PHYS1030 has been (and will hopefully remain) the worst unit I have taken at UWA. I will not state how many units I have taken in order to retain my anonymity, however, rest assured I am not a fresher nor am I inexperienced in mathematics. I have taken units across many different departments at UWA, but it is PHYS1030 that has seriously called into question the competence of Dr Carl Blair, and as a result the physics department and the university as an education provider. I have no doubt Dr. Carl Blair is a very bright individual and an excellent physicist. This is reflected by his research output and I have no doubt he is a very capable academic. However, his ability to teach can be summarised as lazy, unorganised and of overall poor quality. In week three of this semester, I started keeping a tally of certain issues. Lab questions were not released on time in three of the five situations, an astonishing 60%. Dr Blair regularly forgot to release the submission point for assessed labs on LMS, requiring students to email him to have it opened. In the first six weeks of classes, Dr Carl was late to class by more than five minutes a remarkable five times. In this regard, he did at least show some consistency. One other consistency Dr. Blair showed was a complete inability to finish lectures in the allocated two-hour time slot. On seven occasions, Dr Blair did not manage to complete the lecture despite an assessed quiz being due afterwards. This was the consequence of Dr Blair's tendency to regularly go on extended tangents on the nuances of certain topics which hardly improved students' depth or breadth on the topic, and then skimming over assessable formulas and questions in order to make up this time. This made the students responsible for spending a disproportionate amount of time learning the remaining content that was either skimmed over or skipped. Further, Dr Blair did not unmute his microphone for the entirety of the lecture not once but twice. This wouldn’t have been too much of an issue as there are recordings from the previous year's lectures. Unfortunately, on one of this weeks a previous lecturer also did the same, resulting in the absence of a lecture for multiple days before Dr Blair re-recorded it after multiple emails from students. Dr Blair awarded no marks for working, only a binary of correct or incorrect answers. He did not issue individual test feedback. Despite multiple emails from students throughout the week, Dr Blair did not release practice material for tests until the night before. Perhaps in the most outrageous example of blatant disregard - and dare I say outright disrespect - for students and their time and money, Dr Blair sent an announcement out on the morning of an 8 AM lecture to state that he would not be at class as he did not sleep well. Funnily enough, sometimes students don’t sleep well, but we can't just postpone classes or assessments when we feel like it. Given the short notice, most students still showed up at the lecture venue. PHY1030 is a bridging unit and the first experience that many students aspiring to study or work in STEM fields will have. I can seriously see this unit and Dr Blair's conduct in it being a deterrent not just to pursuing a STEM degree but to university study as a whole. It reflects poorly on the physics department and UWA as a whole that a foundational unit such as this is so poorly managed.

Mediocre unit, labs are the worst part of it as they are 3+ hours and you need a lab partner that actually does work. Tests are fine if you understand the content, the workload is a lot with an assignment being released every week which takes about 1hour 30min to complete, and ontop of that you need to take ur own notes from pre-recorded lectures that takes about 2 hours per week. Tests and exams are multiple choice though which is a small positive

Interesting content for students who enjoy physics and maths. However, labs are often confusing and difficult. Not only this you are expected to use excel for the labs by Gareth who gets quite annoyed if you try to do it by hand. Next, mechanics… poorly taught and Ralph just mocks you for getting a bad score. Often had terrible averages. However, exam is not too hard with enough study. Darren puts a lot of love into the subject and made it enjoyable in the end

A very enjoyable unit with the assessments being pretty straightforward as they are multiple choice. However, the labs are stressful and marked very harshly. They are also very long, despite being three hours (which is already a long time), I was often there well into the fourth hour, waiting for marking. The teaching quality varied with the different lecturers, which was pretty annoying. Mechanics was taught the worst despite it being known for its difficulty. The weekly pracs were handy in consolidating knowledge, and the online Mastering Physics assignments were a good form of assessment.

Exam was challenging and confusing. Labs were 3 hours long and marked very harshly (depending on your lab facilitator)

Great unit where the content is provided in very comprehensive lecture notes, and the lecturers are fantastic. There is quite a lot of work to do, but its definitely achievable and helped keep me accountable in my study.

Decent content, and all tests and exams are multi choice. That being said the questions can get quite hard. Main downside to the unit is the labs as they are 3 hours long. I would advise aiming to finish in less than 2.5 hours as otherwise you could be there waiting for marking well into the 4th hour. Also, Darren is a goat.

The content was interesting but the multiple lecturers was very hard to follow. The labs felt more like an arduous task to get marks than interesting experiment.

Good start for phys. Make sure you have the textbook as they double the joy along the journey! The mechanics bit was a bit challenging for me and I would recommend reading the textbook for that part as they helped me more than the lectures.

Lecturers were very varied and same with difficulty. Mechanics was taught the worst and seemed to be the hardest part. Overall, I enjoyed this unit. There were plenty of practice tests and exams and available which was a huge help. Final exam is a 30 q multichoice which was not too terrible but definitely not easy