PHYS 3210

This class is not particularly hard if you go to lecture. Exams are relatively easy, and Nichols provides practice / prior exam questions which prepare you very well. The one critique I have is that Nichols makes errors on the blackboard -- constantly -- and they're often pretty significant mistakes. Make sure you're paying attention, and if you think something is wrong raise your hand and say so because it probably is. I didn't go to office hours but I know a lot of people did and found them helpful. Basically, go to lecture and make sure you understand the homework assignments and you'll do perfectly fine on the exams.

#tCFF23

Nichols runs a tight ship of a class. There is no structural problem with this class, really.
Lectures are clear and direct, and for this semester, recorded via Zoom (I never used these recordings so I cannot vouch for the quality of them). Roughly every other lecture there is an in-class poll question, which is graded on completion and not accuracy. The lectures follow the textbook- Taylor's Classical Mechanics book- well, and are worth attending. Nichols answers all questions to the best of his ability, although he has some funny quirks in his speech, and on the one occasion he did not know the answer to a question, he followed up later.
In office hours, though, he is not as helpful. Some physics professors will walk you all the way to the answer once you ask the right question, but with Nichols, no question is worth a clear answer, it seems. He's a perfectly likable guy but even clarifying questions were met with a sort of brick wall. Homeworks are usually ripped from textbook questions and are never too challenging to get through. Grading on homeworks is pretty harsh. I typically did "fine", y'know, midrange Bs, but that's not what you like to see on a homework. Keep in mind I was getting the answers right and points were taken off for other mysterious things. I don't know, man, it was fine. There was no required groupwork but I found working with other people to be very helpful.
Exams are entirely fair. Double-sided formula sheet for each exam, practice questions provided, and a review session in office hours the week of the exam, which was recorded via Zoom. Grading is lenient in terms of partial credit, more or less. I'm very excited to say that this is a class where studying and practicing directly translates into doing better on exams. The final exam was harder than the midterms, in my eyes, but still entirely fair and easily completable in the time limit. #tCFFall23