FALMOUTH — It's 2 p.m., and every seat is filled in Steve Anderson's classroom at Falmouth High School.

The last bell of the day has gone off, and other students have gone home. But these kids are bent over worksheets, solving complicated math problems.

For fun.

And they're good at it. So good they rank at the top of their division.

But does that make them geeks?

They quibble about that for a bit, then decide that no one definition of geek, nerd or dork can fit the 30-plus students who fill the ranks of "mathletes."

"Geek transcends time, space and classification," says team co-captain Matt McGowen. "It just is."

If their choice of afternoon activity is geeky — and that is up for debate — the math team would be in line with pop culture. It seems that, on television, 2007 is the Year of the Geek.

America Ferrara won an Emmy for her role as the smart but hopelessly unfashionable title character on ABC's "Ugly Betty." Socially inept brainiacs are the charming protagonists on NBC's new shows "The Big Bang Theory" and "Chuck." Skill in math and science pays off on shows such as "Bones," on Fox, and "Numb3rs" and "NCIS," both on CBS. And in reality TV land, The CW's social experiment "Beauty and the Geek" has snagged yet another season.

Everywhere you look, the brainy have taken center stage.

It's a phenomenon that baffles real-life geeks. But they are certain of one thing: It's about time geeks had their day.

Phillip Neal says the trend is about substance.

He's a self-taught computer programmer whose most recent project involves analyzing DNA sequences at

the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

He's a Caltech graduate with a deep-seated hatred of MIT.

And his forearm bears a tattoo of mathematical engineer Claude Shannon's famed measure of information entropy.

The geek trend, he hypothesizes, is the answer to a general "revulsion against the choices that are being handed out."

"People are looking at what is more substantive. Where does the truth really live? Where is the value?" he says. "I think people are starting to realize that this geek thing is more homegrown. It's a bit more refreshing, that's for sure."

The image of the geek has changed. Geeks are no longer the social outcasts meant purely for comic relief.

Gone are the days of Urkel on "Family Matters" and Screech on "Saved by the Bell," when geeks wore suspenders, held their glasses together with tape and spouted silly catchphrases.

Today's geeks — such as Seth Cohen from "The O.C." and Dan from "Gossip Girl" — are outcast hipsters who are unashamed of their eclectic taste in music and their comic book collections. They aren't just the supporting characters. They're the heroes.

The girls love them, and the guys aren't embarrassed to be them.

"People are starting to recognize how being smart isn't a stigma," says McGowen, from the math team.

Math teacher Anderson says the team frequently has more students than it can take to competitions.

They're a diverse bunch, says co-captain Kevin Lin. Musicians and varsity athletes. Girls and guys. Seniors and freshmen. It isn't just a crowd that needed to fill an afternoon between Junior United Nations and student

government — although there

are plenty of those kids there, too.

"People are beginning to see the applicability of smartness," Lin says.

After all, folks like computer revolutionary Bill Gates turned their brainpower into something more than just good grades, says senior mathlete Jill Moore.

She might be right. Perhaps reality has inspired this fictional rewrite of the geek.

Guys like Gates and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin turned their intellectual pursuits into cold hard cash. And they, in turn, became pop icons.

"A geek is a nerd with a positive spin on it," says Peter Mangiafico, who works at MBL. "A geek is a nerd driving a BMW."

And perhaps that is where a real cultural shift lies, says David

Patterson, principal investigator for the Encyclopedia of Life Biodiversity Informatics project at MBL.

Patterson admits to a fondness for Beaker, the lab tech who consistently got blown up on "The Muppet Show." But he says having Beaker on TV won't help one iota.

"Geek is something to be applauded. They are off on one end of the bell curve," he says. "This is the end that is going to lead to improvements in society."

Amanda Lehmert can be reached at alehmert@capecodonline.com.

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