University of Colorado Boulder Department of Physics

"Only in regard to General Physics 1&2, both taught by Professor Daniel Bolton, spring and fall 2023, passed both courses. “These questions are demoralizingly hard” Professor Bolton opens up with as we start to review for an exam. This is a TERRIBLE way to start any class for their students to stay motivated. Many times throughout the semester he would state things like this saying that these questions are extremely hard, and giving us very little or no good base of knowledge on a topic he asks questions about before going over the topic of what the question was even about. Most of the time he uses symbols and letters (which is mostly understandable in physics) but without laying things out in a way that’s easier to understand first and use definitions to better understand and differentiate between these symbols in a topic or equation and when to use them in what case. I had high hopes and expectations coming to one of the top rated schools for astrophysics only to be very let down with the lack of quality in the teaching of the Physics 1 & 2 courses. I may not be the smartest or most studious of students but this is my second bachelor degree and physics 1&2 at CU are probably my least favorite and the worst structured courses I’ve ever taken due to the lack flow and proper/effective structure I had hoped for at such a prestigious university(which is a whole other topic of discussion) that seems to care more about sports, graduate students and professors research than taking the time and making sure the basics are taught well and effectively and not making it seem like we are taking a “weed out” course. I would walk out of class feeling dumber than when I walked in. I have a pretty strong will and determination but these classes caused me and other students to get depressed. To call the lecture a lecture is not accurate as well. Class time was 90% clicker questions that seemed to show us only case by case problems and seeing little to no variety in how to work and evaluate the problems we will see on tests in different ways. Prof Bolton would constantly make me second guess myself on clicker questions. It felt like we were being taught in 3 different languages for physics 1&2. We would have “lecture” (like described already) where we would learn through non mathematical concept questions(clickers), then the 2 workbooks for homework that are 20+ yrs old material consisting of a tutorial book and a HW book, where both books didn’t really correlate well to lecture (or the online HW) and then we had online mastering physics which was usually much more calculation based that also didn’t correlate well with the other 2 “languages” and went into it every week feeling ill prepared having not gone through ANY proper math type questions like we would see every week. The grading scale is heavily reliant on tests with little weight towards the HW that require the most amount of time commitment/work. The tests felt like an English test at times where many questions they would throw as many words in as possible to where it's easy to get mixed up or turned around on a question with how its phrased. I had to rely heavily on other course resources like Dubson notes, tutors and other online resources to even start to properly understand what we were learning and how to try and put it all together. The prerequisites are also a joke, they should require Calc 3 as a coreq or prerequisite for physics 1. We were presented with things like integrals, vectors, dot product, cross product and trig in physics 1. Physics 1&2 seems structured towards students coming out of IB and AP programs in high school, and those kids even struggled. They should have a pre physics 1 course like CHEM does. Prof Bolton talked about the averages at the end of the semester to be B+ to a C-, and that’s after a >5-6% decrease in what an A,B,C,D are, which were already lower than other classes typically are, at the end of the semester so the real avg is prob a C- or a C in this class."

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