If you have a choice of instructor for this class, take it with someone else.

The professor seems like a kind person and the in-class demos were pretty cool, but his teaching does not work. The clearest evidence: the Midterm 2 average was ~53%, and the questions on it were definitely easier than the quizzes and homework we'd been doing all semester. Everyone just did badly.

The same pattern showed up weekly in our group quizzes, where the whole class was routinely stumped on material that had supposedly been covered. The quizzes were take-home if you didn't finish in class, and I'm sure most people just fed them into ChatGPT.

A few specific issues:

1: Pacing didn't respond to the room. There were many lectures where it was visibly clear most of the class was lost and the lecture continued at the same pace anyway. Questions weren't really invited and the professor never paused to check understanding.

2: A lot of topics got covered once, everyone was confused, and then they never came up again (spherical coordinates being one example of many). Despite Calc 2 being a co-req, we did maybe two integrals all semester. I have no idea what math level this course was supposed to be at.

3: Lectures and homework were out of sync. Homework regularly covered material before it had been taught, and lectures often stopped short of the week's content, leaving you to find the rest yourself.

4: No recorded lectures, despite there already being a setup (notes being done via a tablet, mic'd up, cameras filming all demos) that would have made recording trivial. If you missed a class, it was hard to figure out exactly what was covered. There were technically lecture notes on Canvas, but they didn't seem to always track to what we covered in class.

5: Independent work time wasn't really independent. When given problems to work on, the professor would keep talking and interjecting every few seconds, making it almost impossible to focus and attempt them.

The exam structure tells you everything you need to know about how the class was going. Each exam had an individual portion and a group portion that was the exact same exam, given about three weeks later (besides the final). The group exam was a free 100: you could literally pull out your laptop and ChatGPT every answer and no one would care. It was kind of nice as a "review what you got wrong" mechanism, but the fact that they had to build it into the course at all tells you how badly the class was bombing the individual exams.

Bottom line: take it with another instructor if you can.

However, if you already took physics in high school and did well, you'll probably cruise to an easy A while everyone around you struggles, since the assessments have to be made very forgiving to compensate for the poor instruction. This was the situation I was in, personally: I got close to perfect scores on every assignment and ended with over 100% in the class, all thanks to high school physics.

Class seemed very disorganized at times, with the Professor starting problems, making mistakes, and asking us to continue them on our own time. Exams are pretty hard but the group exam helps your overall score a bit. If you do all your work, and terrible on exams, you'll still end the class with at least a B. I would suggest skipping lectures and watching YouTube videos on the lectures and taking notes. Make sure to do your homework because they take up a significant percentage of your grade; they can be hard so start early and go to TA office hours for help. P2L also helps as well!

This class was extremely hard to get through. The curriculum was not too bad (only if you have taken a physics class in high school), but the lectures were very boring. Also, Professor Liyanage was very disorganized and sometimes would start explaining something and then realize that he was wrong and start over. We also didn't even finish the curriculum in class, so we had to learn it on our own. Outside of class work included chapter summaries, homework, and reading quizzes. It's not hard to do well on them, but they do require a decent amount of time. There are also in-class quizzes that are really hard, but you do them in your group and can ask the TAs for help. The exams were moderately hard, but the real reason people did so poorly is that there is no partial credit, and most of the questions are multiple choice.

This class is kind of a mess. We have these things called chapter summaries where we write about the stuff we learned the previous week. Somehow, we were writing stuff about the next week's information at one point? Physics at UVA overall is just not that great, sadly. I highly recommend dodging this class by taking AP physics or DE physics. He's a very nice guy; I felt bad for him when nobody came to his classes half the time, but I don't blame them, since you aren't going to learn a lot during lectures. He has a lot of cool demonstrations though. If you don't have any physics background like me, things going to seem pretty difficult. But when it comes exam time, you can just pull out organic chemistry tutor to learn.

This class was kinda all over the place but eventually did become structured. There is a lot of weekly work, and the exams were really hard, but they had a slight curve on them because of this. Personally the lectures were bland, but there were some cool demos later on that helped with understanding questions on the exams. Each exam had a group portion as well for the exact same exam which helped boost grades. The homework’s were also kinda boring. Overall a decent class but bland topics.