Sadly, probably not. Used water and shaved match striker strips to make deadly phosphine gas There have been a number of posts since this one. I can confirm, having watched the episode in question an hour ago, that they mixed it up on the show. Episode 6. The Derided Ending of 'Wonder Woman' Was Demanded by WB, Says Patty Jenkins, 'Big Mouth' Season 4 Is an Unexpectedly Complicated, Welcomely Wholesome Delight | Review, 'The Wilds' Producers on What They Know About Season 2 and the Show's Connection to 'Lost'. Iron exits in hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting molecule in red blood cells; lithium is a reducing agent in some processes of methamphetamine production, which has led some amateur cooks to grab it in abundance from batteries; sodium is a component in tears as the salt, sodium chloride; sodium is also a component in sweat, but Blood, Meth and Sweat doesn't sound quite so poetic. Two days later, the result is a dead battery and no one around for miles to help. Probably not. Thanks! Collider has long been a money-laundering operation reputable business in good standing. A battery (or a voltaic cell) is really just a series of fuel cells that store combined chemical energy to provide a high source of voltage power. Also, one wouldn’t ever attempt to crystallize mercury fulminate as internal strains in the crystal will make it much more sensitive and impossible to handle. They actually DIDN’T get anode and cathode mixed up. "Run" The final scene of the episode, "Half Measures" may have taken the top spot were it not for the … Steve K and Chemist — You’ve both caught some pretty excellent flaws in the chemistry stories on Breaking Bad. Perfect in theory. The issue here is that, even though the fluorine ion is very reactive, a solution of hydrofluoric acid does not fully dissociate (ie split apart into H and F ions) in water. But would this have worked? Traditional hard drives are broken down into tiny domains of uniform magnetization (ie, all pointing up or all pointing down). Multiplying that volume of methylamine by its density gives us a mass of 3,373kg that needs to be replaced with water. When: Season 2, Episode 2 ("Grilled") When Walt and Jesse realize … While this should be viewed as an additional deterrent for, ya know, not cooking meth, Walt uses his knowledge of the cook to subdue his less-informed co-workers who happen to be holding him at gunpoint. Most cars use a standard 12 Volt battery, but for cold-cracking need about 400-600 Amps, higher if you are going to start something like the Winnebago. Not since the CSI Season 2 episode “Bully For You”, in which a victim’s body found in a duffel bag decomposed so badly it had to be poured out, has a liquefied body played such an important role on a television episode. A man wearing nothing but his skivvies and a gas mask careens a Winnebago in the New Mexico desert, a passed out body beside him, two more dead in the back, and a toxic sludge of chemicals seeping on the floor. I’m a chemist. For the cathode (the positive charge where the current will flow out), Walt uses graphite and mercuric oxide that he ground down from the Winnebago’s brake pads. Simple, right? Your email address will not be published. I have never heard of this show – but damn it looks awesome. Check out this neat video of six lemons powering a low-wattage LED bulb: I didn't know this, but the Breaking Bad blog says the lab was originally for Gale alone to provide meth for Gus, possibly also for the Croatians, where the quality was expected to be low (Lydia's explanation to Walt about Gus' plans for Europe). Since water has a higher density, a volume (mass divided by density) of only 3.38m³, or 892 gallons, is needed to replace the mass lost in the heist. I’ll have to rewatch it to see if the error was on our end. CO2 is also responsible for providing fizzy carbonation to alcoholic beverages, but as Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) found out, over-carbonation can have some unintended consequences. The first good large batch of meth—1 pound!—that he and Jesse were able to synthesize was stolen without compensation by Albuquerque’s toughest drug wholesaler. Made raison poison out of castor beans Walt went through the trouble of processing ricin in order to off a number of bad guys, but it hasn't actually been used to kill anyone (yet). But, when we talk about real-life circuits, we have to factor in electrical resistance, the opposition of electric current. However, as Hank discovered, over-carbonating your bottled beer can lead to pressure build up inside the bottles. Lung cancer. Through flashbacks, we come to find out that the man is Walter White, an unassuming chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, NM. The culprit in ricin is a lectin, as mentioned previously, which is a protein that interferes with cellular metabolism (ie an energy-producing and repair-inducing process). Directed by Rian Johnson. On the chalkboard, he writes an example of an explosive compound, mercury fulminate, Hg(ONC)2. So in this case, referring back to the picture of the galvanic cell, the flow of positive charge will come in the form of K+ ions, and the negative charge from the OH– ions. The residual yeast in each bottle metabolize the sugar and churn out more waste products, among them ethanol, various flavor compounds, and, of course, carbon dioxide. Now that we’ve got the basics of the design down, here’s Walt’s piecemeal design: for the anode, he gathered galvanized metal composed mostly of zinc in the form of coins, nuts, bolts and washers; the cathode was made from the Winnebago’s brake pads which were composed of mercuric oxide and graphite; the electrolyte was a sponge soaked in potassium hydroxide, with the above-seen copper wire as a conductor. Sounds great in theory (and it was certainly done in entertaining fashion on screen), but would it work in real life? Secondly, this stuff is unstable and extremely reactive. To me, Walt started being a true drug dealer at the end of one of the episodes this season. It was definitely a clever concept that was not married by realistic chemistry. Why I Hate FlashForward: A Dissenter’s Opinion « ScriptPhD, From the Lab: Breaking Bad, Chemistry Good « ScriptPhD | Watch Breaking Bad Episodes Online, Breaking Bad remains great, but we miss geeky chemistry of early seasons | Greediocracy, Breaking Bad remains great, but we miss geeky chemistry of early seasons, Who is Heisenberg? Walt fires up the Bunsen burner which acts as a heat source. Information is useful! Even though Walt warned him that this particularly reactive solution could only be stored in plastic, Jesse went ahead and dumped the body in a bathtub along with a couple gallons of HF. These compounds can be used therapeutically in the treatment of cardiac failure, as they increase the force of the heart's contraction by indirectly regulating cellular calcium concentrations. For every two steps forward, for every dollar made, there is a new foe, a new nemesis, or new unintended collateral. I’m interested in reading some more information on this issue. Let's just say that the strength of a magnetic field drops roughly exponentially over distance. So acidically speaking, HF < HCl (stomach acid) < HBr < HI. Walt’s sleight of hand swapped Lydia’s Stevia for ricin, and she was none the wiser until it was far too late. Go inside the making of the train heist in Episode 505 and see how the most ambitious scene in Breaking Bad history came to life. Good thing Walt and Jesse had those respirators, otherwise they'd have been in bad shape. Personally, I really would have chosen a very concentrated hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid solution like John George “The Acid Murderer” Haigh, or better yet, liquid lye (the base NaOH), which would be able to react with the organic components of tissue and fat content and wouldn’t have dissolved Jesse’s tub, but where’s the drama in that? … In the episode, Walt asks Jesse to pick up a plastic container in which to dissolve the body. When he sprays a series of flammable solutions across them, the flame flares green and then red. In the pilot, we see Walt attempting to fire up the curiosity of his high school chemistry students by spraying various solutions across an open flame, whereupon they change color. Pure methylamine has a density of 700.00 kg/m³, but a 40% w/w solution in water works out to about 890 kg/m³. Take home lesson? It was a bit of an unexpected twist with Walt using the ricin to take out the annoying/eccentric/hit-happy Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser). The crystal structure of mercury fulminate was discovered in 2007, over 200 years after the compound was first synthesized and about a year before it gained popular attention on the Breaking Bad season one episode, "Crazy Handful of Nothin'". In "Breaking Bad", Walter White cooks methamphetamine in a secret lab, under the name "Heisenberg". As the authors do not have practical knowledge in synthesizing crystal meth, they can only rely on such sources. It’s likely that people remember more chemistry from an episode of AMC’s Breaking Bad than from their time in high school and college, but is the on-screen science sound? Well, it's an alternate precursor chemical for their cook (one that makes it easier to obtain a higher purity of product), and boosting a large amount from a train was apparently less conspicuous than smurfing dozens of pseudoephedrine-containing products from drug stores. “A little tweak of chemistry.” Most notable about this scene is that it caps the season-long transformation of Walt’s character. Will you post some more? If we break down the two half-reactions, oxidation and reduction, we can add up the total potential using a fancy-schmancy mathematical equation called the Nernst equation. A big ScriptPhD props to the writing team on Breaking Bad for this little gem! I mean seriously, folks, we’ve all been there, right? They won a 2009 Peabody Award for excellence in television achievement. As in don’t touch it, don’t expose it to light, don’t mess with it unstable. It’s such an appropriate name for him on so many levels. Back up for a moment. The cooking of meth involves a chemical reduction of pseudoephedrine or ephedrine (a stimulant and decongestant in cold medications that used to be readily available in drug stores) via red phosphorus and hydriodic acid (another nasty acid for the reasons described above). The show revels in delightful touches such as the title credits interspersing elements from the periodic table. The charge, or electric current, is generated by two separate chemical reactions (or half-reactions) that occur on either electrode of the cell. Yep! Author of "The Science of Breaking Bad" from MIT Press | Twitch Affiliate: twitch.tv/drclawmd | Co-host of the Saturday Mourning Cartoons podcast | Community manager for Ironface Studios | Former science freelance writer for Nerdist.com | Former Animation editor, Streaming Content editor for Collider.com | Founder of ATL S.T.E.A.M. So if we add this up, we get enough voltage, give or take, to build a typical 12 Volt battery. Well, here we go. Walt visits Hector at the retirement home … As you move across the periodic table, atom charge strongly increases, which is why fluorine is a much better acid candidate than nitrogen or an unreactive atom like carbon. Any plans of infiltrating the building will likely get them nabbed in the process, so they dynamic duo decide to attack from without. Easily on par with David Simon’s brilliant The Wire on HBO, in the world of Breaking Bad no one is absolved from the intertwining effects of drugs—the rising body count, both from use and dealing, the strain on law enforcement, and families torn apart. A short while later, the body had been reduced to soup and the acid had also eaten through the tub and the floor beneath it, causing quite the cleanup for Jesse. Homebrewing relatively small batches of the potent potables is nowhere near as dangerous as cooking up illicit drugs with deadly chemicals, but that’s not to say it’s without its own dangers. Walt definitely describes the cathode as the positive side of his cell, which is wrong. Breaking Bad - the story of a teacher who makes crystal meth - is in its final episodes. Taken together, these two values add up to the total cell potential, defined as the ability to force electrons through a circuit, and measured in voltage. My understanding is that the current flows from negative to positive. The 25 Best Documentaries on Netflix Right Now, Netflix's Best Shot at Winning Best Picture Probably Isn't 'Mank' - 'For Your Consideration', Omar Miller on Tackling Difficult Conversations in 'The Unicorn,' Voicing Finn in 'LEGO Star Wars,' and More, 'Bridgerton' Review: A Delightfully Horny Christmas Gift From Netflix That Will Hopefully Run for Years. Wiped hard drive inside evidence room using a 252V electromagnet inside car We already talked about the source of ricin earlier in this post, but since it was written before the finale, now we get to discuss whether or not it would have worked in the way Walt used it. The chemical synthesis process usually leads to very fine white powder precipitate crystals like the one in the picture on the right. Science on Breaking Bad is given the red carpet treatment: it’s sleek, sexy, geek-chic, tongue-in-cheek and everywhere. chemical measures. Your email address will not be published. Inside Episode 506 Breaking Bad: Buyout Jesse deals with the repercussions of Todd shooting an innocent witness while Walt discloses his true motivation. Throughout the story, two different met… Now that we are armed with the basics, here’s how Walt built his galvanic cells. At the anode, an oxidization reaction strips electrons from the electrode (usually a metal of some sort), resulting in overall negative charge. Mr. White’s sobriquet choice? Created by Vince Gilligan. Sometimes, desperate situations call for desperate (and clever!) We do what we do for the love, not the money ;-). Humans can also be poisoned by consuming the castor beans themselves (about 5-20), but should recover with treatment. The trick is in the mix, as Walt has likely dissolved metal ions/salts into an ethanol solution. Breaking Bad is an American neo-Western crime drama television series created and produced by Vince Gilligan.The show aired on AMC from January 20, 2008, to September 29, 2013, consisting of five seasons for a total of 62 episodes. There is a fly loose in the lab. The darkly comedic highlights of the show are Walt and Jesse’s interactions in their “laboratory”, a beaten-down Winnebago camper. At the cathode, free electrons that have traveled through the conducting circuit are used to reduce the electrode species to generate a positive charge. As Walt is cooking in the RV lab, he takes advantage of the dangerous nature of the process to fill the enclosed space with a deadly gas. Mercury fulminate is not as sensitive as described here. Plus, Walt would have had to send Jesse to the store for supplies ... and we all know how well that worked out: In the season five premiere, Walt and Jesse need to destroy video evidence on a laptop. You have anode (positive) and cathode (negative) mixed up in your description above. In one scene, in their makeshift mobile meth lab out in the desert, Walt is being threatened by two gangsters. If so, we will correct it. All in all a great plan until Jesse left the key in the ignition for a couple of days, which resulted in a dead battery and a stranded meth-lab on wheels just waiting to be found by the authorities. Realistically speaking, HF would not be able to liquefy the body to the substantial extent shown in the episode. I really like your post. (We’ll skip discussion of covalent bond orbitals for next time!) Written by Peter Gould and directed by Bryan Cranston , it aired on AMC in the United States and Canada on August 11, 2013 as the mid-season premiere. Translate the up or down orientation into 1s and 0s, and it becomes easy to use binary as a method of information storage. All 4 songs featured in Breaking Bad season 3 episode 5: Mas, with scene descriptions. 'SNL': Jim Carrey Quits Joe Biden Role; Who Will Play the New President Now? And just because they won't erase hard drives, don't get these things near your credit cards or old VHS/audio cassettes. And a fuel cell is an electrochemical device, or a galvanic cell (named after its inventor, Luigi Galvani), which converts free energy of a chemical reaction into electrical energy, or electricity. Yeesh, from fun with science to death by ricin. The propensity for letdown was huge, both in plot and in science. I took HS chemistry a while ago, but I remember a little bit. Let’s start with the theory. To a stupefied, gun-happy Jesse, he makes the suggestion of killing a drug lord with castor beans, the source of the protein toxin ricin. When mixed with sodium hyrdoxide, the deadly phosphine gas is produced. “We’d say, ‘A lab…like Breaking Bad’ or ‘Blue flowers, like Breaking Bad.’ And little by little, it just became like Breaking Bad .” The gag works. According to ScriptPhD.com, the makeshift battery would only have churned out about 12 volts and 20-30 amps of current at the most. Still more want to pull the word apart by its elements: Fe - Li - Na. But is it accurate? We’ve talked about what a galvanic cell is, now let’s talk about how it works. It's particularly dangerous to young children and pets. The Collider Podcast, Ep. The repeating units of CH2, some linked by side branches, make for a strong, compact bond and very low reactivity. Others thought it was simply an anagram of "finale". "Box Cutter", the fourth season premiere of Breaking Bad, was directed by Adam Bernstein and written by series creator Vince Gilligan. College degree in physical chemistry, PhD in chemistry. Let’s hope nobody has followed those instructions and received a nasty shock! The issue with proteins is that their structure is extremely important to their function, so any change in the former will cause a change in the latter. No. List of Breaking Bad episodes " Blood Money " is the ninth episode of the fifth season of the American television drama series Breaking Bad , and the 55th overall episode of the series. « Heisenberg's Chemistry. The Winnie would have needed about 20 times that to get cranking. Breaking Bad has been the recipient of a number of recent awards and critical acclaim. So, if for a certain particle we can specify momentum with absolute certainty, then its position can be found anywhere along those axes with an equal probability. Accolades Walt tells Jesse to look at the bottom of the bins for a symbol called “LDPE”. His students didn't care, but if you're still reading, I'll wager you're interested. In the scene from Breaking Bad where Walter White takes the bag full of crystals to the drug dealer, the bag was handled quite roughly. Walt’s classes brim with interesting blink-or-you-miss-it factoids, such as H. Tracy Hall inventing the first reproducible process for making diamonds. The Science What? This particular scene involved Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) attempting to dispose of a body by submerging it in hydrofluoric acid (HF). He at first tried to help out a fellow meth-maker at the store, but then seeing him talking to his partner in the parking lot, walks right up to him and says: “Stay out of my territory”. Silly, isn’t it? Fulminated mercury [Hg(CNO)2] is indeed an explosive, classically used as a trigger in blasting caps used to set off larger explosives. LOL! Viewers were also worried about the dilution factor of replacing 1,000 gallons of methylamine (keep in mind it's already diluted to 40% w/w) with about 900 gallons of water. Can you explain it please? (Fun fact: Butterflies drink turtle tears to obtain sodium.). The next time you’re in a beer/wine store, check out some of the larger bottles of beer. Too bad the HF didn't dissolve anything but the drywall, though it did soften up the pork tissue a bit. Used fulminated mercury (looks like meth, got through security) as explosive. That pressure finds the path of least resistance (ie the bottle cap) to escape, which sounded remarkably like gunshots in the Breaking Bad episode, “Breakage”. With Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris. Incidentally, you can easily make your own galvanic cell at home. Probably not. These ions absorb the thermal energy from the flame, causing their electrons to jump up a notch to an excited state, ever so briefly. Heisenberg. So magnetic erasure is likely out of the question, but what about wanton destruction? I must admit my inner chemistry geek did major cartwheels when I heard this. The result? All parts of this sucker are harmful, not just the berries (although those are particularly attractive to young children due to their red color). Since that state is unstable, the electrons return to their more tenable ground state, but where does that thermal energy go? An acid that can eat through flesh and bones but will leave a flimsy plastic bucket intact? Yes sparks, and flames will set it off. Things that change protein structure include, and are not limited to, pH extremes, strong agitation, radiation and, most importantly, heat. Composed of a series of fuel cells (or Galvanic cells, which convert free energy from a chemical reaction into electrical energy), a battery’s basic functional parts have the following components: anode, the negative electrode that holds charged ions; cathode, the positive electrode that holds discharged ions; an electrolytic (ie salt) solution that allows ions to move from the anode to the cathode; and a conductor to carry the electrons, usually a metal wire. Here is Fritz's Polka Band. As of the writing of this article, the ricin remains in the mix and we're all waiting to see just how Walt intends to use it, if at all, in the finale. In an astute opening TRULY ripped from the headlines, a Season 2 Breaking Bad episode starts with an original narcocorrido, a Mexican drug ballad evolved from its folk music tradition that is often used to chronicle the drug trade and escalating violence over the last two decades.
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