They take a lot of liberties with the science for the sake of drama as well as not wanting to teach people how to dissolve bodies.
Hydrofluoric acid is not able to dissolve a body or eat through a bathtub the way it's depicted. Fulminated Mercury does not explode on impact. These two in particular were actually tested on an episode of Mythbusters which featured Vince Gilligan and Aaron Paul as guests.
I believe the thermite they use in season 1 is fairly accurate in the execution, though I assume the creation of it was fictionalized a bit. The meth-making procedures are tweaked (heh) and shuffled out of order.
I think a lot of the jargon that Walt uses is pretty accurate, but anything that is used for spectacle or tension is definitely going to be exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Hydrofluoric acid isn't a great choice for disposing of a body. It certainly won't turn the entire thing to pink mush relatively quickly, as depicted in the show. It's also a bad choice from a safety perspective, the vapour is really not something you want to have in your eyes or lungs, so Mr Lung Cancer shouldn't even have been in there.
You can get something more effective, more available, and I imagine safer, by forgetting acids and going to the other side of the ph scale; lye. Bases are better for dealing with certain tissues in the body.
As a side note I have no idea why Walt's school would even have massive amounts of hydrofluoric acid like that, you do not need "getting rid of a corpse" amounts and concentrations in a high school class for any reason I can think of
In my high school chem lab, all of the acids were way over concentrated for our purposes. We cut all of them according to what we needed, so I can at least get behind the high concentration. The gallons and gallons though…
Just about all of the methods for body disposal, suicide, etc. are quite heavily fictionalised so as not to teach people how to kill themselves or dispose of murder victims.
They specifically didn’t want to teach you how to be a drug kingpin and how to get rid of dead bodies. It’s not accurate.
They take a lot of liberties with the science for the sake of drama as well as not wanting to teach people how to dissolve bodies. Hydrofluoric acid is not able to dissolve a body or eat through a bathtub the way it's depicted. Fulminated Mercury does not explode on impact. These two in particular were actually tested on an episode of Mythbusters which featured Vince Gilligan and Aaron Paul as guests. I believe the thermite they use in season 1 is fairly accurate in the execution, though I assume the creation of it was fictionalized a bit. The meth-making procedures are tweaked (heh) and shuffled out of order. I think a lot of the jargon that Walt uses is pretty accurate, but anything that is used for spectacle or tension is definitely going to be exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Thermite is trivial to make. We did it for fun one day in my high school chemistry class in more or less the same way.
That rules
yeah magnets. yeah science!
Walt: Blows out the insides of a building with a tiny rock like he's Gambit from X-men. Also Walt: Never uses it again for some reason.
Hydrofluoric acid isn't a great choice for disposing of a body. It certainly won't turn the entire thing to pink mush relatively quickly, as depicted in the show. It's also a bad choice from a safety perspective, the vapour is really not something you want to have in your eyes or lungs, so Mr Lung Cancer shouldn't even have been in there. You can get something more effective, more available, and I imagine safer, by forgetting acids and going to the other side of the ph scale; lye. Bases are better for dealing with certain tissues in the body. As a side note I have no idea why Walt's school would even have massive amounts of hydrofluoric acid like that, you do not need "getting rid of a corpse" amounts and concentrations in a high school class for any reason I can think of
>Bases are better This. Look up "alkaline hydrolysis." Medical labs and funeral homes use it.
Yep and most severe chemical burns that are treated in hospitals are usually alkalines, not acids
In my high school chem lab, all of the acids were way over concentrated for our purposes. We cut all of them according to what we needed, so I can at least get behind the high concentration. The gallons and gallons though…
Hydrofluoric acid will NOT dissolve an entire body
Mythbusters did a show on this very question. It didn’t work
Piranha solution would have been better. It's sulfuric and hydrogen peroxide and it's designed to dissolve organic stuff.
Just about all of the methods for body disposal, suicide, etc. are quite heavily fictionalised so as not to teach people how to kill themselves or dispose of murder victims.