If anyone is to blame for Wires, it’s the late Don Herbert. Better known as TV’s “Mr. Wizard,” Don’s science-made-simple approach enraptured countless young minds over the many generations of his show, inspiring future physicists and columnists alike. Unfortunately, Mr. Wizard has since gone to that big chemistry lab in the sky, sending his acolytes surfing the airwaves in search of an appropriate heir.
The 1990s saw the ascension of a mop-headed scientist with a red bow tie named Bill Nye. His PBS program “Bill Nye the Science Guy” helped fill the vacuum left in Mr. Wizard’s wake. From 1993-1997 Nye taught Newton, Einstein and Pauli to the MTV generation with equal parts comedy, science and music videos. The show can be encapsulated nicely in Nye’s youthful catch phrase “Science rules!” To alter a Justin Timberlake jam, Bill Nye spent the 90’s bringin’ “Science Back [yeah!].”
More current and more explosive is Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters.” A personal favorite of Wires, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (like oil and water) scientifically explore popular urban myths. They’ve filled pig stomachs with carefully meted pop rocks and soda and ambushed elephants with stray mice to prove the unlikely pachydermal fear of Mickey, Minnie and company. The only downfall of “Mythbusters” is a tendency to gloss over science content for entertainment’s sake.
Completely without that Hollywood sheen is Science Channel’s “How It’s Made.” With only a narrator and virtually no production value, “How It’s Made” chronicles everyday items from raw materials to finished product. Episodes follow the creation of toilets, ballet slippers, compact discs and snowboards. These generally uninteresting items become intensely fascinating during fabrication. Also remarkable is the parade of construction machines. “How It’s Made” is a procession of super-cool robots with hydraulic arms and laser beams.
Perhaps the closest reincarnation of Mr. Wizard is the Food Network’s “Good Eats,” hosted by the bespectacled Alton Brown. While baking a pie, Alton may explain how heated fat molecules in the pie crust expand and bond with flour to make his crust flaky and delicious. Chemical interactions between ingredients are dramatized with oversized props and careful attention is paid to the machines and gadgets used in food preparation. “Good Eats” may be a cooking show, but not an episode goes by without an application of Clapeyron’s Ideal Gas Law or the laws of thermodynamics. Alton Brown is as much physicist as he is chef.
Science on television is flourishing. “Wired: Science” and “Nova” on PBS, as well as the entire Science channel and even “CSI” shoot science over the airwaves into homes across the country. Both entertaining and educational, these programs follow in the vinegar-and-baking-soda-volcano and candle-in-a-jar footsteps of that original TV scientist, Mr. Wizard.
