If you have an “exploding aquarium” accident, it’s usually very bad news for the owner of the aquarium, and the animals living inside it. On another note, many of us have “legacy” aquarium gear including old tank which are barely even worth using as a water vat.
For anyone who’s ever wondered what it’d be like to intentionally blow up an aquarium, the pyrotechnic investigators at Mythbusters have a new segment wherein they do just that. While investigating different options for absorbing a bomb blast, in the unlikely event that you find yourself holding a stick of C4 or dynamite, the Mythbusters detonation crew put a water-filled aquarium to the test of absorbing a bomb blast.
It appears that a six foot long, 120-150 gallon size acrylic aquarium was used for this bomb-absorbing experiment. The resulting video recorded shows a super satisfying explosion of water, tank and stand which should appease anyone that has ever been fed up with a particular aquarium system or setup.
The results? It seems that the water and the acrylic panels did somewhat absorb the shockwave created by the explosion of C4, and pressure and shrapnel detectors were not all that damaged, in that they were not completely destroyed. Obviously, a bomb blast of this type using a glass aquarium would have resulted in a totally different class of explosion and shrapnel.
The moral of the story is that if you foresee ever having to consider using an aquarium as a makeshift bomb chamber, you need to change your ways. The very satisfying video of the Mythbusters exploding aquarium is featured below.
