How many rubber bands does it take to make a watermelon implode?

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/04/21/how-many-rubber-bands-does-it.html

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Video link for the BBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfWCk3a18I8

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More rigor is required, but I propose:

    1 Gallagher = 943 rubber bands

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nearly 20 mins vid? Nah aint nobody got time for that. Timestamped to cut to the chase.

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I would not have made this video inside my living space :watermelon: :exploding_head:

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This is already the short version, I guess the whole thing would have taken way over an hour.

Next up: a 3 hour video where we can watch him clean it all up. Probably wouldn’t make 37k views, though

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Well i got it even succinct :stuck_out_tongue:

I am so disappointed that this wasn’t shot with high-speed video so that we could savour this majestic state change in glorious, detailed slow motion.

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I especially liked how he sits down, gets his foot on the counter, so he can be ready to push himself over when it explodes. The level of over acting is top notch.

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Needs more jack-in-the-box music.

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Cool! I first saw this last year at the Jefferson County Watermelon Festival. It was done as a contest, 5 or 6 teams of 2 to 5 people each, first team to achieve Melon Ignition wins the big prize (gift card? t-shirt?) with runner-ups winning lesser prizes, wrapping to continue until all melons have popped. Most participants were kids, with a few supervising adults mixed in, and it was outside, on a couple of folding tables in front of the main stage, melons and rubber bands provided gratis. Very popular event, pulled a big crowd, even more than the Diving Dogs competition. Nowhere near as big an explosion as in the video, no children were killed (a couple of surprised sobs from the littlest ones), but pretty impressive pops all the same, with the crowd responding enthusiastically as each melon began to deform – a sign of imminent destruction. The festival has been a going concern for almost 70 years, but no one I asked could (or would) tell me if this event had been a part of it throughout. I posited, in the interest of Enhancing the Narrative, that it had been, and was possibly a bloodless survival of an earlier ritual of human sacrifice – the Aztecs had rubber balls, why not rubber bands – but that theory was received with a denial that was consistent and vehement. Suspiciously so.

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Wow, almost doubled in just four years.

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Hooke’s law is obsolete! If we hurry, we can name the replacement law after ourselves!

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YT has a feature to change playback speed that goes down to 1/4 speed. Since we’re not talking about explosives or slowing down a bullet, it works pretty well for this video. :slight_smile:

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How many rubber bands does it take to make a watermelon implode?

Let’s ask the Wise Old Owl.

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Meanwhile in China…

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damn you…came here to post the same thing

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I see what you did there :wink:

Welcome to Boing Boing, I do hope you’ll find a home amongst us Happy Mutants.

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This is clearly a sign that rubber bands just ain’t what they used to be :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Heh, heh, heh.

Great minds, etc, etc…