National Post (National Edition)
FIVE THINGS ABOUT TRUDEAU & BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUYS.
FIVE THINGS ABOUT JUSTIN TRUDEAU AND BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY
Bill Nye sat down with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa on Tuesday to discuss their shared appreciation for science.
Nye, best known for the PBS children’s science show Bill Nye the Science Guy, started his career as a mechanical engineer and has been a science communicator for more than two decades. Trudeau also briefly studied engineering, and is “someone who thinks of himself as a bit of a science nerd,” according to Liberal MP Kate Young, who moderated the event at the University of Ottawa.
Last week, the government announced $3.2 billion in funding for scientific research. Trudeau used Tuesday’s discussion to highlight that investment, but also to share some of his own thoughts about science.
Here, then, are five things we learned about science, and about life, from Canada’s prime minister and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
1 ALL HUMANS START OFF AS SCIENTISTS BECAUSE OF BREAST MILK
Nye told a story about being stung by a bee when he was three, and how he was fascinated when his mother poured ammonia on the sting and the pain went away.
Trudeau claimed that all infants start off as little scientists. “When you’re a baby, you are a scientist,” he said. “’If I make this noise, wow, I get milk. If I push this button or knock this thing off the table, it lands on me and it hurts.’” The problem is that most of us become less science-y as we grow up, Trudeau said. “Being a kid is constantly testing, discovering, hypothesis, experiment, solution, learning. It’s as we grow older, we start to forget about being scientists.”
2 “MEN LIKE EXPLOSIONS, WOMEN ARE BUILDING THINGS”
Women and men are often going to be drawn to different types of science, Trudeau said. Women, he suggested, are more likely to focus on “social impacts or impacts on community or longerterm impacts.”
Men are mostly thinking about whether they can “build a really big rocket,” Trudeau said, miming a really big rocket.
“Men like explosions, women are building things,” he went on, before Nye interjected to say “Everybody likes explosions!”
3 TRUDEAU LIKES EXPLOSIONS
Trudeau had just watched a video the other day with his 10-year-old son in which someone dropped a ball of red-hot metal into a glass filled with Skittles.
“There’s so many of these slowmotion, exploding things,” Trudeau said. “What happens if I drop an anvil on a watermelon? “
4 YOU CAN’T BURN A DISPOSABLE CUP WITH WATER IN IT
Science is about being forced to rethink your assumptions, Trudeau told the audience. By way of example, he told a story about a science class he once taught where his students discovered that you can’t burn through a disposable cup that has water in it.
5 EVEN THOSE WHO LOVE SCIENCE CAN DISAGREE ABOUT SCIENCE
Nye seized the opportunity to challenge Trudeau on his support for the controversial Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project in Alberta and British Columbia. He said research suggests that Canada could be powered entirely by renewable energy right now, “if you just decided to do it.”
“Nevertheless, there’s this enormous fossil fuel industry,” he went on. “So tell us about that.”
Trudeau said his government is investing heavily in renewable energy, but that fossil fuels are necessary during the “transition” to clean energy.
A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office said the government approached Nye to speak with Trudeau, but he wasn’t paid for the appearance. Young did give a shout-out to Nye’s latest Netflix series before the discussion began.