Just fire, ice AND "Thermite"!

Haha, awesome. You could tell they were not expecting that.

"Don't try this at home?" Looks like some kids already did, or else they wouldn't have a myth to bust.

not to go all psuedo-scientist or anything but...

couldn't it have been caused by the molten aluminum/other metals melting the ice so fast that it instantly converted to steam, and the insane expansion rate caused the explosion?

i mean, that's the same thing that happened in the video where the 2 kids are pouring molten aluminum into an ingot cast, this is just on a much bigger (and faster) scale... isn't it?

Very cool. Something unexpected. It looked like a pretty respectable explosion, too. I hope they revisit it to try and nail down the mechanism.

I was waiting for the dump-truck-load of thermite on the 600-ton block of ice.  I'm deeply disappointed in them.

pho3n1x hit the nail on the head. I was a personal witness to the same type of reaction in an art school metal casting class. A classmate of mine didn't properly dry his mold before the casting. Once the 1300+ degree liquid aluminum hit the tiny pool of water in the bottom the whole thing exploded. If the mold hadn't been 3/4 buried in a sand pit before hand we would have been in trouble

I'd suspect an even better reaction by suspending the thermite above a bucket of water, which would result in a quicker conversion to steam due to the lowered energy required and the greater surface area.

First time I ever heard about thermite was after downloading the Anarchist Cookbook at our science lab in junior high.

I was not expecting that, I really wish they delved into more of why this may have happened I really want to know!

Well I guess it's pretty hard to find out what happened. Thermite is not easy to work with. Even the cameras have a hard time with the intense light it emits.

The aerosolizing theory sounds plausible to me. Lots of things ignite that way, I've personally blown a ball of fire with a mouthful of corn starch and I hear sugar and flour work too. A mouthful of thermite, (as if), would be insane.

The water gets vaporized extremely fast because of the very high heat of the burning thermite. 1 liter of water turns into 1700 liters of steam nearly immediately. You get the idea why you see an explosion.
It's the same thing as if you would try to extinct a grease fire with water. NEVER EVER DO IT!

I'm gonna drill a hollow core into an iceberg, fill it with thermite and lite the fuse

I want to see thermite and a snowman!

This is why caldera volcanoes such as Yellowstone are so explosive. Water seeps down and contacts the shallow magma chamber causing a rapid increase in chamber pressure by the volatilization of the water and other fluids. This pressure builds fast until the pressure exceeds that of the roof crust of the caldera. In this case the walls of ice and the bucket on top created a sort of pressure chamber in the middle which allowed for the buildup and explosion.

On the one hand, I'm on board with the idea that "this is similar to the ingot burst", but I disagree that you'd get an even more spectacular result with a bucket of water, as butt3rnuts suggests.

I disagree because I've done that, and it just liberates a lot of steam.

In my case, the setup was a pot of thermite that poured into (well, through) a coffee can of water and then down into a large beaker of water and sand.

As an aside, the glass formed as the thermite contacts the sand is a pretty neat souvenir.

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
Some say an explosion caused by the sudden combination of both."

-Robert Frost

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