Dirk Bouwmeester is one of my favorite professors at UCSB. Easy going and very understanding. His lectures follow the book and this reflects on his tests. Regardless the tests are still very challenging. The class was curved well and I was satisfied with my grade. Required a lot of work but it was worth it.

Very fond of proofs and random tangentially related materials. He likes to thrust stuff on you that is a little beyond the level of the class and then put it on the midterm or final. He grades on a curve but not a generous one. He is brilliant, perhaps superhumanly so, and a nice guy but it is a tough subject that I think he makes tougher.

If you do the homework, go to lecture, and study for the tests you will do fine. His tests are complete regurgitations of his lectures and the textbook. Memorize the textbook and you can get 50% of the test right without any serious problem solving. Loves to make you derive equations. One of my favorite physics professors.

Boumeester's awesome. Really nice and approachable. As long as you do the hw, show up for class, study for the tests and then go to his office hours after the test, you'll get a good grade.

Dirk Bouwmeester is really nice, but his lectures can be unclear, and his exams are really challenging. He grades with a heavy curve, so it works out like a normal class. Textbook was difficult (Klepper/Kolenkow), and homework did not help for exams. Exams based entirely on lectures, but he told us they would be a mix of homework and lectures.

Dirk is a very smart man. The class is very difficult because the tests are really hard but it is easy to pass the class because 18/40 on the midterm earned you a C-. Pointless to go to lecture because you don't learn much. It's a lot of extremely hard material thrown at you all at once. For some reason I really enjoyed him though, good luck.

I took PHYS 20 with Bouwmeester and it was fairly difficult. That being said, he is always willing to answer any question in lecture or in office hours (go to these!). The homework can be hard and requires calculus way beyond the prerequisite of Math 3A. Overall, I enjoyed the class and his test curves are definitely very lenient.

I thought the class was very challenging and he does have an accent. Lecture was confusing but the professor is very helpful during office hours and goes out of his way if you don't understand something. Homework problem set every week, midterm, final. On our midterm it was curved so that 14/40 was a C. Must KNOW your calculus to do really well.

Learned a lot of Solid State Physics from him. His lecture follows the book most of the time but he will fill in hard calculations that the book skips. He went through a lot of material very fast and expects you to spent every minute outside class learning on your own from other resources. The book was Ibach, its ok for certain parts, bad at others

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