Last night I went up to Bucknell University to listen to listen to Bill Nye the Science Guy speak. The event was sponsored by the Bucknell Student Lectureship and was free to all who wanted to attend. However, Bucknell students and employees were allowed to enter the Weis Center for the Performing Arts thirty minutes prior to the lecture, while others had to wait an additional fifteen minutes. Because of this, I got up to Bucknell quite early (I left right after work and had dinner on campus), waited in my car until 7:00 p.m. and then got in line. By this time, there were probably 100 people in line, only ten of which were non-Bucknell people.

At 7:50 p.m., members of the community were finally admitted. When I entered the the theater, very few seats were empty. However, since I was there by myself, I was able to get a really good seat: ten rows back, right on the aisle of the house left/stage right side There were so few seats available, ushers were asking people to move over and fill in seats ; it kind of reminded me of award shows such as the Oscars.

Eventually, Bill came out on stage and received quite a welcome from the crowd. After all, most of those in attendance (college students) grew up watching Bill on Saturday mornings, so they (and I) were thrilled to see a favorite TV star from their youth.

Bill spent about 75 minutes talking about all sorts of things, from his dad’s love for sundials, to information about Mars (including how they realized Mars’ sky wasn’t blue and how he turned the Mars Surveyor Lander’s calibration device into a sundial). After about twenty minutes, he started talking about conserving resources on Earth (the focus of the lecture) and what we can do to, literally, save the planet. In typical Nye style, he added quite a bit of humor to his lecture, but not for humor’s sake; instead, he used it to continually push his point.

The evening was wrapped up with a ten-to-fifteen minute Q&A period where members of the audience asked him questions such as “What are your three favorite books?” (answer: Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style; he couldn’t think of two others), “What do you think of Pluto no longer being a planet?” (answer: it’s just a definition and he’s surprised people are getting all riled up about it; perhaps it will be the first of the Plutonian planets, a sub-category of planets) and “What do you think of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth” (he’s surprised how people, mainly the government, say global warming isn’t of real concern, etc.).

All in all, it was a great evening, as he got me thinking about how I can save energy: the solar panels on Nye’s house generate so much energy that he sells it back to the electric company, he uses LED light bulbs that last sixty times as long as regular ones (but are still quite expensive), etc. The lecture has me really excited about what I can do to help conserve energy, not only at home, but at work, in my car, and everywhere I go.

If you ever have the opportunity to listen to Bill Nye speak (especially if it’s free), I highly recommend it. You won’t be disappointed.