May 4, 2005

Busters dispel sterile science

MythBusters star at SCI-MA-TECH science program

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       Who you gonna call? MythBusters!
      To throw a really rockin' fundraising event that will inspire and entertain attendees young and old, how about tapping the average guy hosts of the hit Discovery Channel television series "MythBusters"? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman flew in from San Francisco to speak for more than two hours to a packed and rapt audience of 520 people at the Hagerty Center.
      The First Annual SCI-MA-TECH "Famous Science Speaker Event" event raised $20,000 for a private fund that fuels the high-octane college prep program.
      Central High School teacher Dianne Walker started the SCI-MA-TECH program four years ago to immerse students in the study of science, math and technology. She came up with the idea and immediately hit the wall: no money. She connected with Jeanne Snow, executive director of the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation, who started the SCI-MA-TECH fund to pay for Walker's idea.
      "Jeanne told me, 'We'll figure out a way," recalled Walker. "If you can conceive an idea, you can achieve an idea; I stole those words from Coach [Jim] Ooley."
      Based at Central High School, the program is open to students throughout the region. This year's enrollment stands at 54 students, evenly split between boys and girls.
      "We wanted to educate young people so they could pursue their goals in science and math education," Walker said.
      Bringing in the MythBusters provided perfect synergy between their program and the students' possibilities for the future. The pair of regular guys embodied the foundation of success in math and science: be curious, be unstoppable, be outrageous - and have fun while doing it.
      With their show turning on kids to science around the globe, Savage and Hyneman delve into science by exploding urban legends - sometimes literally. They have proven that using a cell phone at a gas station does not spark an explosion, that yawns are contagious, that a penny dropped from the Empire State Building will not kill someone or embed itself into the concrete and that you cannot beat a Breathalyzer.
      Both come from varied educational and professional backgrounds, their avid curiosity, unusual interests and high energy gathering a bouquet of offbeat skills over the years. Both special effects experts for years in the film industry, they found a calling in front of the camera with "MythBusters."
      Despite the grueling schedule of finding, researching, creating experiments and building equipment, they're having the time of their lives.
      "At least once a week we turn and look at each other and say, 'What the hell are we doing? Who's paying us to do this?'­" Savage said. "MythBusters is only peripherally about urban legends but about two guys who are not scientists figuring out something. Figuring it out on the fly."
      Their two different natures and approaches to life and problems give the show an even keel overall: Hyneman's cerebral reflection balancing Savage's go-get-em attitude.
      "Adam and I are distinctly different characters when we're going after a subject," Hyneman noted. "But when we approach a subject from a different point of view, it is like a tug of war, which turned out to be a really dynamic thing."
      "We embrace the differences and end up with a lot more than the sum of the parts," he added.
      Doing the show, Savage and Hyneman have learned that science is not neat, and certainly not a simple endeavor. As challenging as it is to come up with a realistic, safe and appropriate test scenario for a myth they are testing, the bottom line is they do not really know what is going to happen. They are experimenting to find out, sifting through failures and false starts to find some answers.
      "Science is not guys in little white coats saying, 'That worked just like I thought it would,'­" Savage noted.
      Their varied toolbox of skills serves them well in creating the program as they plumb the depths of their own ignorance.
      "We find that having a variety of skills is really helpful," Hyneman said. "Kind of like the theory of a liberal arts education. We're all the time in this show going into areas that we have absolutely no experience in but general knowledge helps."