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I was watching The Score (2001) in which De Niro manages to make a hole in a cobalt and titanium infused steel safe. he fills it with water. inserts an explosive and boom! the safe is open. It made me think what would have happened if instead of water the safe was filled with any other substance with higher viscosity than water. maybe runny cement or anything he could have come up with.

  1. Would the explosion sound be less or more?

  2. Since higher viscosity means air molecules have a harder time expanding, how would the explosion act differently?

  3. Wouldn't it have been more plausible for him to use his torch or thermite to heat the safe and then use the water to cool it and make it brittle?

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  • $\begingroup$ This is a good project to conduct experiment with explosion of the box filled with different substances. :) $\endgroup$
    – Alex Trounev
    Commented Nov 10 at 10:57
  • $\begingroup$ In the limit of extremely high viscosity, the liquid is rigid. What does that tell you? $\endgroup$
    – Chet Miller
    Commented Nov 10 at 12:05
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    $\begingroup$ Compressibility is more relevant than viscosity here. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Nov 10 at 14:45
  • $\begingroup$ Also density is important. $\endgroup$
    – mmesser314
    Commented Nov 10 at 15:47
  • $\begingroup$ @AlexTrounev I emailed Ordnance Lab about it. They are a you tube channel based in Texas. They have the proper space for doing the experiment. I let everybody know their answer. In case they don't write back or you wanted to do it yourself, please be very very careful and keep in mind that different main charges work with different initiators, different initiators work with different methods like sparks, electricity, heat, physical strike... $\endgroup$
    – Blake
    Commented Nov 11 at 6:45

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