PHYS 2620

Professor Pocanic is a phenomenal instructor. The lectures are a bit dry for most people, I will admit - but I personally enjoyed listening to his lectures and derivations. He is very understanding, knowledgeable, and is quite funny. It is very easy to be intimidated by these higher-level physics courses, but this is fully intended to be an introductory course to these more complex topics. Go in with an open mind, and you will end up with a good grade.

About course structure:
When I took this course, there were two midterms and one final, cumulative exam. Many of the midterm problems are pulled from homework. He also provided practice exams, which made studying for the exams much less stressful. Homeworks were due weekly and had very reasonable deadlines based on if we had had an exam the previous week, or a break coming up. He and the TA were available for many office hours. I would do homework and then go to office hours with the TA to see if what I did was correct, and doing this made it so that I had good homework grades and learned more tips and tricks for how to solve these kinds of problems. During the discussion, there were also quizzes, but they were open note, collaborative, and could be checked before they were turned in during the discussion period. They were nothing to stress about and were quite helpful in helping students actually learn the material. The readings are extremely helpful, but definitely not necessary. Some problems were pulled from example problems in the textbook, so I'd recommend having the textbook and using it.
This professor WANTS you to be successful, but also wants you to work for it. Put in the work, you will end up with a good grade.
My one criticism is that he can sometimes be inconsistent with grading but is more than willing to resolve any issues that arise. For instance, sometimes two students would solve the same problem the same way, but one would end up with a few more points than the other. If this happens to you, just talk to him!

Pocanic is very, very smart, but not a great lecturer. His lectures are super dry and filled with a lot of information that was beyond the scope of the course. I wouldn't have attended lectures if he didn't have clicker questions which counted for part of your grade. If you want to do well in this course, read the textbook before lectures and go to office hours (he is very helpful in office hours, albeit quite mean and condescending). Additionally, his midterms are very, very fair and he is a very lenient grader, but his final exam was a lot more difficult than necessary.

This class was not hard, but it was time-intensive (I spent a lot of time on the weekly problem sets). I thought the topics we covered were interesting: special relativity, basic quantum mechanics, and particle physics. Prof Pocanic is a good professor, he is kind (and funny) and really wanted us to learn. His exams were straightforward; he always emphasized that exams were not meant to stress us out, but to give us (and him) an idea of how much we had learned. I really appreciated that. Lectures were fairly in-depth, but we only needed to know the basics for exams. The problem sets were often challenging, but doable, especially if you start early, read the textbook, and look at the textbook examples.

My biggest mistake in this class was being too intimidated by the course material.
It's hard not to think that quantum mechanics and the Schrodinger's equation should be extremely difficult, but in the end this is designed to be an introductory level course.
If something seems to be ridiculously difficult, then you're probably going about it the wrong way.

Professor Pocanic knows his stuff and can be quite funny when he wants. I would recommend this class to anyone that wants a little exposure to higher level physics.

While Professor Pocanic seems to be very knowledgeable in his field as well as the concepts involved in the class, he is a very dry lecturer. The content of the class itself if more conceptual over math-based compared to previous physics classes such as mechanics and e&m - I would kind of say it's like chemistry with a bit more math. The course is relatively straight forward: the quizzes and homeworks were a bit challenging, but the professor and the TA were pretty lenient grade-wise.