In Breaking Bad Walter White is known to be the master chef of blue meth, while yielding unheard of 99.9% purity. Is this possible or it is a big myth from the beginning?
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2Related: How does Walter White make pure crystal meth using a non-stereospecific reaction? – Sep 02 '15 at 19:31
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24This is a chemistry SE question – Sep 03 '15 at 01:42
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3@eYe Breaking Bad is, really, when all's said and done, fiction. – AJFaraday Sep 03 '15 at 14:19
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7I recall hearing the show's chemistry consultant speaking on NPR. She said that the chemistry that is described in the show is deliberately non plausible / not fully described - for obvious reasons. Its set up in such a way that in the right 'area' of chemistry, but couldn't be replicated by someone in the real world. – iandotkelly Sep 03 '15 at 14:37
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3Here is a link to the NPR article from 2011. – Sep 03 '15 at 14:59
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Yes, it's possible.
In theory, it's possible to produce a 100% pure sample of any substance; if you isolated and removed any molecules that were not those of your target chemical. The trick is that it's usually very impractical to do so, for various reasons. The cost of purifying chemicals rises sharply as the purity goes up, because you need more expensive and sensitive equipment, or more complex reactants, etc. If you want the details, you'd need to go to a chemistry textbook (or perhaps try the Chemistry Stack, though I doubt they're going to explain the process of making methamphetamine to you :)
Having said that, it's completely possible for someone to produce near-100% pure crystal meth, because it's happened:
That crystal meth was later seized by law enforcement, tested and found to be more than 99 percent pure — purer than the infamously high-quality meth cooked by Walter White, the fictional teacher-turned-drug-lord in the popular TV series "Breaking Bad" src
KutuluMike
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9@daramarak: Nope, the crystals are white, no matter the purity. Of course you could make them blue, but that would be adding impurities, now would it? ;-) – DevSolar Sep 03 '15 at 14:07
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1@DevSolar I agree with you and I thought that it was I did in my answer. 100% pure anything is possible in theory -- physicists working at the single-molecule level could do it, but ridiculously expensive in practice. However, it's possible to get arbitrarily close, as shown by the news story I cited. If you want to try to reword the answer to be more clear I would be willing to accept such an edit. – KutuluMike Sep 03 '15 at 14:27
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Methamphetamine (aka Crystal Meth) has a specific chemical compound; C10H15N, as well as a known weight (149.2328 g/mol) and mass (149.120449 g/mol). Therefore, it can be produced with 99.9% purity if all other compounds are prevented from entering the formula, and the known weight and mass are achieved.
You may recall that Walt and Jesse used an extermination service as a cover-up at one point, and basically built a sterilized environment inside the houses. This was done to get the cook as close as possible to pure. If you had the time, resources and a controlled environment, you could most definitely produce a completely pure batch.
Source: http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/methamphetamine#section=Top
Johnny Bones
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Completely pure is a concept that is not ever really achievable. Arbitrarily close to completely pure is theoretically achievable. I guess, technicality if you kept the batch to a couple hundred or thousand molecules, maybe you could guarantee that every single one was C10H15N.... Maybe. – Jonathon Sep 02 '15 at 19:01
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2@JonathonWisnoski, I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily. But what you're suggesting is more along the lines of "larger batches would get increasingly harder to keep 100% pure", not that it is (basically) impossible. And a related, secondary thought: say you had a perfect thousand C10H15N molecule batch, then you made more tiny batches and kept adding them together. Do you not have a large amount of "pure" C10H15N? – Broots Waymb Sep 02 '15 at 19:25
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3@DangerZone No at that point you could almost certainly never guarantee that the larger batch did not get a few molecules of impurity mixed in it. And I would not look at it that way. Bigger batches are likely easier to get better purity, but the trick comes at the difference between 99.99999% pure and 100% pure. At 100% pure you absolutely cannot use standard methods, you need to work with individual molecules, where it becomes impractical to deal with large volumes.. – Jonathon Sep 02 '15 at 20:02
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@JonathonWisnoski keeping in mind the original quote was "99.9%" and not "99.90000%". And the question is whether or not 99.9% is possible not is 100% possible. "pure" is relative and might not mean 100% just pretty darn close given the tools we have for measuring. – Brad Sep 02 '15 at 21:40
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9Chemicals are usually sold from lab suppliers with a purity specification that goes by order of magnitude at the high end. You pay more for "more nines", as they say. The same compound can be available with "three nines" purity (ie: 99.9%), for example, and would be much more expensive for a bottle graded "five nines" (ie; 99.999%). You never get anything 100% pure - you just get more nines, and more nines get very expensive long before you get to 100%. – J... Sep 02 '15 at 22:04
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Actually, for extremely high purity compounds (when the nines get too long) the impurities start to be measured in ppm or ppb, etc (parts per million, parts per billion...). There are, however, always impurities for any laboratory scale quantity of a material. – J... Sep 03 '15 at 00:10
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No chemical reaction goes 100%. There is always a chemical equilibrium based on the concentrations. I have no idea what the constant is for this particular reaction, but it's not 100% – Kevin Sep 03 '15 at 04:39
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The point is that you can talk about nines all day long, but you cannot talk about 100%. No such thing. Just like you can get a server with 99.999% availability, but no-one, no-where, will ever guarantee you 100%. Cannot be done. – DevSolar Sep 03 '15 at 09:05
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4@Zaibis no. Adding zeroes adds precision, while omitting them basically means "it could be any number". "99.9" might be "99.901" or "99.943" as far as you know. This is because we are talking about measured quantities, and not pure math (pun intended). – o0'. Sep 03 '15 at 12:12
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2This answer is just wrong. The fact that the substance is a single chemical compound in no way implies that it's possible to reach 100% purity. – David Richerby Sep 03 '15 at 12:21
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@DevSolar - No one will guarantee it, because it's very difficult to achieve. Besides, server availability isn't always in the hands of the server owner, it depends on local lines, backbone lines, power outages, etc... This is also why chemical compound guarantees wouldn't happen, because a lot could be out of the hands of the chemist. But, as in both cases, under the perfect conditions it can be achieved. – Johnny Bones Sep 03 '15 at 13:09
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I have changed the accepted answer to the one below because I do agree with the above comments that practically, no one can reach 100% purity, yet it is only a theoretical thing to claim 100%. – eYe Sep 03 '15 at 13:23
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1@JohnnyBones Uptime and chemical purity are completely different. Fukushima was 100% Tsunami-Proof... until it wasn't. – J... Sep 03 '15 at 13:43
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1@JohnnyBones: Your "under the perfect conditions" would include 100% (!!) pure components, 100% (!!) dust-free environment, 100% (!!) no radiation, 100% (!!) no contamination from any of the containers and tools involved ... -- do we agree that this is a theoretical condition, and settle on a finite number of nines? – DevSolar Sep 03 '15 at 13:44
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@DevSolar - In the interest of simplicity, I changed my answer to 99.9%. After all, that was the question anyway. I think this satisfies us both. :o) – Johnny Bones Sep 03 '15 at 13:55
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Just a nitpick but meth has a "twin" molecule which has the same chemical formula, same molecular mass, and more or less the same structure that doesn't do the same thing as meth. – jkd Jan 15 '18 at 08:27
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It is very easy for a skilled chemist to produce pure methamphetamine hydrochloride, a salt, because it crystalizes. A crystal will be very pure if grown properly. The challenge is to make sure the growth solution is pure to begin with by using pure components. If this is the case then the crystals will reject any foreign matter as they grown, making the result very pure, possibly with contaminants measured in parts per billion. The crystals must then be separated from the host liquor using proper washing techniques.
Tyler Durden
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2Actually a lot if molecules can be trapped in the crystals. The rejection you say is only favorable if energy allows it. – M.A.R. Sep 15 '15 at 17:45
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It is easy to produce very pure methamphetamine if you are a good chemist.
The reason why it is notable that Walter White does so is because most meth cooks are rank amateurs using bad recipes, poor equipment and little care. Meth isn't particularly hard to make (if you have the equipment and the right ingredients). It is also easy to make badly using poor equipment, bad recipes, little skill and readily available sources (like the over the counter medicine pseudo ephedrine).
Walter White is a good chemist and has access to the right ingredients and the right equipment. And he cares about his recipe and his professional standards. So it is entirely unsurprising that he can make very pure meth.
BTW this has been discussed in chemistry.SE:
matt_black
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