Every now and then some friends and I will get some dry ice, a bunch of plastic bottles and other containers with a screw-on lid and have a laugh making small explosions.
Basically you take a bottle, fill it 1/4 with water and 1/2 with dry ice and screw the cap on. You then have around a minute before it explodes.
A 1/2 liter coke bottle will make a nice whooompf and a 20 liter plastic gasoline can (the largest we have tried) will make a bang that can be heard maybe half a mile away. They very rarely sizzle out, and the ones that do probably have a defect, or we didn't get the cap screwed on properly. There's some time pressure, so you don't stand around checking before you throw the container. I would imagine that a metal container will make a pretty big bang (higher pressure before it ruptures) and may throw out some nasty debris.
It's good fun!