Scientific accuracy
how many scenes were put under scrutiny?
Breaking Bad
Donna Nelson, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Oklahoma, checked scripts and provided dialogue. She also drew chemical structures and wrote chemical equations which were used as props. According to creator Vince Gilligan, "Dr. Donna Nelson from the University of Oklahoma approached us several seasons back and said, 'I really like this show, and if you ever need help with the chemistry, I'd love to lend a hand.' She's been a wonderful advisor. We get help wherever we need it, whether it's chemistry, electrical engineering, or physics. We try to get everything correct. There's no full-time on set, but we run certain scenes by these experts first." "[Because Walter White was talking to his students, I was able to dumb down certain moments of description and dialogue in the early episodes which held me until we had some help from some honest-to-God chemists," says Gilligan. According to Gilligan, Nelson "vets our scripts to make sure our chemistry dialogue is accurate and up to date. We also have a chemist with the Drug Enforcement Administration based out of Dallas who has just been hugely helpful to us." Nelson spoke of Gilligan's interest in having the science right: " said it made a difference to him. "In 2013, two scenes from the first season of "Breaking Bad" were put under scrutiny in a "Mythbusters" "Breaking Bad" Special. Despite several modifications to what was seen in the show, both myths were busted. Jason Wallach of Vice magazine commended the accuracy of the cooking methods presented in the series. In early episodes, a once common clandestine route, the Nagai red phosphorus/iodine method, is depicted, which uses pseudoephedrine as a precursor to d-(+)-methamphetamine. By the seventh episode of season 1 "A No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" Walt chooses to use a different synthetic route based on the difficulty of acquiring enough pseudoephedrine to produce on the larger scale required. The new method Walt chooses is a reductive amination reaction, relying on phenyl-2-propanone and methylamine. On the show the phenyl-2-propane, otherwise known as phenylacetone or P2P is produced from phenylacetic acid and acetic acid using a tube furnace and thorium dioxide or ThO2 as a catalyst as mentioned in episodes "A No Rough-Stuff-Type Deal" and "Más". P2P and methylamine form an imine intermediate, reduction of this P2P-methylamine imine intermediate is performed using mercury aluminum amalgam as shown in several episodes including "Hazard Pay".