Don Herbert better known as “Mr. Wizard” was the beloved host of “Mr. Wizard’s World,” an educational science show that even the most jaded Gen X’er came to love while watching Nickelodeon in the 80s. However, you might as well have called him Walter White because hidden within his many practical chemistry lessons was all the information you needed to know in order to make crystal meth. Here’s which episodes you need to watch in order to become your town’s new Heisenberg!
Season 1, Episode 4: Mr. Wizard goes to the store
In this episode, Mr. Wizard instructs the kids about how to space out purchasing all of the materials you need without raising suspicion. He has his child assistants visit multiple stores and only use cash to purchase their materials. He also coached the children to put pepper up their noses before buying the Sudafed to really sell their “colds”.
Season 2, Episode 7: Adventures in chirality
Chirality is the principle in chemistry that certain molecules can have the same chemical formula while not being superimposable mirror images. This means that you can have chemicals that, despite being made of the same parts, can have completely different properties. In this episode, Mr. Wizard explains that you want the R configuration and not the S configuration because one gets you super high and the other causes impotence.
Season 2, Episode 10: Eating good in the neighborhood
Mr. Wizard takes time to explain the Maillard reaction and how it’s the reaction that makes your bread brown when you make toast. It didn’t teach anything about making meth, but it’s surprisingly interesting, and you’re definitely going to want to understand it when you’re making a celebratory grilled cheese after a successful meth cook.
Season 3, Episode 5: Catalyzing reactions
In this episode, Mr. Wizard explained how catalysts are used in chemical reactions to speed up the rate of a certain reaction while not being used up in the reaction itself. Of course, the best place to get the necessary metals for a lot of these reactions is located right behind your muffler. The kids really enjoyed getting the shiny stuff in this episode, and their smaller size made it much easier for them to use the band saw.
Season 5, Episode 10: How to make meth
Unsurprisingly, this was the last episode of Mr. Wizard, because he dropped any and all pretenses and just straight up made meth. In retrospect, watching any of the other episodes was unnecessary because in this episode, he just straight-up makes meth before getting tackled by DEA agents.