Finally, an answer to the age old question: How many elastic bands does it take to explode a watermelon?

For millennia, the great thinkers of our species have devoted themselves to unlocking the universe’s mysteries. In the process, they created scientific processes incredible enough to give us spacecraft, the internet, and robots. Still, despite all of these technological innovations, our brightest minds forgot to solve the kind of problems that have always puzzled humanity most: Like, say, figuring out how many elastic bands it takes to make a watermelon blow up.

Not content to see our ability to destroy melons stop at the (admittedly impressive) heights of that guy who’s really good at cutting them apart with a knife, an internet comedian who goes by Dakidd Hilarious has conducted an experiment to determine the number of elastics needed to explode a watermelon.

Decked out in the standard research equipment of a thin layer of chalk, track pants, and swimming goggles, Dakidd Hilarious works away steadily in a lab equipped with a giant melon and a seemingly infinite supply of rubber bands. Although the video begins with him already counting into the 600s, Dakidd works steadily for nearly 18 more minutes. He doesn’t waver, just continues at his task with determination. The watermelon visibly begins to pinch in the middle as the clip goes on. “It’s choking,” the technician notes for posterity before reminding viewers that they can win $25 for guessing the magic number.

At long last, after 943 bands have been applied, the watermelon cracks open like some horrible alien egg and then blows up entirely, knocking Dakidd backward off the chair he’d just sat down on. He looks disoriented, but whether that’s because he just did a melon-assisted somersault or because he’d captured a landmark scientific achievement on video is impossible to tell.

[via Digg]

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