The Best Episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy

#1 Fan Favorite
Click to reveal
9.0/10(14 votes)
#1 - Science of Music
S5:E196/13/1998
Music is the art and science of expressing ideas and feelings through sound. A sad song can say more about how someone feels than most words, and a familiar song can make crowds clap together and feel like one happy family. Whatever the emotion, music seems to have a way to communicate it. The music we listen to today is the result of years of experimentation with sounds. As people figured out what they liked best, they invented instruments that could play their favorite tones and developed popular rhythms, or patterns of beats. Each note of music, and every tone of each instrument is a sound wave. Some sound waves sound great together. Some not so good. Getting the exact soundwaves in the pattern you want – now that’s science.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.9/10(13 votes)
#2 - Space Exploration
S5:E29/26/1997
Space is hard to explore, because it’s really, really big. Most things in space are so far away that people we build special equipment just to see them. We use telescopes to magnify far-away solar systems, planets, and stars. Rockets send astronauts past the Earth’s atmosphere. Space probes with special cameras send back pictures of planets for scientists to study. Astronauts perform experiments in orbit around the Earth. We do all these things and more to learn more about our universe.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.9/10(15 votes)
#3 - Smell
S5:E112/28/1998
How do noses work? Objects give off tiny amounts of tiny molecules into the air. When just a few of these molecules get up your nose, they dissolve in the mucus up there. Some molecules come into contact with special receptors on what’s called your “olfactory membranes.” Each nostril has a membrane, and each membrane is only about the size of a postage stamp. The membranes hold millions of receptor cells, each of which are ready to send messages to the brain about the molecules that go up your nose.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.8/10(12 votes)
#4 - Oceanography
S2:E99/24/1994
Surf's up! Get the current information as Bill Nye explains why oceans are salty and explores the ocean currents. Go with the flow of ocean currents with Bill Nye the Science Guy. Most of the Earth is covered with water - we're talking 71% of the entire Earth, and most of that water is in oceans. It depends how you count, but you can say that there are five oceans on Earth - the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, and the Antarctic. They are all connected into one World Ocean by the flow of ocean currents. Ocean water is moving around all the time. Some of the moving water forms rivers in the ocean. Oceanographers, scientists who study oceans, call these rivers of ocean water "currents". Currents help sea animals move around, they bring up deep ocean water with lots of nutrients for small animals to eat, and they push warm and cold water around, creating different climates in the oceans. As the sea surface gets warmed by the Sun, water evaporates, but salt stays in the sea.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.8/10(11 votes)
#5 - Fish
S3:E159/22/1995
More than 22,000 different species of fish live in the oceans, lakes, and rivers of the world. Fish come in all shapes and sizes. Some eat water plants, some eat other fish. Lampreys and some jawless fish suck onto other fish for food. Stone fish live on ocean bottoms and camouflage themselves as rocks. Puffer fish blow themselves up like a balloon, only they’re covered with spines. There are tons of strange and cool-looking fish everywhere.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.8/10(11 votes)
#6 - Rivers & Streams
S4:E111/3/1995
Water is massive; rivers are powerful. As rivers flow downhill, they wear away rock and soil to form canyons or winding curves in the land, called meanders. Sometimes rivers fill and overflow their banks. Rivers with too much water create floods that can carry away plants, trees, buildings and boulders. Rivers and streams support most of the ecosystems on land.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown

TRENDING NOW

The 20 WORST Episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy

READ

8.6/10(12 votes)
#7 - Earthquakes
S4:E411/24/1995
Earthquakes happen when pieces of land in the Earth’s crust scrape together. The crust of the Earth is made of big slabs of land called plates that are constantly moving just a little bit. The plates scrape by one another, and sometimes they don’t move smoothly. An earthquake happens when the plates get unstuck suddenly and jerkily slip past each other. The majority of earthquakes occur along plate boundaries such as the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. One of the most active plate boundaries for earthquakes is the massive Pacific Plate commonly referred to as the Pacific Ring of Fire. The fire comes from the volcanoes that form near the edge of the plates.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.6/10(15 votes)
#8 - Volcanoes
S4:E141/31/1996
Volcanoes are mountains made from molten rock. The Earth’s crust is divided into big slabs, called plates, which are slowly moving all the time. The plates are floating on the Earth’s mantle, a layer of gooey hot rock that flows like maple syrup. Some places in the mantle, the rock gets very hot and nearly liquid. It’s called magma. Sometimes the magma reaches the Earth’s surface and forms a volcano.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.6/10(14 votes)
#9 - Fluids
S5:E135/2/1998
Fluids are cool; they ooze and swoosh. Whatever container you put a fluid in, that fluid will take the same shape. Milk poured into a pitcher forms to the shape of the pitcher. If you pour it into a glass, it takes the shape of the glass. You just can’t do that with a boulder. But with the right container, you could pour liquid rock from below the Earth’s crust. Fluids still act like fluids, even halfway to the center of the Earth.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.5/10(20 votes)
#10 - Pollution Solutions
S4:E71/12/1996
Dirty water, land, and air are a result of pollution. People are the only animals on Earth that make pollution. Garbage, burning fuel, chemicals, sewage, oil, and pesticides are all human-made things that make the Earth’s atmosphere, water, and soil unclean. Humans are even leaving trash in space, such as broken satellites, pieces of metal, paint from rocket skin, and even cameras and toothbrushes. Much of the junk people make and leave behind hurts plants, animals, you and me.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.5/10(14 votes)
#11 - Comets & Meteors
S5:E155/16/1998
Outer space is full of stuff. We’re not just talking about planets and moons. There are some bits and pieces, too small to be noticed most of the time that float around and occasionally run into all those planets and moons. Comets and meteors are the big bits of dirt, rock and ice that inhabit our Universe. More than just high-speed space chunks, comets and meteors carry important information about the history of our Universe.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.4/10(11 votes)
#12 - Spiders
S4:E61/5/1996
Be sure to get this straight: spiders are not insects, they’re arachnids. Spiders have eight legs, and insects have only six. Spiders have two body parts, a head and an abdomen, while insects have three body parts, a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Insects have antennae, and spiders do not. Some insects sting. All spiders have fangs and venom. There are almost certainly a few spiders in the room with you right now.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.4/10(13 votes)
#13 - Erosion
S5:E145/9/1998
Dirt, sand, and rock from the Earth’s surface gets blown, sliced, torn, swallowed and distributed all over the world. What was yesterday’s hill is tomorrow’s flat plain. The planet looks a lot different than it did when it formed four and a half billion years ago. The force of erosion, the slow wearing away of the land, has never ceased.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(17 votes)
#14 - Planets & Moons
S3:E11/14/1995
Each planet is different. They are all different sizes – Pluto’s the smallest, and Jupiter’s the biggest. They come in a variety of colors – Mars is covered with rust, so it looks red; the methane (cold natural gas) in the atmosphere of Uranus makes it look blue; and Saturn’s colorful rings are made of icy rock. As far as we know now, Earth is the only planet in our solar system that is home to living things.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(19 votes)
#15 - Fossils
S4:E199/5/1997
Most dead animals and plants break up, get decomposed, and become part of the soil, but some turn into fossils. A fossil forms when a plant or animal dies, and gets buried. If conditions are right, water gets into the fossil bed, and chemical reactions preserve the impressions for thousands or millions of years. There are different types of fossils — imprints of animals, black carbon outlines, hardened bones, or actual animals and plants that have been trapped in ice or hardened tree sap.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(13 votes)
#16 - Do-It-Yourself Science
S5:E711/21/1997
Do-it-yourself science involves a question, observations, a hypothesis, and experimentation. You have probably come up with questions after you noticed something unusual. For instance, why do fingers get all pruny and wrinkled when I sit in the tub? The observation – shriveled fingertips – is the first step. Do-it-yourself science requires an eye for details surrounding your observations. Collecting related information helps you get to the next step, what scientists call a hypothesis, or “educated” guess. After weighing all the evidence, you hypothesize that your fingers get pruny because of the hot water in the tub. Once you have a hypothesis, it’s time for the fun part – testing it out.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.3/10(15 votes)
#17 - Atoms & Molecules
S5:E811/28/1997
Atoms are reeeeally small. They are so small that you can’t see them with just your eye. It takes as many as 10 million of them side-by-side to measure a single millimeter. In fact, atoms are the smallest pieces of “stuff” that are still considered “stuff.” If you take something and break it into tiny pieces, and then break it into tinier pieces, and keep going, the smallest part you’d be left with (and still have the same substance that you started with) is an atom. Atoms are the building blocks of all matter. Everything is made of only 109 different kinds of atoms, called elements. 92 of these elements occur naturally, but the rest of them – ones like Technetium and Promethium have only been found in distant stars and Californium and Einsteinium – are only made in laboratories. A molecule is born any time two or more atoms combine together. English
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(11 votes)
#18 - Balance
S2:E1210/15/1994
Bill Nye's going to use the force to pull you into the world of balance. A force is a push or a pull. You can feel a force when someone pushes you. You can use a force to pull a door shut. Anyone can make forces by pushing and pulling, and you don't need to be Luke Skywalker to use a force. In a game of tug-of-war, if the pull of your team is the same as the pull of the other team, the forces are equal. The two teams are in balance, and the rope doesn't budge. Things are in balance when forces that are pushing or pulling them are equal. If your tug-of-war team pulls harder than the other team, the forces are not equal. The other team falls all over the place. Unequal forces make things move and twist. A lot of things are designed to take advantage of unequal forces. Wrenches, screwdrivers, door handles, and water faucets use forces made by you to do work. A well-balanced science diet starts with Bill Nye.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(11 votes)
#19 - Brain
S2:E1410/29/1994
Bill Nye looks at how the brain controls the body and stores information
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(11 votes)
#20 - Germs
S3:E94/7/1995
Don’t panic, but germs are all around you. Germs are bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi, very small one-celled organisms. Your skin keeps most of these organisms from ever getting into your body. If germs slip inside, your body has some powerful weapons to attack and destroy them. And not all germs are bad; there are good germs, too, like the ones that live in our stomach and intestines – our guts.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(14 votes)
#21 - Ocean Life
S3:E124/28/1995
There’s an amazing amount of living things in the ocean. There are fish, sharks, flowers, whales, squid, sea plants, sea anemones, sea otters, and all sorts of other things living in the water. But most of the living things in the ocean are so small we can’t even see them. These tiny plants and animals are called plankton – the “drifters”.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(11 votes)
#22 - Birds
S3:E1810/13/1995
Scientists believe that birds evolved from reptiles. Birds have backbones, and they lay eggs, but they’ve developed a unique feature that sets them apart from all other animals – feathers. Feathers are made of the same stuff human fingernails and hair are made from – a protein called keratin. Feathers, combined with lightweight bones, powerful wings and strong hearts let birds fly.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(16 votes)
#23 - Flowers
S4:E101/27/1996
Flowers are an important part of many plants. Plants use flowers to make other plants – to reproduce. Flowers have special parts, called stamens and pistils. When pollen from the stamen finds its way down through the pistil, the flower is pollinated, and seeds start to grow. The seeds eventually find their way to the ground, the seeds sprout, and more plants are born.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(12 votes)
#24 - Amphibians
S4:E131/30/1996
Frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (worm-like animals that have backbones) are all amphibians, animals that spend part of their lives in water and part on land. Amphibians are slimy. Amphibians are cold-blooded that means their body temperature changes with the temperature outside. And as amphibians grow up, they go through metamorphosis.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.2/10(12 votes)
#25 - Invertebrates
S4:E152/7/1996
Worms, squid, clams, and flies are spineless creatures. They’re not afraid, they’re invertebrates – animals that don’t have backbones. Invertebrates are everywhere. You can find invertebrates in the sea, in freshwater, and on land. There are about 30 times more invertebrates than vertebrates on Earth.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown