PHYSICS 1B
Physics for Scientists and Engineers: Oscillations, Waves, Electric and Magnetic Fields
Grades
3.21
Average grade awarded in PHYSICS 1B. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
45%
of the 5,033 letter grades
D, F or W
2.1%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
<1%
5 of 9 students passed
The registrar's own records: 5,033 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 3.02 to 3.61.
Historical grades for all professors, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
- A+ 282 · 5.6%
- A 1,414 · 28.1%
- A- 565 · 11.2%
- B+ 485 · 9.6%
- B 966 · 19.2%
- B- 343 · 6.8%
- C+ 276 · 5.5%
- C 464 · 9.2%
- C- 132 · 2.6%
- D+ 23 · 0.5%
- D 34 · 0.7%
- D- 8 · 0.2%
- F 41 · 0.8%
- P 5 of 5,064
- NP 4 of 5,064
- I 22 of 5,064
Percentages are of the 5,033 letter grades. Grey bars are non-letter outcomes: passes (P), no-passes (NP), and incompletes (I).
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.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Spring 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CORBIN, BRENT reviews ↗ | 3.10 | 3.10 | 1,519 | 10 | 39% | average | not teaching it |
| GUTPERLE, MICHAEL reviews ↗ | 3.06 | 3.06 | 680 | 3 | 37% | light | not teaching it |
| KUSENKO, ALEXANDER reviews ↗ | 3.26 | 3.26 | 354 | 1 | 44% | light | not teaching it |
| TUNG, NATHAN C reviews ↗ | 3.56 | 3.58 | 351 | 1 | 68% | - | not teaching it |
| MUSUMECI, PIETRO reviews ↗ | 3.25 | 3.25 | 340 | 2 | 43% | - | not teaching it |
| HAUSER, JAY reviews ↗ | 3.19 | 3.19 | 339 | 2 | 42% | light | not teaching it |
| CARTER, TROY A reviews ↗ | 3.10 | 3.09 | 186 | 1 | 37% | average | not teaching it |
| WANG, SHENSHEN reviews ↗ | 3.44 | 3.46 | 184 | 1 | 57% | - | not teaching it |
| PETTA, JASON R reviews ↗ | 3.09 | 3.08 | 175 | 1 | 37% | very light | not teaching it |
| BAUER, DAVID JEFFREY reviews ↗ | 3.07 | 3.05 | 162 | 1 | 37% | light | not teaching it |
| HAMILTON, PAUL reviews ↗ | 3.09 | 3.07 | 154 | 1 | 38% | - | not teaching it |
| ROMBES III, NICHOLAS DEMETRIOS reviews ↗ | 3.44 | 3.46 | 150 | 1 | 65% | - | not teaching it |
| MCKEOWN, DANIEL FREDERICK reviews ↗ | 3.77 | 3.84 | 128 | 1 | 88% | - | not teaching it |
| FREIMAN, GABRIEL reviews ↗ | 3.52 | 3.57 | 113 | 1 | 73% | - | not teaching it |
| TSUNG, FRANK reviews ↗ | 3.29 | 3.30 | 86 | 1 | 55% | - | not teaching it |
| ROVIGE, LUCAS PIERRE reviews ↗ | 3.19 | 3.19 | 72 | 1 | 35% | - | not teaching it |
| POWELL, IAN EMMANUEL reviews ↗ | 3.23 | 3.23 | 40 | 1 | 50% | - | 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
- 2 exams, said by 16 reviewers
- 4 quizzes, said by 8 reviewers
- 9 problem sets, said by 5 reviewers
Read from 508 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 4 courses long before PHYSICS 1B. Read from Fall 2026, because dibs has not read a class page for PHYSICS 1B in Spring 2026 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 Springs
Ran in 4 of the last 4 Springs.
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: course 1A, Mathematics 31B, 32A. Enforced corequisite: Mathematics 32B. Fluid mechanics, oscillation, mechanical waves, and sound. Electric charge, field and potential, capacitors, and dielectrics. Currents and resistance, direct-current circuits. P/NP or letter grading.
Sections in Spring 2026
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking PHYSICS 1B 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.
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External reviews are separate and do not count toward the dibs rating.