PHYS 1110

Not recommended if you are looking for something easy to take during your first-year or as a completion of the College requirement. Consider exploring alternative classes. The lectures tend to be unengaging and dry, with challenging midterms. Homework assignments are graded with stringent standards.

I would not recommend if you are trying to take an easy class or if you liked physics in highschool. This is barely a physics class (most physics will be doing algebra conversions of units). What made the course difficult was how uninteresting lectures were, the harsh grading on homework/midterms, and the random, very specific questions that would be asked on exams. If you are good at memorizing facts and numbers, this class may be for you, but I would not suggest it.

The course was not bad but I can definitely see why people said the course was not interesting. There were 2 midterms with 20 multiple choice questions and if you read over the PowerPoints and reviewed the in class questions they are pretty easy. For homework there was usually 1 weekly assignment either a summary of a news article you pick relating to energy or a hw set. Max of 1 hour per week and they were pretty easy. The final was definitely a little more random but reviewing the PowerPoint and the in class practice was helpful for most questions. The test questions were sometimes the exact same questions as the ones we already practiced so it was just a if you pay attention in class you get a pretty good grade. The final was curved up like 20 points as well to give the class an average of an 87. For the lectures the professor just read over the slides and I see why people said it's boring but as long as you pay attention in class and put a decent amount of effort it's really easy. I personally never read the textbook and some of the questions from the textbook did show up on hw sets and exams. The professor was pretty clear for course expectations and this class felt easier than my highschool classes but I think it all comes down to effort.

Tldr: Easy A if you try (even a little), Professor is pretty understanding imo. 1 hour per week out of class max. A little boring in class.

This class honestly felt more like environmental science with a tiny bit of math than physics. Learn from my mistake and don't take this for your science requirement, but seems great for STEM majors or if you're really interested in fossil fuels and climate change. Professor is definitely well-versed in the material and nice, but lectures were a bit hard to sit though. The midterms are extremely difficult, but homework is reasonable and not super time-consuming if you're willing to put the work in. #tCFF24

If you're looking for a class to fulfill a science requirement, please do yourself a favor and do not choose this one. The lectures were extremely hard to pay attention to due to the monotone, "read right off the slide" style of the professor, and attendance is recorded via the inclusion of in-class unit conversion questions, which are graded for accuracy. There was one homework assignment every week, either reading and reviewing an article or doing a homework set (mostly unit conversions). The homework was graded pretty harshly, and a couple of times I would get points taken off for things that I had checked and confirmed with the TA. There were two midterms (20 MC questions) and a final (50 MC questions), and while the study guides specifically say that random or specific information from the lecture slides and readings won't be asked, that's pretty much all that they consist of. There were curves on all three exams, but it was frustrating to sit through the exams and look at questions that referred to a footnote in a single slide out of the hundreds that were available for review (especially for the final). I think that if you have a deep and passionate interest in energy sources or are a STEM major this class could be for you, but in general I would not recommend it.

See Dukes is a really chill guy and seems greatly accomplished, which is something I respect. I think he truly does care a lot about the course material and energy in general, but it was impossible for me to gauge that passion because there is literally no inflection in his voice and I wouldn't have a problem with that if he didn't spend every hour of every class straight up reading off of an ancient powerpoint. I know that many students have grievances about this style of lecturing, but believe me when I say that Dukes is the final boss of reading straight off of slides. Not only that, but his exams cover unnecessary, niche information that could have only been retained had an individual memorized all of the thousands of slides he goes through. It is truly frustrating to have studied thoroughly, understood the content, and then be faced with a question about some random empiric or subjective metric pulled from the textbook that he never really talks about. This isn't to say that the class itself is difficult, as we rarely did any real physics or math aside from unit conversions, and Dukes puts in homework assignments as having an equal weight to the midterms and the final, but it's truly just a vacuous class that won't give you much fulfillment as a student. With that being said, it is easy to fall behind. Don't take this class. #tCFF24