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On the price of watermelons

Watermelons are huge, cheap, and contain a lot of water. The edible part is about 92% water. I wanted to find out whether water from watermelons is cheaper than bottled water at the supermarket.

I compared prices with other beverages, each is the cheapest in its category. Because prices change all the time, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt:

Item Price per litre (AUD)
Home Brand Cordial (diluted 1:4 with free water) 0.23
Water 0.46
Cheap soft drink 0.63
Milk 0.89
Watermelon Juice 1.05
Tropical Juice 1.90
Lipton Iced Tea 2.57

So it’s settled. You wouldn’t save anything juicing watermelons unless you usually buy natural juice, which it turns out quite pricy!

This is how I got the price of a litre of watermelon water:

Water is 997.1kg/m3 (0.9971g/mL) at 25°C
1000mL * 0.9971g/mL = 997.1g water
997.1g / 91.45% = 1090g watermelon
1.090kg * 96c/kg = 1.05c/L for watermelon water.

This is not science: I ignored the watermelon rind, and the 6.2g / 100g of sugars which would be dissolved in the water. If anybody juices a watermelon in a lab then I will revise these numbers.

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