PHYSICS 5C
Physics for Life Sciences Majors: Electricity, Magnetism, and Modern Physics
Lecture and discussion.
Winter 2026: 2 lectures and 8 discussions. 1 lecture and 3 discussions are open. The oldest of these readings was about 2 months ago.
Grades
3.37
Average grade awarded in PHYSICS 5C. Not a student rating: this is what the grades were.
In the A range
56%
of the 5,652 letter grades
D, F or W
1.9%
of every letter grade awarded, plus withdrawals
Taken pass/no pass
1%
86% of those passed
The registrar's own records: 5,652 grades over 12 terms, Fall 2021 to Fall 2025. Every instructor is pooled here.
What is inside that record
No summer session is in that record.
The table below splits them, and term averages across those 12 terms ran 2.98 to 3.59.
Historical grades for MCKEOWN, DANIEL FREDERICK, across recorded terms. The course summary above includes all professors.
No grade history is available for this professor in this course.
By instructor
| Instructor | Predicted GPA | Raw | n | Terms | A range | Workload | Winter 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAUER, DAVID JEFFREY reviews ↗ | 3.27 | 3.27 | 1,077 | 4 | 48% | light | not teaching it |
| TUNG, NATHAN C reviews ↗ | 3.49 | 3.49 | 951 | 3 | 64% | light | not teaching it |
| NIEMANN, CHRISTOPH reviews ↗ | 3.31 | 3.31 | 900 | 5 | 52% | light | not teaching it |
| JIANG, HONG-WEN reviews ↗ | 3.01 | 3.00 | 547 | 3 | 33% | - | not teaching it |
| SHI, QIANHUI reviews ↗ | 3.47 | 3.47 | 520 | 2 | 66% | average | not teaching it |
| CORBIN, BRENT reviews ↗ | 2.97 | 2.95 | 394 | 2 | 32% | heavy | not teaching it |
| SCHRIVER, DAVID reviews ↗ | 3.83 | 3.85 | 382 | 2 | 88% | very light | Closed |
| NARANJO, BRIAN B reviews ↗ | 3.29 | 3.29 | 363 | 2 | 44% | - | not teaching it |
| ROMBES III, NICHOLAS DEMETRIOS reviews ↗ | 3.72 | 3.74 | 354 | 1 | 82% | - | not teaching it |
| BOZOVIC, DOLORES reviews ↗ | 3.73 | 3.77 | 164 | 1 | 80% | light | 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
Reported assignments across instructors and terms. This term's syllabus may differ.
No assignment details are available in this review summary. Based on 202 reviews; source checked about 2 months ago. Missing details do not mean there are no papers or exams. Check the current syllabus.
What comes first
The chain dibs can see is 3 courses long before PHYSICS 5C. Read from Fall 2026, because dibs has not read a class page for PHYSICS 5C in Winter 2026 and a department can change what it requires. This is a floor, not a deadline: dibs has not read a class page for LIFESCI 30B and MATH 3B, so the real chain can only be longer than this, never shorter.
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
Choose an open discussion to enroll; an open lecture alone does not mean a seat is available.
Seat counts as of : the oldest of these 10 readings. That term is over, so nothing has moved since.
-
Seats
ClosedLecture: 209 of 209 enrolled
Seat risk
-4 discussions, none open. No waitlist listed.Every discussion, with its time and seats: 4 discussions
-
Closed
58 of 58 enrolled
-
Closed
56 of 56 enrolled
-
Closed
48 of 48 enrolled
-
Closed
47 of 47 enrolled
-
-
Seats
Open19 seats left in discussions.
Lecture: 188 of 207 enrolled
Instructor
3.37Predicted GPA
Historical records across all instructors; 5,652 letter gradesSeat risk
-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 discussions
-
Open
6 seats left.
40 of 46 enrolled
-
Open
4 seats left.
45 of 49 enrolled
-
Closed
56 of 56 enrolled
-
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.
From the people who took it
Student reviews
What taking PHYSICS 5C 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.
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.
A dot is a reading where something moved: the seat count, the status, or the waitlist.
What a flat run means, and where a line starts
Flat between dots means it did not drift, it held and then jumped, and a line starts when dibs first saw that lecture rather than reaching back before it existed. A lecture that has never moved draws a flat line across the whole window, and one with two or three readings draws a line joining them, which is too few to read a trend from.
Lec 1 · Schriver, D. · 209 of 209 enrolled
Unchanged over 1 minute
Both readings say 209 of 209.
Lec 2 · McKeown, D.F. · 188 of 207 enrolled
Unchanged over 1 minute
Both readings say 188 of 207.
How readings and alerts work
Dated seat counts can be available even when hourly check history is missing. Gaps do not show whether seats changed between observations.
Seat counts show the last successful read, not live availability. Refreshes can be delayed by request limits or upstream interruptions. Watched sections receive priority, but an hourly update for every section is not guaranteed.
The registrar can change a seat count between our checks. Alerts depend on dibs detecting an opening and completing delivery; a quiet watch does not prove that no seat opened. Check the registrar before enrolling.