Interest in calculating numerical solutions of a highly nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation with fractional power diffusion and dissipative terms motivated our investigation of a heat equation having a square root nonlinear reaction term. The original equation occurs in the study of plasma behavior in fusion physics. We begin by examining the numerical behavior of the ordinary differential equation obtained by dropping the diffusion term. The results from this simpler case are then used to construct nonstandard finite difference schemes for the partial differential equation. A variety of numerical results are obtained and analyzed, along with a comparison to the numerics of both standard and several nonstandard schemes. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009