WHEN the reality TV show “MythBusters” debuted on the Discovery Channel in 2003, its producers weren’t on a mission to transform science and education in America. They just wanted to entertain. In each episode, the hosts would try to debunk or confirm a few classic urban legends. Could a penny dropped off the Empire State Building really kill a person? Could eating a poppy-seed bagel actually make you test positive for heroin? The producers cast two San Francisco-based special-effects artists, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, as hosts. The show was a surprise hit — pulling in as many as 20 million viewers a season — and it helped changed our culture.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Hyneman and Mr. Savage announced that the 14th season of “MythBusters,” which begins in January, will be its last. It was a worthy run. Over the course of 248 episodes and 2,950 separate experiments, “MythBusters” taught a whole generation how science works and why it matters.

Americans have worried about the state of science literacy in our country since the days of Sputnik. Educators who want to improve our prospects in this field would do well to take a few pages from the “MythBusters” handbook.

When the show started, the image of science and engineering in mainstream culture was at a low ebb. NASA’s Apollo glory days were long past, and the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry just days after the show’s premiere episode. There was no leading scientist able to connect with the general public the way the astronomer Carl Sagan had before his death in 1996. Even Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” had been dropped from the airwaves. And popular sci-fi movies of the era — “The Matrix,” “Minority Report” — depicted science and technology leading us to bleak, dystopian futures.