Recycling - what weighs more a crushed aluminum can or an uncrushed aluminum can? regular soda type.?

Question

im trying to recycle aluminum cans and want to see what the best investment on my time would be. Does the air in the uncrushed cans give it extra weight? or does the crushed ones somehow weigh more? Any toughts other than what a lame question are welcome. Thank you.

Answer 1

They weigh exactly the same.  The only advantage to smashing them is to be able to get more cans in your tote.

Air has no weight.   If it did, we would all be crushed by it.  A balloon weighs the same after you blow air into it as it did before.  The only thing you have changed is mass.

Answer 2

Crushing the can is done to conserve space........never dreamed anyone would consider the air in the can to have value.

Personally I don't bother crushing because of the time and fact I have a pickup that can handle the extra bags.

Answer 3

An aluminum can weighs exactly the same, crushed or uncrushed unless the act of crushing tears off a piece of it, which is unlikely.

Answer 4

Crushed ones just take less space. weight is the same.

Answer 5

they weight the same buddy.

Answer 6

a pound is a pound is a pound.  the question could be changed to how much space is needed to hold crushed cans versus non-crushed cans that total the same amount of weight.

Answer 7

crushed can weighs same...you want to crush the cans so you can fit more into your truck thus being able to transport more weight then volume

For current aluminum can scrap metal prices go to http://www.scrapmetalpricesandauctions.c...

Answer 8

At first I thought, that's crazy, air doesn't weigh anything.  But. if you weigh a container, and then remove all the air from it (create a vacuum) and weigh it again, it does weigh less.  It's just that the air "floats" in air, so it's negligible.

The real question for your aluminum collection is density, I think.  Crushed aluminum cans are more valuable per square unit of measure because you are carrying around less worthless "bulk" and more metal.

Seems like a silly question but it's an interesting one.