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What is the lightest plastic 20 fl oz bottle you know of?
The lightest one I have found is the Aquafina 20 fl oz water bottles which weigh in at 0.8 oz on my scale. This is an impressive weight to capacity ratio of 0.04 oz/fl oz.
Does anybody know of a lighter plastic bottle with the same capacity? Note that I am referring to hard plastic bottles only, not soft bladders (such as Platypus).
-Sid
I believe that NASA makes one that is a high quality extrusion and cross-linking of solid aerogel sheets impregnated with pure hydrogen gas at elevated temperature and extremely high pressure. Then the impregnated solid sheets are expanded in a huge low pressure autoclave and extruded into the shape of a bottle. This process results in an extremely regular and uniform cell structure in the aerogel material making the bottle amazingly light and strong for its very low density. In fact the 20 oz size actually has negative weight. They are quite a remarkable innovation though difficult to obtain since they float into the sky immediately after leaving the shipping warehouse.
Hal,
maybe I should have specified that I was asking for the lightest bottle that can be obtained from a supermarket…Interesting post though.
-Sid
the lightest bottle I've found were "Crystal Geyser" brand, although I've only weighed the half liter bottles.
Aquafina plastic is fairly thick, so there should definitely be lighter 20 oz bottles. I have stuck with 32 oz bottles.
Not exactly supermarket bottle, but lighter and much more compact when empty — Platypus 1L collapsible bottle — 32oz for 0.8oz weight — or 0.025oz/fl oz.
Sid, I confess I was gently poking fun at how our "gramweenieness" can go a little crazy sometime. NASA does not make a bottle out of aerogel but if they did some of us would be interested if it could bring our water bottle weight down from .8 oz to .6 oz and all for only $99!
They've all been going through rounds of material-reducing in their bottles and caps, such that some of them almost seem too thin. Chrystal Geyser and Arrowhead are the most common brands where I live and both are considerably thinner than before. Crystal Geyser caps are also quite short now.
Compared to some older bottles I have stashed in the gear bins, the new bottles are a few grams lighter. I trust the new bottles with water but for other liquids I prefer something stouter and more leakproof. There are plenty of options, such as the insanely stout Gatorade bottles.
Cheers,
Rick
OK, I had to check..
A Sprite bottle is lighter (almost 1/3rd) than my Gatorade (heavier than Aquafina) but I still prefer the latter because it can take some knocks both dropping it and on the side pockets.
Franco
Hal, some of us got it the first time, but very convincing nevertheless.
Pity that the superlight Unobtanium can only be used as tent material. (not food grade, toxic)I drilled holes out of the cap and bottom of my 20oz Crystal Geyser bottle to get the weight just under.42oz. Oh man what a difference!
Bryian
Try Nestle's 500 ml water bottles, they have recently announced a 9.3 gram bottle which is the lightest for that size.
Of course, larger bottles might have a better weight/volume ratio since the threads of the bottle (called the finish) and the base are the heaviest parts and are somewhat "fixed weights". It just depends how big of a bottle you want to use.
Even this lightweight bottle will be pretty tough.
Tom
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