Top 10 facts
About Bill Nye
1. Bill Nye's life was changed by bees.
Bill Nye said: I watched bumble bees (Hymentoptera bombidae) for hours. How could such a relatively big animal fly with such relatively small wings? The answer was discovered in my lifetime. Their abdomens are springs, and their halteres provide vortices with allow the wings to swing up with hardly any aerodynamic drag. If I may, how cool is that?
2. Bill Nye sometimes gets science facts wrong.
I can't believe I'm about to do this....but hymenopterans don't have halteres. Those are specialized balancing structures limited to Diptera (flies). Hence di (two) ptera (wing). Hymenoptera still have all four wings, no balancing structures. Their muscles vibrate instead of contract to allow for extremely fast wing movement. They also use these vibrations in cold weather to heat their bodies. Sorry, Mr. Nye. As an entomologist I just had to. I'm gonna go punch myself in the face now.
3. Bill Nye has a favorite science experiment.
4. Bill Nye can't pick a favorite
Can't say I have a favorite. They are all so important to our understanding of nature and our place in space. With that said, Michael Faraday changed the world. We have electricity and these fancy computer machines as a result. BTW, Darwin discovered so much about how we came to be, and he didn't even know about DNA. Astonishing. It's the process of science that has changed the world. Science rules!
5. Bill Nye won't discount the idea of life on Mars.
Nye dreams of Martians: Were we to discover evidence of something alive on Mars, either fossil or even living now, it would change this world forever. And... we'd mount a human mission to Mars.
6. Bill Nye can explain dark matter in one sentence
It's apparently the source of gravity that is at once holding galaxies together and pulling them apart at an accelerating rate.
7. Bill Nye never gets bored.
Strongly encourage you never to use the word "bore" or "boring." It says a lot about a person. It's hard for me to imagine being "bored," ever. The world is so exciting and fascinating, yes?
8. Bill Nye isn't in it for the money.
I worked at an engineering firm (which has since been absorbed) for people obsessed with making a profit every quarter (every 3 months). You cannot advance much with that outlook. So, I decided to affect the future as much as could; I shifted my focus to elementary science education. The objective 20 years ago, and the objective now, is to, dare I say it, change the world. The outcome is still to come I believe as people like you become engineers and captains of industry. I'm hoping you all will make the world great.
9. Frisbee Football
Bill grew up throwing a Pluto Platter (a really old disc with planets in a ring around the center) with his older brother and played “Frisbee Football” when he was growing up in D.C. “I was comfortable throwing a disc around,” and when he saw Jon teaching the game, “I just wanted to be part of it. I understood it instantly.”
10. dancing with the stars
Bill Nye was the second celebrity eliminated in season 17 of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” but he and professional dancing partner Tyne Stecklein remained upbeat while discussing their short-lived ‘DWTS’ experience on “Good Morning America” today.
“It was the coolest thing. It was great,” Nye told the “GMA” anchors in Times Square.
After suffering a serious leg injury during his performance last week, Nye has been walking with a cane and unsure if he’d even be able to perform in Monday night’s show. But Stecklein got creative with her choreography, going with a robotic-themed dance to Daft Punk’s electronic pop hit, “Get Lucky.”
“We needed to do something that allowed for locked leg because, obviously, the one leg had to be, so I tried to pull some fun moves that were energetic,” Stecklein said of her decision to go with the jazzy routine that allowed for Nye to wear a leg immobilizer and stick with mostly hand movements.
Sources
Clarke, Suzan. "‘Dancing With the Stars’: ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye Gets the Boot on Hollywood Night." ABC News. ABC News Network, 30 Sept. 2013. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
Pastore, Rose. "8 Awesome Things We Learned About Bill Nye From His Reddit AMA." Popular Science. Popsci.com, 5 June 2013. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.