Bob Field biosketch

DR. BOB FIELD

Cal Poly adjunct physics professor and research scholar in residence

Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History docent

Retired physicist specializing in advanced optical systems and components for aerospace applications

calpoly.edu email address: rfield

PRIMARY RESEARCH EMPHASIS: GLOBAL EVOLUTION STUDIES

The National Academy of Sciences says that it is the role of science to provide plausible natural explanations of natural phenomena. The ultimate question for Earth System History is: How did a giant cloud of cold dilute gas and dust evolve into astronauts in a spacecraft orbiting a planet orbiting a star? The Natural History of Planet Earth is the product of nearly five billion years of global evolutionary processes that followed the first nine billion years of cosmic evolution. Complexity grows when energy flows in natural systems because simple building blocks evolve into complex materials and processes. The structure and evolution of the OASES (oceans, atmosphere, solid Earth, and Sun) and the biosphere (molecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems) depend on interactions of energy and matter. The origin, evolution, diversity, abundance, and distribution of life are emergent properties of increasing environmental complexity.

I am developing indoor and outdoor science education programs for youth and for the adults that influence them by applying Dr. Sam Ham’s principles of thematic interpretation to the greatest story rarely told: the remarkable four billion year sequence of physical and biological events that preceded the Cambrian Explosion. My goal is to secure an endowment for an organization to develop and maintain a global evolution website and related educational resources.

I am seeking students and faculty to help develop a website featuring:

1. a five-billion-year timeline of globally important events in 100 million year intervals

2. a database of properties and processes of the Sun and the Earth and its subsystems

3. math models of solar and global system structures and flows of energy and material

4. constructivist thematic educational resources for students, educators, and the public

RELATED PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

I have been an adjunct physics professor at Cal Poly for seven years. I have spent countless hours developing simple math models of complex systems and working with students and faculty in physics, biology, chemistry, and education. I developed and taught an advanced physics course PHYS470 Solar and Global Evolution that included analyses produced by a solar evolution code donated by Los Alamos National Lab as well as my simple math models of the oceans, atmosphere, and solid Earth. I have supervised sixteen student projects (four senior projects, eight summer research students, plus PHYS200, PHYS400, GEOL400, and BIOL400 special problems) in optics, atmospheric physics, optical oceanography, geophysics, solar astrophysics, and natural history.

I created the Ocean Science Quest tabloid newspaper posters currently on display in Fisher Hall as part of a larger six-week exhibit for the Kennedy Library in conjunction with an Osher Institute course that I taught in 2003. I have given three physics colloquia and have conducted teacher workshops for the Central Coast Science Project (CCSP). Recently, I recruited a team of science educators to prepare two proposals to develop informal science education programs to advance the missions of the Center for Excellence in Science and Mathematics (CESAME) and the Center for Coastal Marine Science (CCMS). I am currently developing a global evolution website and related educational resources.

As a California state park docent for ten years, I have devoted 5000 hours to developing and conducting informal science education programs for the general public. I developed and presented fifteen animated PowerPoint slide shows for mind walks and for the Winter Bird Festival at the Morro Bay State Park Museum of Natural History. I have created several temporary displays for the museum. I created four nature walks that relate the natural history of the California Coast to global evolutionary themes for the museum and for general and youth audiences. I previously served on a Central Coast Natural History Association educational liaison committee and on the state park walk docent committee.

PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

My experimental solid state physics PhD thesis at the University of Illinois required me to design and build several state-of-the-art (1970s) spectroscopic instruments to acquire the data necessary to determine the nature of several advanced materials. My twenty year career as an aerospace scientist emphasized the design and development of high energy laser optical systems and components, primarily for space-based, ground-based, airborne, and ocean-related military applications. I worked at Rocketdyne for ten years on advanced laser projects doing systems analysis and designing high energy laser optical, electro-optical, and opto-mechanical systems. As a senior scientist at Schafer Corporation for ten years, I designed very low absorption optical coatings and evaluated advanced coating technologies for uncooled high energy laser optics, for large laser beam director primary mirrors, and for broadband and multi-band surveillance system optics. My optics experience ranges from the ultraviolet to the far infrared and includes hands-on design, construction, assembly and operation of advanced instrumentation and developing and exercising applied math models.