Science promoter Bill Nye '77 speaks to undergraduate engineering students in Olin Hall on March 27. At right, Nye examines a Cornell paperweight presented to him by David Caughey, right, director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who taught Nye.
By Larry Bernard
Part standup comic and part lecturer, part entertainer and part professor, William Nye returned to his alma mater last week and treated a roomful of undergraduate engineering students to an hour of wisdom and wit.
Imagine comedian Steve Martin teaching aerodynamics, and that is the sense of how Nye -- known universally among 10-year-olds in this country as "Bill Nye the Science Guy" -- kept undergraduates in rapt attention March 27 as he delivered a freewheeling "lecture" on the virtues of engineering. And that's not so far-fetched, since he worked as an engineer by day and standup comic at night, and once won a Seattle-area Steve Martin look-alike contest.
Nye, a 1977 graduate of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, now is the star and head writer of "Disney Presents Bill Nye the Science Guy," a weekly, half-hour television series, designed with an MTV-like flair, to teach science to fourth-graders. With a trademark thumbs-up and the ubiquitous slogan, "Science Rules," Nye dances through 30 minutes a week, teaching his TV audience many of the concepts he learned as a Cornell engineering student -- "in this very room (155 Olin Hall)," he said. He was introduced by David Caughey, director of the Sibley School, who taught Nye aeronautics in 1976.
"We do a lot of stuff in real life that's based on fundamental science," he told the students, in delivering the serious part of his message. "It's the fundamental stuff that sticks with you. And you never know what you'll end up doing. Learn as much stuff as you can, and try stuff you like." He added: "Every day I use my engineering skills. Every day something comes up."
Like a lecturing professor, Nye drew diagrams of supersonic jet planes, upside-down pyramids and O-rings and described the philosophy behind his show. But he always came back to the same point:
"You guys are really poised at a time when you can really make a difference. There are terrible problems facing our planet. These problems could devastate society. But at the base of them all is science. You guys are poised to -- dare I say it? -- delta the world!" he exclaimed, using the mathematical delta symbol for the word "change." "And I'm not kidding."
He told the students that "the campus is way better now than when I was here. When I was here, it was very stressful. The only records were Barry Manilow." Then he hiked up his pants to where the legs were at flood length and said, "We'd go to parties and a guy would look at my pants and say, 'You're an engineer, aren't you?' I'd say 'Yeah.' And he'd say, 'Well, can you fix the blender?'"
The answer, he said: plug it in and hold the outlet, then drop it in some water. "You had to know some science to know what would happen," he said.
"Things in this country have really improved since I was in school," Nye said. "There's all this industry. You have amazing materials that we didn't have 20 years ago. This is a very cool time. The country's going to come out of this disco era of design."
Nye said the three most important principles of his TV show are, in order: make money, have fun, "delta," or change, the world. "This is the goal of the show. And I never worked harder in my life. Except when I was in school. Do you still have to work hard?"
The 40-year-old engineer/author/comedian/entertainer described how he got the idea for his television show. He was, he said, an engineer in Seattle and a volunteer at a children's science center, where he noticed young people showing an interest. "The people who like science are young, much younger than you. Very young people were getting excited about science," he said.
His flair for comedy had him writing for Almost Live, KING-TV's late-night comedy show,while he was an engineer during the day, not completely happy with his daytime stint. One night, he heard a radio disc jockey talk about "gigawatts" but pronounce it with a soft "g," like "jigawatts," and Nye called to say it's "gigawatts," with a hard "g."
"The DJ said, 'Oh yeah, who are you?' I said, 'I'm Bill Nye . . . the science guy!' I just blurted it out, and that was it. I really had a vision right then."
Nye took questions and signed autographs, and he announced that he had applied to NASA to be an astronaut. Such, then, is the possibility, that future grade-schoolers will be simultaneously taught science and be entertained by a standup scientist-comedian who truly is out of this world.