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Large meplat is what makes the jugs explode.

A little pointed 224 will just goes through the jugs depending on type, FMJ, HP

Now if you it the same jug with a 458 SOSCOM, 325gr HP will shred into many pieces.

Shoot a milk jug with a hot loaded wadcutter then get ready for a shower. Particularly 44 or 45.

Yeah meplat.
If you ever shot some water jugs with 30-06 ball ammo and then shot some with 30carbine ball ammo you will notice that the splash the pipsqueek 30carbine makes is surprisingly close to 30-06.

Your biggest splash would be to set the jug on top of a can of tannerite any bullet going fast enough, even FMJ’s will work.

Some of the more impressive bullets for shooting contained liquids are light weight varmint bullets. A 35 grain Vmax explodes a 12 oz can full of water, even at 22 hornet velocity’s.

I doubt I’ll ever forget the time my Father took me down to the lake and filled a 5 gallon gas can full of water (had rusted a pin hole in the bottom) and shot it with an 8mm Mauser, was my first lesson at only pointing at things one wishes to destroy.

For that splash effect, you want as much energy transferred into the liquid as possible. To do that, you want the flattest surface possible hitting the liquid. This can be achieved by either using a bullet with a broad, flat point, or an expanding type bullet(hollow point or soft point, or ideally a flat lead soft point). Think of it kind of like a hammer and a nail. The nail has a relatively sharp point, and when you strike it with a hammer, it tries to go through the wood. When you just hit the wood with a hammer, it doesn't go nearly as deep, but still transfers all that energy to the wood.

Pointy stuff likes to penetrate. Flat stuff has a lot of drag and dumps a lot of energy.

I shoot 2 milk jugs a week. I have shot them with a 45-70 and 22lr and a lot of things in between. For me in this game velocity puts on the best show. This morning results with 40 grain VMax in .222 Rem.

I think it all works for the simple reason water is a liquid and liquids don’t compress. So it’s all down to how much hydraulic pressure is imparted to that column of water by the velocity,weight and surface area of the projectile. . The bigger the ram the more pressure it can create.

Depends on the caliber. I shoot a lot of random stuff out in the yard. I'd say, above 2300fps or so, bullet construction is more important. Results with varmint bullets such as Vmax or the light for caliber HPs driven relatively fast are astounding. The hard part may be recovering your jug fragments. Pro tip, freeze a jug and shoot it with a .30 caliber Vmax!

The absolute most dramatic I've ever experienced was the Barnes Tac frangible 108?grain fired from a Mosin Nagant M39 at a respectable velocity.

When you get into the slower velocities, I.E. handguns and some of the old straight wall rifle rounds, metplat will come into play a lot more.

Standard 35 Whelen makes the same splash as a 300 win mag.
158xtp from the Whelen is spectacular.
This tells me run as fast as you can with as large of frontal area as you can.

A .460 S&W makes an incredible show. There’s a YouTube video of Jerry M shooting a purple cabbage that’s downright scary. Good luck.