Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 15, 1994 TAG: 9412160007
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT MOORE THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It wasn't that he wanted a glass of nitrogen, chilled to minus 200 degrees Celsius - iced tea would do just fine. But he wanted his companions to understand how he got started in this semi-cerebral television gig, and why science is so important to him.
``Liquid nitrogen is just funny stuff, I'm telling you,'' explained the bow-tied host of the PBS television series that bears his name and occupation (weekdays at 5:30 p.m. on WBRA-Channel 15).
``You take limp celery, put it in liquid nitrogen for a moment and it looks like you have fresh celery. Put an onion in, and it shatters.''
That, in fact, was the first televised act of the Science Guy when Nye was in the cast of ``Almost Live,'' a Comedy Central ensemble show.
``My hook, the thing that set me apart, I guess, is at the end I roasted some marshmallows in liquid nitrogen,'' he continued. ``I spent a lot of time on this in the Pacific Science Center. I was able to eat marshmallows and have steam come out of my nose.
``Now, someone else showed me how to do this, but I really put in the hours. I could make a lot of steam come out of my nose and not burn my tongue. It's very easy to burn your tongue, and it's very uncomfortable. But, hey, it's art.''
Combining his experiences as a Boeing engineer and Steve Martin look-alike, Nye became more animated as he recalled those heady days of steaming marshmallows. But he was distracted.
``Fred,'' he asked the waiter, ``do you have treacle? ... Sugar-syrup stuff. Liquid sugary stuff.''
As Fred went in search of the sweetener, Nye recalled his years at Sidwell Friends School, a Washington, D.C., prep school, where he was a member of the class of 1973 and the Mad Scientist Club.
``The nerds hung out together. It's not just a sense of belonging, but we were all fascinated with the world and science. And I'm still fascinated by it. There's nothing more interesting to me than science.''
Nye credits Sidwell teacher George Lang with having given him an appreciation of physics. ``He had a way of showing you exactly as it was.''
Later, Lang described Nye as ``a good student. His nerdy parody of himself, with pocket protector, was not totally wrong.'' The Sidwell teacher, whose senior class critiqued the ``Bill Nye, Science Guy'' pilot, also recounted how Nye once stopped at Sidwell and was able to take over Lang's lecture on cosines without missing a beat.
Nye, meanwhile, was still obsessed with treacle, which was finally proffered.
``Let's address this issue, see if we can score,'' he said, plunging into his pocket dictionary as the waiter walked away, shaking his head in wonder.
``I bet he holds that word [treacle] for a long time,'' Nye said.
Later this day, the frenetic Science Guy would appear on Capitol Hill to testify about the Children's Television Act.
``I'm fearful that very well-meaning people will over-regulate it,'' he said.
Just as he did before Congress, Nye explained the educational approach of the much-praised ``Science Guy.''
``Every show has learning objectives, a sentence in fourth-grade language that describes what we want to get across in the show: `Dinosaurs died out before humans were born. We know dinosaurs once lived because we have found their fossil bones.' In 221/2 minutes, that's all you're going to hear about.
``If you get that it was 65 million years ago; if you get argon, calcium dating; if you get promineralization,'' that's an educational bonus, he said.
The show is also entertaining, with music videos, interesting graphics, special effects, comedy and interviews with ``way-cool'' scientists. There are also wacky, science-based demonstrations, such as dangling Nye from a helicopter into the mouth of Mount St. Helens and putting him in a wind tunnel to face a 60 mph gale.
Nye, who is 38 and single, has no children of his own to recruit to science, but there are a number of nieces and nephews who know which uncle to turn to for help and inspiration in science.
A longtime resident of Seattle, he has volunteered at Seattle's Civic Science Center as a science explainer and tutored students in the I Have a Dream Program. Clearly he is intent on getting everyone to think in a scientific way.
``My thing is, I want everyone to be a scientist. I want someone who works in retail to be a scientist. I want Fred the waiter to understand that when it [sweetener] is a liquid, it's easier to get it to mix in this solvent [iced tea]. Not to say that Fred is going to declare himself a scientist on the tax form, but that he has a scientific view of the thing.''
This science thing may be catching on. Alan Alda is digging up answers on PBS's ``Scientific American Frontiers,'' and Don `Mr. Wizard'' Herbert is still doing his thing on Nickelodeon. ``Beakman's World'' gives science a comic spin on CBS and The Learning Channel.
``Bill Nye the Science Guy'' also airs Sundays at 7 a.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7.
by CNB