Back in April, which was Mathematics Awareness Month, Cheryl Heuton told Wired magazine that one of the inspirations for her CBS show “Numb3rs” was Bill Nye, whose “Bill Nye the Science Guy” show was a PBS staple for years.
“He talks a lot about inspiring young people to study math and science,” Heuton told Wired. “I used to be a journalist. I did a three-hour interview with him once and never forgot that.”
Together with husband Nick Falacci, she created the Friday-night crime drama that stars David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes, a mathematician who uses numbers to help his FBI-agent brother, Don (Rob Morrow), solve crimes.
Nye, whose “Science Guy” show used humor and clever demonstrations to illustrate scientific principles, will appear on the 9 p.m. Friday episode called “Scorched” playing Professor Bill Waldie. Don and his team, hunting an arsonist, turn to Waldie to recreate a backdraft in the university’s combustion lab.
“It was such a stretch for me,” Nye said. “I took weeks, I studied under Stanislaus–what’s his name?–Stanislavski’s grandson for months. I starved myself. My character’s name is Bill Waldie, but call me Bill, please. ‘The chance to create the conditions of a backdraft, this is just way cool,’ is what my character says.”
Just in case you aren’t sure what a backdraft is, Nye explains: “It is a smoke explosion, where unburned fuel is carried in particles of smoke. When you add enough oxygen, and the situation is hot enough, the smoke burns. And, it being airborne, it gets a lot of oxygen very well, so it burns really fast, and you get an explosion.”
Told that does sound cool, Nye says, “Or hot. My character has built a replica, and we prove that it couldn’t have been a backdraft. I’m the downer before the big payoff, which is what is so pleasing about the show.”
As a scientist, Nye is pretty happy about “Numb3rs.”
“People in the scientific community have talked for a long time, ‘Why don’t we get on television? Why don’t they show us scientists?’ ” he says. “I don’t want to put words in his mouth or speak for him, but Leon Letterman–he won a Nobel Prize in physics, unlike a lot of us–his thing was ‘L.A. Science,’ back when ‘L.A. Law’ was a big deal. ‘Numb3rs’ is that kind of show. I think it’s the coolest thing in the world.”
