Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Electricity, Magnetism, and Modern Physics

Grades

3.37

Average grade awarded in PHYSICS 5C. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were. i The mean of every letter grade the registrar has published for this course, pooled across every instructor who has taught it. It is not shrunk toward anything, because a course average cannot be pulled toward itself. Standard error 0.008.

The registrar's own records: 5,652 grades over 12 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. No summer session is in that record. Every instructor is pooled here. The table below splits them, and term averages across those 12 terms ran 2.98 to 3.59.

By instructor

“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.

dibs measures outcomes: grades, seats, how fast a class fills. For what a class is like to sit in, BruinWalk has the reviews.

Reviews for PHYSICS 5C ↗

What comes first

dibs has not read a class page for PHYSICS 5C, so it cannot say what comes before it.

Counted in courses rather than quarters: dibs does not know which of them a department lets you take together.

In Winters

Ran in 4 of the last 4 Winters.

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, three hours; discussion, one hour; laboratory, two hours. Requisite: course 5A. Electrostatics in vacuum and in water. Electricity, circuits, magnetism, quantum, atomic and nuclear physics, radioactivity, with applications to biological and biochemical systems. P/NP or letter grading.

Sections in Winter 2026

You enroll in the discussion, not the lecture, so a discussion's status is the one that decides whether you get in. A lecture can read open while every discussion under it is full.

Seat counts as of 27 Aug 03:06: the oldest of these 10 readings. That term is over, so nothing has moved since.

• Lec 1 MWF 2:00pm-2:50pm

  Closed

  Schriver, D.

  3.83

  this instructor · 382 grades

  209 of 209 enrolled - i A guess about whether this will still be here at your enrollment pass, from how full it is now and how fast classes like it have filled before. Seat risk is a prediction and seat status is what the registrar said: they are two things, and this page keeps them apart.

  not checked yet

  4 discussions, none open. There is no waitlist either, so the only way in is somebody dropping the lecture.

  › Every discussion, with its time and seats (4)

  • Dis 1A

    M 10:00am-10:50am · Dodd Hall 167

    Closed

    58 of 58 enrolled

  • Dis 1B

    M 11:00am-11:50am · Young Hall 2200

    Closed

    56 of 56 enrolled

  • Dis 1C

    M 12:00pm-12:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Closed

    48 of 48 enrolled

  • Dis 1D

    M 5:00pm-5:50pm · Physics and Astronomy Building 2748

    Closed

    47 of 47 enrolled

• Lec 2 MWF 3:00pm-3:50pm

  Open

  McKeown, D.F.

  3.37

  course average · 5,652 grades

  19 seats left. 188 of 207 enrolled - i A guess about whether this will still be here at your enrollment pass, from how full it is now and how fast classes like it have filled before. Seat risk is a prediction and seat status is what the registrar said: they are two things, and this page keeps them apart.

  not checked yet

  4 discussions, 3 open: Dis 2A, R 8:00am-8:50am, Dis 2B, R 9:00am-9:50am, and Dis 2D, R 4:00pm-4:50pm.

  › Every discussion, with its time and seats (4)

  • Dis 2A

    R 8:00am-8:50am · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Open

    6 seats left.

    40 of 46 enrolled

  • Dis 2B

    R 9:00am-9:50am · Physics and Astronomy Building 2434

    Open

    4 seats left.

    45 of 49 enrolled

  • Dis 2C

    R 3:00pm-3:50pm · Kinsey Science Teaching Pavilion 1240B

    Closed

    56 of 56 enrolled

  • Dis 2D

    R 4:00pm-4:50pm · Kinsey Science Teaching Pavilion 1240B

    Open

    9 seats left.

    47 of 56 enrolled

Final enrollment, averaged across each term's sections: between 142 and 195 a term over 12 terms, summer excluded, most recently 175 in Fall 2025. That is the shape across years, not this term, which is above.

Seats over time in Winter 2026

How each lecture has filled since dibs first saw it. This course runs 2 lectures; the legend under the chart picks one.