Awesome Explosions

If you take a balloon and fill it with too much air, it will eventually explode. The guys from How Ridiculous thought it would be fun to see what else would fail catastrophically when overinflated, starting with a hot water bottle and culminating with a big exercise ball. Like Tom Petty sang, “the waiting is the hardest part.”

The guys from How Ridiculous spend a lot of their time dropping heavy and dangerous objects from towers and cranes. For this video, they went in the opposite direction by launching things like rubber band balls and an anvil sky-high using explosives. The hang time on that bowling ball was something special.

The Slow Mo Guys have been spending time with Kentucky Ballistics, because he’s got lots of things that go BOOM. In this video, they tested the one weapon in Scott’s arsenal that even he dreads shooting. The 950JDJ FAT MAC is the world’s largest sporting rifle. It fires a huge 20mm diameter bullet, kicks out a massive muzzle flash, and has insane recoil.

What’s better than watching stuff blow up? Watching stuff blow up in slow-motion. Darren from Beyond Slow Motion used Phantom high-speed cameras to capture a series of explosions at up to 49,100 frames per second, revealing fascinating details of each energetic reaction. The big booms were made possible by explosives expert Matt Barnett.

More than eight years ago, The Backyard Scientist conducted an experiment to see what would happen when molten salt is poured into an aquarium. The results were quite explosive. Now, The Slow Mo Guys have revisited the classic experiment and revealed much greater detail in the explosions thanks to newer, more sophisticated high-speed camera tech.

In preparation for Independence Day, Warped Perception wanted to do something that involved fireworks. So he took an already-toasted junkyard Audi, covered it with 100,000 firecrackers, and lit it with a blowtorch. The whole thing was over in just a few seconds, but fortunately, he recorded it in slow motion for a longer fireworks show.

Plants need to spread their seeds to procreate. While some rely on birds or the wind, others use explosive force to send seeds flying. Ze Frank explores a variety of plants that blow their tops and shoot their pollen, spores, and seeds. It’s fascinating to see how they store the mechanical energy needed to explode.

If you’ve played Minecraft, you know to steer clear of Creepers. These bespeckled hostile mobs will blow you to smithereens. The Slow Mo Guys dropped by the Colorado School of Mines with a real-world version of the explosive enemy and detonated it in front of their high-speed camera. After a small test, they got a much bigger boom from a charged Creeper.

The guys from How Ridiculous braved winter conditions in Montana to play with a pair of air cannons with their friends from BealsScience. This time, they loaded up their barrels with soda cans, bowling balls, spray paint, and a pair of glass spheres for an explosive grand finale.

After smashing stuff with their shop’s new 300-ton hydraulic press, the Beyond the Press channel got to work on a different kind of destruction. For maximum explosive carnage, they took car and truck tires and filled them way past their safe limits with a 4350 psi (300 bar) air compressor. Don’t try anything like this at home – it’s incredibly dangerous.

The Slow Mo Guys, Gav and Dan, stopped by the Colorado School of Mines to observe what happens when you fire two identically shaped charges into each other. Their high-speed cameras captured the 15,000 MPH collision in slow motion for us to enjoy. It was really tough to keep the exposure from blowing out because of the intensity of the fireball.

When Lauri Vuohensilta isn’t crushing things with his 150-ton hydraulic press, he enjoys making things explode. In this clip from his Beyond the Press channel, he and the guys from Pyrokratia rigged up nearly 7000 blocks of recalled fireworks to explode at the same time. This is totally going to be our new bedtime white noise.

We’ve seen how explosive something as tame as paper can be when crushed in a hydraulic press. So, how energetic are actual explosives when subjected to similar forces? Press play and find out as the Hydraulic Press Channel takes canisters of compressed propane gas and smooshes them next to a bunch of candles.

Here’s one from the “don’t try this at home” file. TikTok user ex9g6oxt has posted a series of videos in which he uses firecrackers to launch metal bowls and rice cookers into the air. He starts with the smallest firecracker and gradually ups the size to see how high the explosion can launch each object.

If you’ve ever handled gold leaf, you know how fragile the thin metal sheets are. The Slow Mo Guys used this to their advantage by placing gold leaf inside a jar, removing all the air, and then letting air back in to make it shatter into tiny particles. Naturally, they captured the explosive decompression with a high-speed camera at 80,000 fps.

Popcorn: there aren’t any other foods we can think of which must explode to be enjoyed. This high-speed footage from The Slow Mo Guys is almost as tasty as a bucket of the buttery stuff is. They used a dangerous-looking popcorn pressure cooker to get a bunch of kernels to pop simultaneously, then fired up some puffed rice.