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Does Mercury(II) fulminate really react the way it did on breaking bad?

10/19/2015

 
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In season 1 episode 6 of breaking bad Walter takes some mercury fulminate a blows up Tuco's HQ. Can it really cause the explosion that it did in the show?

The answer was given in mythbusters; to test the mercury fulminate, 5 grams (in the show Walt had around 50g) of the stuff (which was wired to a squib) was placed inside a pumpkin. The mission was to see if it made a 'big' explosion; the results were good. The pumpkin was literally no more; check out the video.
After they attempted to build a replica of Tuco's office, which included windows, desk and dummies; the idea was to have someone throw the substance to have it match the show. But that would be stupid to have a person do that, so star Grant Imahara created a robot with the capability to throw. The speed of the throw was 60 MPH which is almost identical to the speed of an average humans throw. But no explosion was made.
The robot was then changed to throw much faster and this time increased the mass to 250 grams of mercury fumlinate. This did it; the entire room was engulfed in a massive explosion, leaving nothing but pieces of robot Walt, plastic Tuco and unidentified dummies.

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