving problems, but in general, he's one of the better science teachers out there. Grades are based solely on two midterms and the final, so take care. Do not procrastinate, skip homework, or skip class unless you are extremely familiar with the concept(and probably shouldn't be in the class).

What to say about Professor Tuts. I will say that he is a good lecturer, I absolutely hate physics but Professor Tuts was able to make the class fly by with his little jokes about his bald spot and whatnot. In the beginning of the semester, I actually believed that he was probably the greatest science professor I ever had because for someone having 2 Ph D's, is a graduate of MIT, and is a brilliant physicist, he was able to "dumb" down the material and present physics on a level that everyone could understand, which for someone like me, was great. All the changed after our first exam, which was brutal. No matter how hard you study, do practice problems and ace the problem sets, you will not be prepared for the exam. The exams are so beyond the scope of the course that you will feel like you're a moron and have no right to either be a science major or a pre - med. And Professor Tuts seems to take the stance that we are a bunch of retards, even though most people that I know in the class, know and understand physics (including myself) but can't do his exams. That's just plain unfair. This year, his exams were brutal in comparison to the past two years. Also, just one side note, when the TA's look at the exam and can't do the problems, something is wrong. Though I have to say, Tuts is very generous when it comes to grades and even if you score about 15 to 20 points below the mean…

If you're somewhat good at math and logical/physical thinking, then this class could be a breeze for you, which wasn't exactly what I expected after Gen Chem! I thought Tuts would do full on textbook lectures every class, but really his lectures just ended up being solving textbook problems, answering peoples questions, and occasionally showcasing demonstrations of physical phenomena, which were fun to watch (also there was some PollEverywhere). None of that is mandatory to attend, though, so toward the end of the semester I would sometimes come halfway through the lecture or not at all, and you can still do well in that case because the textbook ("Fundamentals of Physics") illustrates the concepts and formulas SO GOOD AND SIMPLY that all you have to do is read through the textbook a little, know what formulas and concepts are important, then you'll be FINE! Otherwise, online on CourseWorks there are THREE whole lecture notes and videos for each single lecture, so there's an absolute abundance of material to learn from at any time. Tuts teaching style was not really teaching but instead just working through problems with us, which was helpful because that's exactly what you need to practice doing for the problem sets AND the exams (much in contrary to Intro Bio). His answers to students' questions were always satisfactory. The content of the course was mainly kinetics, Newton'…

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.

Physics in Columbia is not easy, but it's easy to get a good grade if you take with Professor Tuts. I agree with some of the reviews that Professor Tuts gives challenging exams and he does not really explain how to solve the problems. I never went to his office hours, so I don't know if he's approachable or not. But, his lectures are absolutely the repeats of the textbook. There is no point of going to the class because you would not learn how to solve the problem. I would rather prefer him doing more problem solving than repeating the textbook. Overall, take this class if you are too busy to go to class, and if you are desparate to get an A. I didn't go to class half of the semester, and still do above the average on his exams. If you are above the average, your grade is like B+ or A- .