PHYS273 | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a B- Anonymous 06/24/2024	Kollar is better than those who, one needs to avoid, but still not one of the good ones. Besides the unstructured lecture, there are neither readable notes. HW have content directly related to notes and not to textbook. Reads through the notes as lectures and barely cared how students working. Try decoding the notes is more helpful than lectures. But then, for example, in class, Kollar can do half way through some math and say, I had something wrong in the notes and I will fix then reupload. Also had a equation wrong in notes until someone pointed out. Additionally, office hour time is poor and hardly any between hw assign date(thusday) and due date(monday). The right way is to email question early enough, then you can get a fair response.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 06/24/2024	One of the very best one may get, in this unfriendly physics department. If you see the name, take his class. He had well structured, thorough lectures. Posts slides and study guides onto canvas and very helpful. Homework may be a bit hard but his office hours are very helpful. Shawhan is the one who actually cares about your learning and well being. for reference, in spring 2024, he also did provided a curve on letter grades. also for reference, spring 2024 he is co-teaching phys273 with Kollar, who lowered the class experience considerably. Anyway, Shawhan is the good one and he is guaranteed to provide a good experience.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/17/2024	Notes and lectures were convoluted and often had mistakes.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/17/2024	Easily in the upper echelon of physics teachers here. Should be your first choice for any class. Lectures are easy to follow and posted slides cover everything. Friendly and helpful during office hours. Fair grading
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Anonymous 05/16/2024	The greatest who ever did it, i dont think he'll be teaching this course in the future but whatever he does is worth taking just to have him. best prof in the department imo
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2024	I really enjoyed Dr. Shawhan's lectures; he had a good energy and seemed to have a great mastery of the course content and beyond so he was able to answer most questions even if they were only tangentially related to lecture. I think the homework problems were a bit tough but not unfairly so. I only wish he went a little bit slower in lecture slides so it was easier to write things down but this isn't as much of an issue if you write down some notes from the "textbook" before class
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/13/2024	I think this was her first time teaching the course, but there were a lot of mistakes she made especially earlier on. She would get variables mixed up during lecture, and the first few homeworks she made had problems that were unclear and didn't entirely match with what we actually worked on in class. This got better over time so if she teaches this class again or is teaching another class she has experience with it will hopefully be a bit of a better experience than what I had.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Anonymous 05/10/2024	Kollar is an interesting one. Her lectures are actually quite decent, however, the notes she posts afterward are not so much. She's a very pleasant person and does work out each problem to its fullest extent. However, her homework and tests, while not hard in the traditional sense, are just confusing. It's taken me significant periods of time to just understand what the questions are even asking me to do. Her office hours often leave you more confused than before, so avoid those. Overall, I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking her, but if you have to it isn't the end of the world. Don't sweat it.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/02/2024	Pro: You can tell he is very passionate about teaching physics. He conducts classes well and efficiently. Cons: Uses an unfinished textbook for the course. Lecture slides are messy and hard to read.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/02/2024	Pro: Easy to read lecture slides. Communicates the information in a way that's easy to understand. Moderately hard homework problems and exams. Con: The assigned readings were from an unfinished textbook. It felt difficult to study for this course.
Alicia Kollar PHYS273 Expecting a C- Anonymous 05/02/2024	She co-taught this class with Prof. Shawhan this semester. Her lectures tended to be confusing, especially because after taking 5 minutes of notes on a derivation she would realize she made a mistake, and we would have to restart the problem. This happened frequently (at least once every two lectures) and as someone who already struggled with the content, I felt that this made it even more difficult for me to understand what was going on. There were also quite a few instances where her office hours were cancelled right before an exam or having homework due. Even after getting feedback multiple times, she tended to write far too small on the board and with messy enough handwriting that students were constantly asking what the symbols she had written were. She's definitely an extremely smart physicist but I don't think teaching is her strong suit. At the beginning of the semester, I wanted to give more leeway as it was her first time teaching this course, but over time I feel that attending lecture made me more confused and only really learned the material by reading the textbook or when Prof. Shawhan was lecturing.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/27/2023	If you can get this professor for any physics class at UMD, please take him. He is the probably one of the only professors at this dogshit school who actually cares about you and your well-being both in and out of class. Pros: Replies to emails at a reasonable time, office hours are helpful, lectures are organized, tests are challenging but reasonable, homework is fine Cons: N/A
Erin Sohr PHYS273 Expecting an A Anonymous 07/07/2023	Avoid taking a class with this professor at all costs. You will not learn anything. Despite being a professor, she seems to have a severe lack of understanding of the material, and simply rewrites the equations from the textbook every class. Always walked into class with a cup of coffee like she just woke up 2 minutes ago, no energy. I stopped attending her lectures after a couple weeks. We were lucky to have 2 wonderful TAs who had a better understanding of the material than the professor. Her class is pretty easy only because no one does well due to her terrible teaching skills. When the TAs are literally smarter than the professor, something is wrong.
Erin Sohr PHYS273 Expecting a D Anonymous 05/16/2023	considering the class she taught, the worst teacher i have ever had. definitely the worst professor i've had at UMD. half of the class failed both the midterms, so we just end up praying that everyone else failed so we can get a curve. it's a really difficult class and difficult class to teach in her defense, but her lectures felt completely useless. she is very nice and caring, but she never sounds like she even fully knows what she is talking about. the entire class had to basically teach themselves the material. to make everything worse, the exams are always way harder than anything we've done in class, and often contain types of problems we have never seen or been prepared for. i just took the final and I would be happy if I got a 50 before the curve, which will be a huge one, but probably not enough to get me to pass. i'm far from the best or smartest student, but I worked my ass off to try to pass this class and it just feels completely impossible with her exams. it is painfully obvious she has not been teaching for long. she would make a great middle school or high school science teacher. but for her to teach this class, with how much content there is and how difficult it is, has caused me genuine mental anguish and caused me to hate physics for the first time in my life.
Abolhassan Jawahery PHYS273 Anonymous 12/22/2022	The most "reasonable" person since Immanuel Kant. Jawahery's lectures are pretty straightforward and his homework content may be challenging from time to time but is absolutely doable. The quizzes and exams will mostly contain questions/problems from the homework problem sets however, there always may be one or two that are mixed in (i.e. one or two questions that aren't from the H.W. problems) just to make sure you know your material. Overall, PHYS273 isn't an easy course but Jawahery definitely made the experience way more entertaining and interesting.
Abolhassan Jawahery PHYS273 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/12/2022	quizzes and exams identical to the hws, good at teaching.
Hailu Gebremariam PHYS273 Expecting an A Anonymous 08/17/2022	Had an amazing time studying PHYS273 over the summer with prof. Hailu. The course was straightforward, the material he went over was quick for me to grasp onto, the TA was very accessible, the Homework wasn't difficult and same with the midterm. If you have to get your credit for waves over the summer, I strongly recommend taking it under him, you will not regret it.
Abolhassan Jawahery PHYS273 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 01/20/2022	PHYS 273 is a challenging course. It's a lot of content in a short amount of time. That being said, Prof. Jawahery tries to make the most of it and present it to his students in a comprehensible way. His content builds on itself, so if you're paying attention along the way, you'll find content later in the course quite easy to understand. His homework assignments are pretty tough, so don't wait till the last night to do them. That being said, his quizzes and exams are almost identical to these homework assignments, so if you really work on them and understand the posted solutions, you'll do great. He is a very understanding and reasonable person who changed deadlines often when his lectures did not sync up with them. The final exam was quite the challenge and unlike anything we had seen before, which did not help my final grade, but the course as a whole was a good learning experience. I would recommend him if you had the choice.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Anonymous 05/29/2021	Great Lecturer, very organized. Kind and understanding.
Peter Shawhan PHYS273 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/31/2020	Prof. Shawhan was fantastic. He managed to navigate the switch to online classes relatively seamlessly, and I still feel like I learned a lot in the class and feel ready for next semester.
Christopher Lobb PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/24/2019	Great guy. Nothing can go wrong taking him, so maybe I should say something about this class. First I am a math student. This was the first physics class I've taken since high school (did physics c in hs, didn't learn anything), so I was clueless from the beginning. It turned out that I could manage derivations pretty well, and the concepts were very sensible. But whenever there were formula based and plug in chug type of questions I would get totally lost because of my lack of familiarity with those stuffs (and apparently reluctance to memorize them). Not all homework problems were graded, so it was sometimes a pain depending on whether if I correctly solved the graded ones. Also never did too well on the quizzes (bunch of zeros, ouch), but the tests were fine since there were a lot of guided derivations, which I liked. My raw grade on elms was appalling (less than 65%) but I ended up with a B (my tests were all a bit above average). Lobb is strict about material-wise grading (quizzes, tests) but is very lenient when it comes to the final grade. I would say don't worry about grades too much, but focus on the understanding of the material and that feel of doing physics. Last remark, I much prefer French's book to Pain's, especially French's treatment of Fourier series (honestly I didn't read either of them).
Carter Hall PHYS273 Anonymous 05/13/2013	This guys is the most excellent professor I've ever met. Super smart + humble = clearly covers concepts and wants students to learn the stuff. Homeworks were somewhat challenging but the test were recast/simplified homework questions! Ahhh, why aren't all my professors like him?!?
Carter Hall PHYS273 Expecting an A anonn 12/23/2012	The textbook for this class has a one star rating on Amazon, so I didn't get it. But it was okay because he posts his notes on his website, and they cover literally everything he goes over in class. Technically, you don't even have to take notes! He lectures very clearly and effectively and definitely wants the students to do well. The class is called waves, but he describes the class as a pre-quantum mechanics, mathematical methods class. Thus, as a math major, I already knew a lot of the stuff he taught and thought he taught the beginning of the semester rather slowly. Other students didn't seem to have this problem though. The exams are easy and straightforward (he provides equation sheets). For the second exam, I only studied for about an hour (I had a lot of other exams that week), finished it early, and only lost two points. They test concepts rather than little details, so if you go to every class and pay attention, you'll do fine. Homework is also fairly easy, maybe 3 hours a week. Another tidbit: my friend took this class with a different professor two semesters ago, and it was extremely difficult. He worked really hard, but ended up with a B. This shows how much this class can vary with different professors.
Christopher Monroe PHYS273 Expecting a B Anonymous 11/17/2009	He's a nice guy but the class is hard, so I suppose I'm only capable of liking him so much. Lectures can be intense sometimes, and he does tend to make mistakes, but he's aware of it and fixes them/is really nice about it if you point something out. He's also very willing to answer questions. The homework would vary between really hard and easy. And the tests we hard, as he aims for a 50% average. But then he curves by about 25% (even if the average is above 50%) so it's ok. Certainly a hard class that will take effort, and it can get rather confusing, but he seems to be doing a decent job.
Kara Hoffman PHYS273 Expecting an A Austin90 05/09/2009	Dr. Hoffman is one of the better professors at MD. Her lectures are very useful, and her demonstrations in class are very interesting. The only problem is that not-too-uncommon questions catch her by surprise. Therefore, she isn't able to answer them until a day or more later. However, she is very easy to talk to, because she doesn't have an ego that dominates her personality. Her tests are a little harder than most (Hence our average test score for the spring 2009 semester was a 60%) However, she gives generous curves (1/3 As, 1/3 Bs, 1/3 C's, and some "stragglers" get Ds and Fs ) If you do well on the webassign and homework, none of which are too hard, then you should really enjoy her class. As a side note, GO TO RECITATIONS EVERY FRIDAY since not doing so can take up to 10% off your final grade.

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
06/24/2024

Kollar is better than those who, one needs to avoid, but still not one of the good ones. Besides the unstructured lecture, there are neither readable notes. HW have content directly related to notes and not to textbook. Reads through the notes as lectures and barely cared how students working. Try decoding the notes is more helpful than lectures. But then, for example, in class, Kollar can do half way through some math and say, I had something wrong in the notes and I will fix then reupload. Also had a equation wrong in notes until someone pointed out. Additionally, office hour time is poor and hardly any between hw assign date(thusday) and due date(monday). The right way is to email question early enough, then you can get a fair response.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting a B
Anonymous
06/24/2024

One of the very best one may get, in this unfriendly physics department. If you see the name, take his class. He had well structured, thorough lectures. Posts slides and study guides onto canvas and very helpful. Homework may be a bit hard but his office hours are very helpful. Shawhan is the one who actually cares about your learning and well being. for reference, in spring 2024, he also did provided a curve on letter grades. also for reference, spring 2024 he is co-teaching phys273 with Kollar, who lowered the class experience considerably. Anyway, Shawhan is the good one and he is guaranteed to provide a good experience.

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/17/2024

Notes and lectures were convoluted and often had mistakes.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/17/2024

Easily in the upper echelon of physics teachers here. Should be your first choice for any class. Lectures are easy to follow and posted slides cover everything. Friendly and helpful during office hours. Fair grading

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Anonymous
05/16/2024

The greatest who ever did it, i dont think he'll be teaching this course in the future but whatever he does is worth taking just to have him. best prof in the department imo

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/13/2024

I really enjoyed Dr. Shawhan's lectures; he had a good energy and seemed to have a great mastery of the course content and beyond so he was able to answer most questions even if they were only tangentially related to lecture. I think the homework problems were a bit tough but not unfairly so. I only wish he went a little bit slower in lecture slides so it was easier to write things down but this isn't as much of an issue if you write down some notes from the "textbook" before class

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/13/2024

I think this was her first time teaching the course, but there were a lot of mistakes she made especially earlier on. She would get variables mixed up during lecture, and the first few homeworks she made had problems that were unclear and didn't entirely match with what we actually worked on in class. This got better over time so if she teaches this class again or is teaching another class she has experience with it will hopefully be a bit of a better experience than what I had.

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Anonymous
05/10/2024

Kollar is an interesting one. Her lectures are actually quite decent, however, the notes she posts afterward are not so much. She's a very pleasant person and does work out each problem to its fullest extent. However, her homework and tests, while not hard in the traditional sense, are just confusing. It's taken me significant periods of time to just understand what the questions are even asking me to do. Her office hours often leave you more confused than before, so avoid those. Overall, I wouldn't necessarily recommend taking her, but if you have to it isn't the end of the world. Don't sweat it.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/02/2024

Pro: You can tell he is very passionate about teaching physics. He conducts classes well and efficiently. Cons: Uses an unfinished textbook for the course. Lecture slides are messy and hard to read.

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/02/2024

Pro: Easy to read lecture slides. Communicates the information in a way that's easy to understand. Moderately hard homework problems and exams. Con: The assigned readings were from an unfinished textbook. It felt difficult to study for this course.

Alicia Kollar
PHYS273

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
05/02/2024

She co-taught this class with Prof. Shawhan this semester. Her lectures tended to be confusing, especially because after taking 5 minutes of notes on a derivation she would realize she made a mistake, and we would have to restart the problem. This happened frequently (at least once every two lectures) and as someone who already struggled with the content, I felt that this made it even more difficult for me to understand what was going on. There were also quite a few instances where her office hours were cancelled right before an exam or having homework due. Even after getting feedback multiple times, she tended to write far too small on the board and with messy enough handwriting that students were constantly asking what the symbols she had written were. She's definitely an extremely smart physicist but I don't think teaching is her strong suit. At the beginning of the semester, I wanted to give more leeway as it was her first time teaching this course, but over time I feel that attending lecture made me more confused and only really learned the material by reading the textbook or when Prof. Shawhan was lecturing.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
12/27/2023

If you can get this professor for any physics class at UMD, please take him. He is the probably one of the only professors at this dogshit school who actually cares about you and your well-being both in and out of class. Pros: Replies to emails at a reasonable time, office hours are helpful, lectures are organized, tests are challenging but reasonable, homework is fine Cons: N/A

Erin Sohr
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Anonymous
07/07/2023

Avoid taking a class with this professor at all costs. You will not learn anything. Despite being a professor, she seems to have a severe lack of understanding of the material, and simply rewrites the equations from the textbook every class. Always walked into class with a cup of coffee like she just woke up 2 minutes ago, no energy. I stopped attending her lectures after a couple weeks. We were lucky to have 2 wonderful TAs who had a better understanding of the material than the professor. Her class is pretty easy only because no one does well due to her terrible teaching skills. When the TAs are literally smarter than the professor, something is wrong.

Erin Sohr
PHYS273

Expecting a D
Anonymous
05/16/2023

considering the class she taught, the worst teacher i have ever had. definitely the worst professor i've had at UMD. half of the class failed both the midterms, so we just end up praying that everyone else failed so we can get a curve. it's a really difficult class and difficult class to teach in her defense, but her lectures felt completely useless. she is very nice and caring, but she never sounds like she even fully knows what she is talking about. the entire class had to basically teach themselves the material. to make everything worse, the exams are always way harder than anything we've done in class, and often contain types of problems we have never seen or been prepared for. i just took the final and I would be happy if I got a 50 before the curve, which will be a huge one, but probably not enough to get me to pass. i'm far from the best or smartest student, but I worked my ass off to try to pass this class and it just feels completely impossible with her exams. it is painfully obvious she has not been teaching for long. she would make a great middle school or high school science teacher. but for her to teach this class, with how much content there is and how difficult it is, has caused me genuine mental anguish and caused me to hate physics for the first time in my life.

Abolhassan Jawahery
PHYS273

Anonymous
12/22/2022

The most "reasonable" person since Immanuel Kant. Jawahery's lectures are pretty straightforward and his homework content may be challenging from time to time but is absolutely doable. The quizzes and exams will mostly contain questions/problems from the homework problem sets however, there always may be one or two that are mixed in (i.e. one or two questions that aren't from the H.W. problems) just to make sure you know your material. Overall, PHYS273 isn't an easy course but Jawahery definitely made the experience way more entertaining and interesting.

Abolhassan Jawahery
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/12/2022

quizzes and exams identical to the hws, good at teaching.

Hailu Gebremariam
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Anonymous
08/17/2022

Had an amazing time studying PHYS273 over the summer with prof. Hailu. The course was straightforward, the material he went over was quick for me to grasp onto, the TA was very accessible, the Homework wasn't difficult and same with the midterm. If you have to get your credit for waves over the summer, I strongly recommend taking it under him, you will not regret it.

Abolhassan Jawahery
PHYS273

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
01/20/2022

PHYS 273 is a challenging course. It's a lot of content in a short amount of time. That being said, Prof. Jawahery tries to make the most of it and present it to his students in a comprehensible way. His content builds on itself, so if you're paying attention along the way, you'll find content later in the course quite easy to understand. His homework assignments are pretty tough, so don't wait till the last night to do them. That being said, his quizzes and exams are almost identical to these homework assignments, so if you really work on them and understand the posted solutions, you'll do great. He is a very understanding and reasonable person who changed deadlines often when his lectures did not sync up with them. The final exam was quite the challenge and unlike anything we had seen before, which did not help my final grade, but the course as a whole was a good learning experience. I would recommend him if you had the choice.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Anonymous
05/29/2021

Great Lecturer, very organized. Kind and understanding.

Peter Shawhan
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/31/2020

Prof. Shawhan was fantastic. He managed to navigate the switch to online classes relatively seamlessly, and I still feel like I learned a lot in the class and feel ready for next semester.

Christopher Lobb
PHYS273

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/24/2019

Great guy. Nothing can go wrong taking him, so maybe I should say something about this class. First I am a math student. This was the first physics class I've taken since high school (did physics c in hs, didn't learn anything), so I was clueless from the beginning. It turned out that I could manage derivations pretty well, and the concepts were very sensible. But whenever there were formula based and plug in chug type of questions I would get totally lost because of my lack of familiarity with those stuffs (and apparently reluctance to memorize them). Not all homework problems were graded, so it was sometimes a pain depending on whether if I correctly solved the graded ones. Also never did too well on the quizzes (bunch of zeros, ouch), but the tests were fine since there were a lot of guided derivations, which I liked. My raw grade on elms was appalling (less than 65%) but I ended up with a B (my tests were all a bit above average). Lobb is strict about material-wise grading (quizzes, tests) but is very lenient when it comes to the final grade. I would say don't worry about grades too much, but focus on the understanding of the material and that feel of doing physics. Last remark, I much prefer French's book to Pain's, especially French's treatment of Fourier series (honestly I didn't read either of them).

Carter Hall
PHYS273

Anonymous
05/13/2013

This guys is the most excellent professor I've ever met. Super smart + humble = clearly covers concepts and wants students to learn the stuff. Homeworks were somewhat challenging but the test were recast/simplified homework questions! Ahhh, why aren't all my professors like him?!?

Carter Hall
PHYS273

Expecting an A
anonn
12/23/2012

The textbook for this class has a one star rating on Amazon, so I didn't get it. But it was okay because he posts his notes on his website, and they cover literally everything he goes over in class. Technically, you don't even have to take notes! He lectures very clearly and effectively and definitely wants the students to do well. The class is called waves, but he describes the class as a pre-quantum mechanics, mathematical methods class. Thus, as a math major, I already knew a lot of the stuff he taught and thought he taught the beginning of the semester rather slowly. Other students didn't seem to have this problem though. The exams are easy and straightforward (he provides equation sheets). For the second exam, I only studied for about an hour (I had a lot of other exams that week), finished it early, and only lost two points. They test concepts rather than little details, so if you go to every class and pay attention, you'll do fine. Homework is also fairly easy, maybe 3 hours a week. Another tidbit: my friend took this class with a different professor two semesters ago, and it was extremely difficult. He worked really hard, but ended up with a B. This shows how much this class can vary with different professors.

Christopher Monroe
PHYS273

Expecting a B
Anonymous
11/17/2009

He's a nice guy but the class is hard, so I suppose I'm only capable of liking him so much. Lectures can be intense sometimes, and he does tend to make mistakes, but he's aware of it and fixes them/is really nice about it if you point something out. He's also very willing to answer questions. The homework would vary between really hard and easy. And the tests we hard, as he aims for a 50% average. But then he curves by about 25% (even if the average is above 50%) so it's ok. Certainly a hard class that will take effort, and it can get rather confusing, but he seems to be doing a decent job.

Kara Hoffman
PHYS273

Expecting an A
Austin90
05/09/2009

Dr. Hoffman is one of the better professors at MD. Her lectures are very useful, and her demonstrations in class are very interesting. The only problem is that not-too-uncommon questions catch her by surprise. Therefore, she isn't able to answer them until a day or more later. However, she is very easy to talk to, because she doesn't have an ego that dominates her personality. Her tests are a little harder than most (Hence our average test score for the spring 2009 semester was a 60%) However, she gives generous curves (1/3 As, 1/3 Bs, 1/3 C's, and some "stragglers" get Ds and Fs ) If you do well on the webassign and homework, none of which are too hard, then you should really enjoy her class. As a side note, GO TO RECITATIONS EVERY FRIDAY since not doing so can take up to 10% off your final grade.

Reviews for PHYS273