PHYSICS 1A
Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Mechanics
Grades
3.11
Average grade awarded in PHYSICS 1A. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
42%
of the 4,710 letter grades
D, F or W
5.4%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
1%
52% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 4,710 grades over 17 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
4 of those terms are summer sessions, and summer sessions are counted here.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 17 terms ran 2.81 to 3.52.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 315 · 6.7%
- A 965 · 20.5%
- A- 690 · 14.6%
- B+ 597 · 12.7%
- B 659 · 14.0%
- B- 506 · 10.7%
- C+ 272 · 5.8%
- C 269 · 5.7%
- C- 184 · 3.9%
- D+ 64 · 1.4%
- D 59 · 1.3%
- D- 64 · 1.4%
- F 66 · 1.4%
- P 15 of 4,748
- NP 14 of 4,748
- I 7 of 4,748
- NR 1 of 4,748
- DR 1 of 4,748
Percentages are of the 4,710 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), incompletes (I), no report (NR), and withdrawals (DR).
How the non-letter outcomes are counted
They are excluded from the GPA entirely rather than scored, because counting a P as a 4.0 would be a fabrication.
Withdrawals are the exception to "excluded": DR is not scored, but it IS counted in the D, F or W figure above, which is reported over the letter grades plus the withdrawals. Pass/no pass and S/U outcomes are outside that figure on both sides.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Fall 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KAMAHA, ALVINE reviews ↗ | 2.89 | 2.89 | 912 | 5 | 39% | light | not teaching it |
| VASSILIEV, VLADIMIR V reviews ↗ | 3.26 | 3.26 | 881 | 5 | 37% | average | not teaching it |
| KUSENKO, ALEXANDER reviews ↗ | 2.95 | 2.94 | 708 | 2 | 35% | light | not teaching it |
| TUNG, NATHAN C reviews ↗ | 3.30 | 3.30 | 525 | 4 | 54% | light | not teaching it |
| CORBIN, BRENT reviews ↗ | 3.25 | 3.25 | 443 | 3 | 47% | average | not teaching it |
| SALTZBERG, DAVID reviews ↗ | 2.97 | 2.97 | 299 | 2 | 37% | average | not teaching it |
| BAUER, DAVID JEFFREY reviews ↗ | 2.92 | 2.90 | 197 | 2 | 36% | - | not teaching it |
| GELMINI, GRACIELA BEATRIZ reviews ↗ | 3.28 | 3.30 | 164 | 1 | 43% | heavy | not teaching it |
| ZOCCHI, GIOVANNI reviews ↗ | 3.74 | 3.81 | 149 | 1 | 89% | average | not teaching it |
| WILLIAMS, GARY A reviews ↗ | 2.88 | 2.85 | 145 | 1 | 26% | heavy | not teaching it |
| GUTPERLE, MICHAEL reviews ↗ | 3.16 | 3.17 | 122 | 1 | 39% | average | not teaching it |
| TODERI, MARTIN ALEJANDRO reviews ↗ | 3.25 | 3.28 | 83 | 2 | 54% | very light | not teaching it |
| TSERKOVNYAK, YAROSLAV reviews ↗ | 2.99 | 2.96 | 82 | 1 | 33% | - | not teaching it |
Why Predicted is not the Raw average
“Predicted” is shrunk toward the course average, which is itself shrunk toward the department, so an instructor with a handful of students sits near the course mean rather than topping the list.
Grade records describe outcomes. For what a course is like to take, read student reviews written on dibs below or follow the separate external review link.
Workload and assignments
Work types reported in BruinWalk reviews of this course, across recorded instructors and terms. They may differ from this term's syllabus.
What the work looks like
- 3 exams, said by 2 reviewers
- 5 quizzes, said by 1 reviewer
- Problem sets mentioned, no number given, said by 1 reviewer
Read from 534 reviews about 1 month ago. dibs counts only what a review actually states, so a kind of work nobody mentioned is absent rather than zero.
What comes first
The chain dibs can see is 3 courses long before PHYSICS 1A. Read from Fall 2026, because dibs has not read a class page for PHYSICS 1A in Fall 2025 and a department can change what it requires. dibs has read a class page for every course in it.
Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.
In Falls
Ran in 5 of the last 5 Falls.
From the terms dibs holds, which start in Fall 2021 and exclude summer. A department can run a course in a quarter it never has before.
From the registrar's catalog
Lecture/demonstration, four hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisites: Mathematics 31A, 31B. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 32A. Motion, Newton laws, work, energy, linear and angular momentum, rotation, equilibrium, gravitation. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Fall 2025
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking PHYSICS 1A was like: the work, the teaching, and what students wish they’d known.
Your experience could be the first.
No student reviews are available to read on dibs for this course yet. Took it? Tell the next person what helped, what was hard, and how you spent your time.
Looking for more perspectives?
External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.