• Question: do you find the series breaking bad beneficial for students?

    Asked by anon-349845 on 20 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Thomas Swift

      Thomas Swift answered on 20 Mar 2023:

      I think it has some good points, and ‘largely’ the chemistry and how it is represented as a serious endeavour is on point.

      But it’s a show about people, and arguments, and ‘stuff’ more than science. I think it highlights how quality chemistry can make products better, and weak chemistry is in no-one’s interests, but I don’t think it changes things much overall. And Walter White – great TV character that he is – is not a good face for chemistry as a whole

    • Photo: Joshua Bray

      Joshua Bray answered on 20 Mar 2023:

      Sure, it portrays the realities of how chemistry is actually performed relatively accurately, both in the “lab” and on small pilot plant scale. That part particularly interested me, and after rewatching it the other day, I was pretty surprised at quite how close to reality it is. Some actions and the chemistry speak is not-accurate (they must have slipped through their scientific adviser’s net), but I enjoyed it!

      So long as people are able to distinguish that Walter is a nasty piece of work, and that chemistry is useful for things other than making crystal meth, then it’s fine to show some of the realities of doing benchtop and larger scale chemistry.

      I also enjoyed that Walter was strangely obsessed with safety and wearing a respirator, etc. but was happy to be using very flammable solvents in a truck in the desert without any kind of fume extraction or a fire extinguisher on hand. Brave man.

    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 20 Mar 2023:

      I never watched the show so really can’t comment. However, I would say that the CSI shows did put science in a very positive light and helped recruit students into forensics-based courses.

    • Photo: Emmett McKenna

      Emmett McKenna answered on 21 Mar 2023:

      I’d highly recommend giving it a watch.

      It as an entertaining well paced story centered on a complex morally ambiguous man in the middle of a mid life crisis and coming to terms with his own mortality, but filled with fully developed and complex characters.

      It would be excellent for social science and English literature students.
      For an understanding of Chemistry, not so much.

    • Photo: Jade Markham

      Jade Markham answered on 31 Mar 2023:

      Yes if it makes them feel like chemistry is cool.

      They actually used real scientist to advise them on what would be realistic! Though if the meth was pure it would not be blue!

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