The Best Episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy

#1 Fan Favorite
Click to reveal
8.9/10(13 votes)
#1 - 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)
#2 - 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
8.9/10(13 votes)
#3 - 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
8.6/10(14 votes)
#4 - 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(14 votes)
#5 - 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(13 votes)
#6 - 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

TRENDING NOW

The 20 WORST Episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy

READ

8.3/10(17 votes)
#7 - 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(13 votes)
#8 - 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)
#9 - 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)
#10 - 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(14 votes)
#11 - 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
8.1/10(15 votes)
#12 - Storms
S5:E165/23/1998
Storms are big, loud, and often accompanied by rain, snow, sleet, or hail. Where do these wild, dangerous, and necessary tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms come from? Storms happen when huge different air masses collide. Along the border of these air masses, water vapor condenses into clouds, strong winds form, and the clouds rub against each other with the ground often becoming electrically charged waiting to send lightning bolts across the sky. What starts out as a placid summer day turns into two air masses boxing it out 10,000 meters up.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.0/10(12 votes)
#13 - Forests
S2:E1511/5/1994
In Bill Nye the Science Guy: Forests, Nye shows students the levels of a forest, which include the canopy, the under story, and the floor. His special guest is Nalini Nadkarni, who has no qualms about going high up in the canopy to check out the wildlife and other happenings there
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.0/10(14 votes)
#14 - Climates
S3:E104/14/1995
There are lots of different climates all over the world. Deserts are warm and dry. Temperate forests are cold and wet. Tropical rain forests are warm and wet. Animals and plants live in climates that are good places for them to live. Cacti wouldn’t grow too well in the Arctic, just like polar bears would over heat in the desert.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.0/10(13 votes)
#15 - Mammals
S3:E139/8/1995
Mammals - They're (sometimes) big, they're hairy, and they're warm-blooded. From human being to moose and from cats to rats, Bill Nye explains what it takes to be in the mammal family.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
8.0/10(23 votes)
#16 - Motion
S5:E206/20/1998
Things can appear to be moving, when they really aren’t. Sometimes an object might seem to be at rest, even when it is in motion. It’s all relative. Relative motion, that is. How things appear to move depends on how you, or any observer, happens to be moving. So, if you’re on a bus looking out a window into another bus, and your bus begins to back up slowly, you may think the other bus is moving forward, when really it’s not moving at all. That’s motion in motion. It happens all around us all the time.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.9/10(14 votes)
#17 - Friction
S3:E83/31/1995
Friction is a force that slows moving things down and turns the moving energy into heat energy. When two things rub together, like your bike tires and the road, friction between them slows you down. There’s also friction in the metal parts of the wheel’s hub – at the center. There’s even friction between the fibers and rubber of the tires themselves as they flex and roll. That’s why you eventually stop rolling when you stop pedaling. Rough things make more friction than smooth things. Rubber shoes on a clean wooden basketball floor create more friction than do hard metal skate blades on smooth ice.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.8/10(12 votes)
#18 - Wind
S2:E22/25/1994
The relationship between the Earth, the sun, the wind and the weather. Guest: "Today" weather reporter Willard Scott.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.8/10(13 votes)
#19 - Pressure
S3:E21/21/1995
When you push something, you’re using pressure. Pressure depends on two things – the power of the push and the area that’s being pushed on. A push on a small area makes more pressure than the same size push on a big area. Pushing hard on something creates more pressure than a little nudge, naturally.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.8/10(13 votes)
#20 - Water Cycle
S3:E73/24/1995
About 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, and almost all of that water has been around since the Earth formed billions and billions of years ago. That means a glass of water you drink today could be water that a dinosaur once sipped. Water is constantly recycled on Earth as rain, snow, sleet and hail. It makes its way in and out of oceans, lakes, streams, hail, and glaciers. Scientists call the recycling of water the water cycle (not that bad, huh?).
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.8/10(15 votes)
#21 - Lakes & Ponds
S5:E102/21/1998
What do you get when you have a big hole in the ground and some water? Lakes and ponds. All lakes and ponds have one thing in common – they happen when a basin, or hole, forms, and then fills with water. A glacier may grind a long gulch, volcanoes and earthquakes may make a sinkhole, or engineers may build a dam – they can be human or beaver.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.7/10(13 votes)
#22 - Bones & Muscles
S2:E89/17/1994
In this show, you can Bone up on Muscles. When you clicked on the Nye Labs web site to read this, you used your bones and muscles. Without them, you can't click, surf, or even sigh. Bones and muscles work together, or you aren't going anywhere. Muscles always pull, even when you push on something like a door somewhere in your body your arm and leg muscles are in tension. They are all attached to bones, and those bones are pushing; they're in compression. By pulling on bones you can breathe, talk, and move all over the world. Your bones support your weight like beams of steel or wood. They're stiff and strong. Rigid as they might seem though, they do flex. And, if you bang one hard enough, it swells up. You have a lump. That's because bones are full of blood vessels. Bones are not solid like rocks or skeletons in a dinosaur museum. Bones flex and grow. In fact, putting healthy amounts of stress on your bones is good for them.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.7/10(13 votes)
#23 - Momentum
S2:E1711/19/1994
The momentum of a moving thing, like you riding your bike, depends on how much mass you and your bike have and how fast you’re speeding down that hill. An elephant on a bike has more momentum than a mouse on a bike moving at the same speed. A mouse on a fast bike has more momentum than a mouse on a slow bike. If there’s an elephant on a fast bike, you’d better get out of the way.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.6/10(17 votes)
#24 - Light & Color
S1:E1612/24/1993
Lighten up. It's the ""Light and Color"" episode. Without light, we wouldn't be able to see. It would be like living in a room with no windows, doors, or lamps. There's an old saying, ""We don't see things; we see light bouncing off of things."" We see things, and colors, when light bounces off things and into our eyes. White light, like the light from the Sun, is made up of all the different colors of light blended together. When white light hits something white, almost all of the light bounces into our eyes, and we see the color white. Things are different colors because some light bounces off and other light gets absorbed. An orange is orange because it absorbs all different colors of light except orange light. Grass is green because it absorbs all different colors of light except green light. Bill Nye's lab coat is blue because it absorbs all different colors of light except blue light. All colors, including black, are made in the same way. It's just a matter of ref
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
7.6/10(14 votes)
#25 - Plants
S3:E31/28/1995
A plant’s recipe for food has only three main ingredients: sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. When plants make their food, they give off what animals need – oxygen. Without oxygen, animals like us wouldn’t be able to breathe. If plants weren’t here on Earth, we wouldn’t be here.
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown
Be the first to start the conversation for this episode
Director:Unknown
Writer:Unknown