Something not to try at home...
A funny photo of an interesting demo shown at the annual Physics Department Open House as part of the "Demonstration Lecture".
Take a 50 gallon drum, put about 5 cm of water into the bottom, set it on a stand and get a hefty burner underneath (we used furnace burners), heat it for ~45 minutes (to a roiling boil), turn the burner off (extremely important or you make a fairly dangerous bomb in the next step), take the cap or barrel bung slathered with vacuum grease and seal up the barrel tightly.
The photo then shows myself cooling the barrel quickly by pouring liquid nitrogen on top and undergrad Matt Shepherd spritzing the outside with water. After about a minute of this cooling treatment with the air inside rapidly cooling and contracting to create a partial vacuum inside resulting in tons of air pressure pushing from all directions, the barrel fails catastrophically with a truly impressive "bang" surprising enough to have the demonstrator almost fall off the lab top. Looking later at a video tape, the entire collapse takes place inside of one video frame, i.e., a decrease in volume by a factor of about 3 in less than 1/30 of a second. Fast enough that one can feel the air rushing by immediately after the collapse.
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at rickv@paoli.physics.indiana.edu