Prof Norum is very sweet, but brace yourself because this is going to be a difficult semester. I took this class during COVID so lectures were all asych, but I imagine that they are better in person. Learn from a few of my mistakes:
-If you haven't taken physics before, don't start with it here. A lot of folks in this class were able to sail through the first part of the semester because they had taken it in high school.
-Write down formulas as you go. If it looks like a formula, write it down. Later, you can go through and organize them onto a formula sheet with their appropriate unit. A problem that Norum has is that it's not always clear which formulas he wants you to be familiar with, so it's easy to get lost looking for the right one to use.
-Start the homeworks early. This is hard if you are a procrastinator like me, but it honestly really helps because then you can go to office hours before they are due at 5 am on Thursday. One thing that helps motivate me to do this is going to office hours to work on it and then work until you have questions, or scheduling a tutoring session to work on it.

The class was pretty boring, but Professor Norum does his best to make it interesting. The midterms are curved a lot, which helped the people who only kind of understood the material do okay on the tests. A lot of student have already taken Physics in high school, which puts them at an advantage. I had never taken a Physics class so it was tough to keep up with the material enough to get the grades I wanted on the exams. I ended with I at least think should have been a B+, but only the top 25% of people with B's get a B+, so even if you have an 87/88 you can still end with a B like I did.

Unless your major will directly use alot of this class's info like in Civil Engineering etc... its practically useless (and UVA being a CS and BioMed focused school, this is probably a lot of you) and thus you should take it at a Community college or something. Tests are impossible, averages being between 50 and 60% and the final worse than that. You have to pay to make an account on MasteringPhysics to do hw and its just busy work that you learn nothing from. Lectures are as bland as watching paint dry and even if you do manage to pay attention, good luck trying to decipher Norums explanations of problems or formula derivations. You have to show up because he has clicker questions tho. All in all, its p obvious Norum does not care about this class, he lectures from slides that a textbook gave him, he assigns hw from a pre-designed website and makes us all pay for it, and he has his TA grade everything so do yourself a favor and avoid this class. If you do have to take this class, do not fall behind, take notes on the pre lecture before class, go over them after class, and chill in the back w/ your laptop doing other work because lecture is a waste of time apart from clicker questions. Godspeed.

The lectures are worthless, the only reason it is beneficial to go to class is because the clicker questions are 10% of your grade. Norum's demos are interesting and they definitely help, but for the vast majority of classes he just sits in the front going over solutions to various problems the whole time. Many of the solutions are hard to follow because he reads the problem and then goes directly into the solution, giving us zero time to think about it ourselves. Almost all the things I learned in this class were self taught from the textbook. There is also a weekly homework assignment due at 5 am for some reason, with ZERO credit given for lateness. I would not take this class unless you have to. Physics can be a fun subject but this class doesn't do it justice.

Norum is a very nice person but is a fairly “stereotypical” professor. He isn’t the best at explaining and lectures can be boring when there aren’t a lot of demos. Material is a lot and moves very fast but good homework. Fills the requirement and isn’t too bad with a little studying.

Blaine is a decent professor, not the best, but he's sufficient. The demos are usually pretty cool. The course is not extremely difficult. Two exams with 20 multiple choice and a final. He is sort of helpful with homework questions. Usually the TA is better to ask for help. Decent choice of professor, don't expect him to be amazing though.

The lectures were pretty boring but the demonstrations that Prof. Norum did very interesting. In terms of homework, the load is not too bad - you only have 1 weekly web assignment. That said, the homework can get really, really hard. The exams were pretty difficult but it helped that they were multiple choice questions. The class is curved, so be on your toes to keep ahead of the pack. I was averaging a 80s in the first two midterms - on route to an A/A- after a curve, but slipped on the final and ended up with a B+ instead.

I came into this class feeling pretty confident about physics but boy was I wrong.. this class goes super fast (new unit every week, aka every 2 lectures) and it's very easy to sort-of/not-really understand things and google your way through webassign, until the exam comes and you're fucked. Did this for the first two exams (which are straightforward but very hard if you don't thoroughly understand the material), but actually took the time to learn everything before the final and got a 95. I learned that the nice thing is that physics is not really studyable so if you stay on top of things, and actually figure out the webassigns throughout the class, you won't need to study for the exams since they just test concepts.

This class was probably different for me because I took it during the summer, but I didn't think Norum was all that bad. His lectures were pretty much straight from the book, but he was easy to understand and follow. He would even crack a joke or two. Homework was time consuming and tests were very tough, with the average hovering around a 60%, but there is a big curve and he was generous with partial credit. The final was along the same lines as the test, but if you were able to Ace it, it would replace your final grade.

50% of the 2011 class cheated on their final. Honorable people who had above-average scores throughout the course ended up with below-average grades. If you take this class, have some integrity.