| Information | Review |
|---|---|
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS401 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/30/2025 |
I don't know what's going on with the other reviews, Dr. Palmer is genuinely one of the best professors I've ever had. He really cares about his students succeeding and will spend time, both in class and during office hours, to ensure that his students understand the material. Also, his exams are extremely fair and he gives a practice exam before each exam. He's also extremely clear about what he wants you to take away from the class and what you should study. He does require in class participation on slido, but it's not that big of a deal. He also has a policy where you can make your grade just your final exam grade or just the grades you got on all the exams averaged, if you didn't do well on the homeworks or didn't go to class. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS401 Expecting an A Anonymous 04/20/2025 |
Hes a good lecturer who cares a lot and gives fair exams. The homeworks are extremely long though so start early every time. Participation weighted quite heavily (inclass clicker + piazza is just under a quarter of the grade.) More of a 3.5 star than a 2.5 star but am limited by the scoring system here. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting a C Anonymous 01/18/2025 |
HORRIBLE, Taught off of trash slides, so hard for what reason, Hella nice tho cant lie |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2023 |
He is a nice person in general, but not a a great teacher. He reads off slides in his lectures and it is often hard to follow. A large percentage (12%) of the grade depends on class engagement, so it becomes pretty important to attend lectures. He also assigns a lot of written HW - anywhere between 12-20 questions every week, but we barely receive any feedback on HW. If your background in the concepts taught is not very strong, his lectures get even harder to follow. What I do like about the structuring of this course is how each unit introduces a fundamental larger concept in physics and how he sort of connects everything with each other. Overall, he is an understanding and helpful person, but his teaching could be much better. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2023 |
Idk what these reviews are on about...Palmer's pretty fantastic. - Yes, attendance is a part of your grade. But all you have to do is put literally any answer into the Learning Catalytics session each class, and boom, you've just got a free 12% of your grade. - Homework's twice a week: one part online, with super easy conceptual problems. The written section is usually ~15 problems, again not too bad - As a lecturer, he's perfectly good. He's no Fawzi/Nelson (for the cs majors), but he decently explains how to go about solving all the problems we cover in class, and is incredibly open to any kind of question in class/in office hours. - The big thing tho: he gives you his past exams. Not only that, he ALWAYS reuses AT LEAST 1 question (or a very similar problem) from his past exams on his current exams. This even happened on the final. If that doesn't help guarantee at least a B+ on every exam for everyone, idk what will. - One thing I will note: you might wanna buy a Giancoli textbook, because the Mazur one he uses is (imo) pretty terrible at explaining everything past 2d kinematics. |
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Christopher Palmer
Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/30/2023 |
Lectures are useless but attendance is graded so your basically waking up for a 9am class and wasting your time. Written Hw is graded lazily, only a few random questions are graded so if you mess up one of those questions too bad your down to a 75 already. You also don't get answers to any of the hw questions you get wrong. The exams are pretty easy if you prepare for them but even if you get an A on all of them you can still easily get a B for the course. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting an A- Anonymous 11/15/2023 |
He never teaches in class, all he does is "examples" in his head on the board. He doesn't teach any of the material needed for the exam in class, that is all done on your own. I would be okay if attendance was optional, but he feels that it is imperative that you come to class to waste your time with him. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 10/10/2023 |
He mainly uses PowerPoints to teach the class, which can sometimes get boring and irrelevant. He is very high on 'peer learning' which often means he organizes you into learning pods, but it doesn't really help you gain any extra knowledge. He is also very keen on daily class attendance (and is graded) which can be annoying because his classes don't seem to add much value. The textbook that he recommends and uses for this course isn't the best at explaining concepts and can leave you confused. I ended up having to rely on alternate textbooks. He assigns a ton of homework - both online (on Pearson IIRC) and questions from the textbook. Only a few of those are graded but you are expected to do all of those because you don't know which ones are graded. It just seems so much commitment and homework for an introductory physics class. His exams aren't tough, and he drops your lowest exam which really helped me save my grade. He is helpful if you go to his office hours. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting a B- Anonymous 10/03/2023 |
Not really the best professor but a nice guy. As the other reviews have mentioned, he kinda just reads off the slides and even the slides are not that helpful. He kinda expects us to know everything from the book or to just have a great background on it already but that's kinda not how it should be because not everybody has the same background. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/01/2022 |
Didn't really do a good job of explaining material. Just did his lectures through power points. Is very annoying about attendance 10-15% of your grade. Won't really tell you what to expect on exams and his written homework consists of 15+ questions. He is a nice guy tho and he just started teaching so maybe he'll get better over time. Overall I would go with another professor. |
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Christopher Palmer
PHYS171 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/27/2021 |
Did a decent job of explaining material, was relatively understanding with students. Was kind of annoying about attendance and the grading on homework was unnecessarily weighted towards minor details like whether you remembered to write 'conservation of energy' and stuff like that IMO. But I can see the logic behind it. |