Dr. Christopher S. Baird

Dr. Baird is the author of the textbook Fundamentals of Human Monocular Depth Perception and the general-audience book The Top 50 Science Questions with Surprising Answers, and is an Associate Professor of Physics at West Texas A&M University. He is also the author of the popular series of online articles called Science Questions with Surprising Answers. Dr. Baird's teaching assignments include Electromagnetism and Optics, and his research areas include electromagnetic scattering, quantum devices, and lasers.

The Textbook "Fundamentals of Human Monocular Depth Perception"

Download the free OER textbook written by Dr. Baird that describes how physics and geometry dictate the manner in which the depth information of the three-dimensional physical world becomes encoded within the two-dimensional images that are captured by the human eye. This book then describes how human vision extracts this depth information using visual depth perception cues to enable humans to visually experience depth, thereby visually perceiving the physical world as three-dimensional, despite capturing only two-dimensional images in the eye.
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The Online Articles "Science Questions with Surprising Answers"

When will the planets align? Can it rain fish? How can you unlock the 90% of your brain that you never use? The actual answers to such questions may be different from what you would expect. In fact, the answers to many science questions can be quite surprising. In 2012, Dr. Baird began writing a series of immensely popular online articles for his website Science Questions with Surprising Answers, which were written for a general audience. He has now written over 350 of these articles. Each article takes the form of a highly-accurate answer to a particular science question, with information drawn from peer-reviewed journals, professional scientific organizations, university textbooks, and Dr. Baird's own first-hand expertise as a scientist. These articles do a marvelous job of making complex scientific concepts interesting and understandable to the average non-scientist.
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The Book "The Top 50 Science Questions with Surprising Answers"

Of the 350+ online articles that Dr. Baird has written for his website "Science Questions with Surprising Answers," this book contains the fifty most popular articles, as determined by the average number of article views per month. This book presents the articles in countdown fashion, ending at the number-one most popular surprising answer. Additionally, for this book, Dr. Baird has edited and expanded each of these science answers and added a bonus chapter. This ranked compilation of science questions and answers is an interesting representation of the science questions and answers that the world finds the most intriguing.
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Teaching

Dr. Baird has enjoyed teaching in the classroom, in the laboratory class setting, and through the supervision of original student research. He currently teaches lower-level and upper-level undergraduate physics courses, including: Optics, Electromagnetism, General Physics I & II, and Calculus Physics I & II.
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Research

Dr. Baird's research interests are in the areas of electromagnetic scattering and quantum structures. Currently, he is involved in building and using computational models to predict the performance of Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCL's) and to aid in the design of next-generation QCL's.
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CV

Dr. Baird received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2007 and his BS in physics from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2001. He is currently Associate Professor of Physics at West Texas A&M University.
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Biography

Dr. Baird was born in Belmont, Massachusetts. After a two-year church service mission in Germany, he attended Brigham Young University (BYU) as an undergraduate. At BYU, he met and married his wife Ellen Shumway who graduated with a degree in nursing. They currently have seven children and live in Amarillo, Texas.
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Contact Dr. Baird

Feel free to contact Dr. Baird if you would like to learn more about his research, if you would like to collaborate on research, or if you have a science question.
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