PHYS 1425

DO NOT take this class with Shivaram. He's a nice guy and he tries, but he's one of the worst teachers I've ever had. His lecture notes make no sense and when he tries to do example problems in class it just makes everything more confusing. Don't even bother paying attention in class because you won't learn anything - the only good reason to attend lecture is for the iclicker points. The webwork assignments have nothing to do with what he teaches in lecture, and the tests have nothing to do with either. He spends a lot of time on demos in class that look cool but don't actually contribute to learning anything. Also, it takes him 2 weeks to grade a scantron and he still screws it up every time. Seriously, do whatever you can to take this class with a different professor, you will fail.

Bellave Shivaram is the worst excuse for a professor I have ever seen. If it wasnt for the clicker questions nobody would ever show up to his class. Even with the clicker questions the max people that ever show up is 65/110! He has messed up grading every single time we took a test. Honestly, I never knew it was so hard to grade a multiple choice test on scantron sheets. Shivaram is the worst professor at UVA! Avoid him by any means necessary unless you want to hear him say "wi" 100 times a class instead of using the letter v. Additionally, Shivarams in class notes do not line up with the homework at all. Not that this matters though because none of what he says in class makes any sense because he cannot explain anything well. Hes a nice guy though.

Bellave is a bad professor. He's a nice guy, but a terrible, terrible teacher. I think I actually got dumber in his class. He constantly messes up grading tests, the clicker stuff is just really confusing, and he confuses dot product and cross product. He does do some cool demonstrations, but they don't actually teach you anything, they just look cool. He is awful at explaining things, he just makes them more confusing. If you took physics before, either don't take it with Shivaram, or just play on your laptop all class and just answer the clicker questions when they come up. If you listen to him, you'll just get confused. As for the weekly homework, it gets progressively harder, and has nothing to do with the lecture slides, i suggest just googling all the questions cuz usually there is something online that has a similar problem.

Homeworks will be on material he didn't cover, he gets lost in his own sample problems, and he won't explain a clicker problem after 2/3rds of the class gets it wrong