Steve Plotkin - University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

Professor: Steve Plotkin

Department: Physics

College: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

Rating # 1

Overview:

• Course: PHYS306
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Was dreading taking this class, but Steve made sure to explain everything very clearly, making this class one of my favourites despite hating 216. In-class participation came up a lot, so attendance is necessary. The in-class worksheets made following lecture easier and getting distracted more difficult.

Rating # 2

Overview:

• Course: PHYS306
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 5.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Steve was an awesome prof. He clearly wants his students to do well and isn't afraid to scale to very high averages to ensure it. His worksheets are pretty useful and the scaling makes it so you can just focus on learning rather than doing exceptionally well on everything (takes away some serious stress). Pretty receptive to feedback as well.

Rating # 3

Overview:

• Course: PHYS305
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

The guy is clearly trying his best to improve via worksheet use. I would not recommend for first year level classes as his arrogance might seem intimidating.

Rating # 4

Overview:

• Course: PHYS306
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Honestly this is a hard professor to rate. He is a clear speaker and motivated teacher which is great and unusual in the physics department. However he is also a little arrogant and seems not to care about student learning but rather about how he is viewed. Unfair midterm, fair homework. Overall he isnt bad but nothing special either.

Rating # 5

Overview:

• Course: PHYS306
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: Yes
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Steve is a fantastic teacher. His approach to teaching mechanics is very clear and understandable, and I feel like I leave every lecture learning something new. His midterm was rough and the homework is a little hard at times, but if you care about actually learning the material I would definitely reccomend taking mechanics when he is teaching it.

Rating # 6

Overview:

• Course: PHYS306
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Honestly one of the absolute worst professors in the department. While he is not bad at the teaching component of being an instructor, his utter lack of care for students combined with how disorganized he is more than balance it out. Would not recommend ! Ever !

Rating # 7

Overview:

• Course: PHYS305
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

The professor is awful. Unprofessional behavior. Arrogant. Does not know how to teach. Horrible presentation.

Rating # 8

Overview:

• Course: SCIE113
• Grade Received: C
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: No
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

no enough office hour. terrible . do not want to take his course again

Rating # 9

Overview:

• Course: PHYS158
• Grade Received: C+
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Unclear when lecturing. His lecture notes (I they're the same across sections) are terrible & packed to the brim with irrelevant derivations, info, etc. Cannot be concise. Fails to mention important concepts early. Makes supposedly easy material hard to understand. Averages for the two midterms were 42% and 50% across the 3 course sections.

Rating # 10

Overview:

• Course: PHYS158
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: Yes
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

This prof is terrible! His lectures are so boring so it's incredibly hard to stay focused. He puts slides up with paragraphs and paragraphs of text which you have no chance of reading let alone writing down any notes from. Super condescending and not helpful at all.

Rating # 11

Overview:

• Course: PHYS102
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 2.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Not the best professor at UBC. Nice guy and all but I really think instead of blaming him for physics 102 for being such a useless boring course whoever is in charge is to blame. He gives out clicker questions on stuff we havent learned yet in class which sucks and sometimes makes class unbearable.

Rating # 12

Overview:

• Course: PHYS210
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.5
• Course Difficulty: 2.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Steve was a nice guy and all, but I can understand teaching a course on Octave/Matlab is challenging. Overall I don't think he was very effective in teaching the material, it took hours and hours and hours a week to do the weekly quizzes. I'm pretty sure I failed the final, but luckily it was massively scaled.

Rating # 13

Overview:

• Course: PHYS210
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

"Google it" is a famous phrase in this course. You are there to learn how to google how to do something in Matlab. Actually, you are not there to learn anything. Might as well stay at home, learn Matlab on your own. Wonder what I am even paying for. Math material from courses not pre/co req are on the quizzes. Good luck to you.

Rating # 14

Overview:

• Course: PHYS210
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 1.5
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

If you do not have any programming knowledge, be warned DO NOT take the course. The TAs are not going to help you either. What you learn in lecture is child's play compared to the quiz questions. It is like asking one to run without learning how to crawl. It is ridiculous. This is a course straight from hell.

Rating # 15

Overview:

• Course: PHYS102
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.5
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: Yes
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Usually, I take the reviews on this site lightly. However, for Steve, I found they were pretty true. I believe it was his first time teaching the course and you could tell. Hard to follow in lecture and just overall not very effective in conveying ideas and concepts. I had to teach myself out of the textbook. I would recommend a different prof...

Rating # 16

Overview:

• Course: PHYS270
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 3.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: No
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

A fairly useful course, but he regurgitated a lot of his examples, and was a bit of a jerk when answering some questions. He treated the class like highschool students at times, and his quiz system was very ineffective.

Rating # 17

Overview:

• Course: P305
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 5.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: N/A
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

Really hard course at times. He expected us to know stat mech initially, and then had to do some extra lectures on it. Plotkin lectures quite well, but he expects much especially on his tests and selfmade hw questions. The bio students etc dropped it, class went from 50 to 18. It's a pure physics course in disguise, just know that when you take it.

Rating # 18

Overview:

• Course: PHYS305
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.0
• Course Difficulty: 4.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: N/A
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

I learned more than I expected to in this course. He somestime digressed but I could always pay attention. Also, I think he looks like Stuart Townsend in the movie "Queen of the Damned."

Rating # 19

Overview:

• Course: PHYS305
• Grade Received: A
• Overall Rating: 4.5
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: N/A
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: Mandatory

Comment:

Dr. Plotkin is very thoughtful in answering questions. He always wants to make sure you get the concept. I appreciate that he takes the time to do that and just doesn't blow over a question with a quick response.

Rating # 20

Overview:

• Course: PHYS305
• Grade Received: N/A
• Overall Rating: 4.5
• Course Difficulty: 3.0

• For Credit: N/A
• Textbook Used: N/A
• Would Take Again: N/A
• Attendance: N/A

Comment:

a little too dependent on powerpoint, ask him to do board lectures so you can check out his ass. tough but fair. very available for office hours, willing to work on problems with students. bonus questions sucked.