Loose Change

[brennan]

The black smoke indicates low temp fires

Says who?

You say it wasn't a conspiracy and then you talk about planes being flown into the buildings. So, I take it that there wasn't a conspiracy to fly the planes into the buildings? Do you think it was an accident or that one man flew both planes?

No of course not, you're prepared to believe in Muslim conspiracies but not in others. That sounds a bit racist to me. Either that or you're just being flippant. Is this really the time for flippancy, what with 3000 people dead directly and thousands more in the resulting two wars?

Now there's a couple of cheap shots. Ad hominems too. It is easy to believe in one conspiracy when the evidence for it is staring everyone in the face. It is quite something else to rely on extensive supposition and lack of evidence to believe another. Your attempt to confuse 2 different conspiracies is desperate at best.

 

[Xenocrates]

You have a cite for that?

There's quite a well-written report on it here:

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425°C and loses about half of its strength at 650°C.4 This is why steel is stress relieved in this temperature range. But even a 50% loss of strength is still insufficient, by itself, to explain the WTC collapse. It was noted above that the wind load controlled the design allowables. The WTC, on this low-wind day, was likely not stressed more than a third of the design allowable, which is roughly one-fifth of the yield strength of the steel. Even with its strength halved, the steel could still support two to three times the stresses imposed by a 650°C fire.

It doesn't agree with the explosives theory, but I think there are two errors in it. Heat 'flows'; from hot to cold. A low temperature fire burning for a long time couldn't have, even if there was enough energy in the fire, have produced a hotter temperature in the steel. Simple thermodynamics! There's a LOT of heat in the sea, but when you dip your toe in it you don't get hotter. They also neglect that the fuel would have evaporated, reducing the quantity available to heat the building. Everything needs to be checked and double checked. Very tiring.

 

[Turner]

All that site says is what you said. It doesn't take into consideration the fact that the building may have been designed to withstand forces '30 times greated than the weight of the plane', but in fact that weight was concentrated into a relatively small area. Now, I don't have the math to write the equation, but there's a big difference in forces when it's spread out over the entire length of the building or concentrated on a couple of floors.

 

[Xenocrates]

Yeah, but that mass hit one floor, collapsing it, then the added mass hit the next floor... see where we are going here?
Or you can fly a plane into the building. A big plane. At full speed.

I think you missed the post here.

The NIST report stated that there was negligible resistance to the fallling mass; hence the speedy decent.

I'm saying that each floor below would have decelerated the falling mass. Inertia and momentum are at play here as they would be anywhere else, but NIST asks us to believe otherwise.

 

[JerichoHill]

F=MA?

So the Force should build as the first part tumbles (acceleration). As each floor crumbles their mass is added. Thus the force increases at each level

Thusly, each floor would not have decelerated the falling mass. Its like, its tough to stop a 230 pound guy once he gets going...

I know you want to question these things and all, but really, I just googled this and it gave me this kind of answer, on building construction. There would be minimialyl resistant

 

[brennan]

The ensuing fire was clearly the principal cause of the collapse

Are you sure he's on your side

The maximum flame temperature increase for burning hydrocarbons (jet fuel) in air is, thus, about 1,000°C—hardly sufficient to melt steel at 1,500°C.

But it is very difficult to reach this maximum temperature with a diffuse flame. There is nothing to ensure that the fuel and air in a diffuse flame are mixed in the best ratio. Typically, diffuse flames are fuel rich, meaning that the excess fuel molecules, which are unburned, must also be heated. It is known that most diffuse fires are fuel rich because blowing on a campfire or using a blacksmith’s bellows increases the rate of combustion by adding more oxygen. This fuel-rich diffuse flame can drop the temperature by up to a factor of two again. This is why the temperatures in a residential fire are usually in the 500°C to 650°C range.2,3 It is known that the WTC fire was a fuel-rich, diffuse flame as evidenced by the copious black smoke. Soot is generated by incompletely burned fuel; hence, the WTC fire was fuel rich—hardly surprising with 90,000 L of jet fuel available. Factors such as flame volume and quantity of soot decrease the radiative heat loss in the fire, moving the temperature closer to the maximum of 1,000°C. However, it is highly unlikely that the steel at the WTC experienced temperatures above the 750–800°C range. All reports that the steel melted at 1,500°C are using imprecise terminology at best.

Here he says the specific quanity of soot made the fire hotter, not cooler.

It was noted above that the wind load controlled the design allowables. The WTC, on this low-wind day, was likely not stressed more than a third of the design allowable, which is roughly one-fifth of the yield strength of the steel. Even with its strength halved, the steel could still support two to three times the stresses imposed by a 650°C fire.

...and here is where he effs up. Lateral strain forces (eg wind loads) are different to compressive stress forces due to weight.

There are a couple of other glaring mistakes, but they are beside the point.

I bet this guy didn't write the official report. Am I right?

 

[Xenocrates]

Says who?

Black smoke means that carbon is remaining. This means insufficient energy to burn all of the fuel OR insufficient oxygen. In both case this means lower temperatures than for smokeless fires.

Now there's a couple of cheap shots. Ad hominems too. It is easy to believe in one conspiracy when the evidence for it is staring everyone in the face. It is quite something else to rely on extensive supposition and lack of evidence to believe another. Your attempt to confuse 2 different conspiracies is desperate at best.

No, what i'm saying is that people are discounting a theory because it's a conspiracy while supporting another conspiracy theory. I think technically they're not ad hominems.... Cheap yes (and richly deserved ), but not ad hominems.

 

[Bamspeedy]

There's quite a well-written report on it here:

Did you read that entire article. It clearly shows how the building collapsed (hint: without the use of explosives).

This produced distortions in the slender structural steel, which resulted in buckling failures. Thus, the failure of the steel was due to two factors: loss of strength due to the temperature of the fire, and loss of structural integrity due to distortion of the steel from the non-uniform temperatures in the fire.

First, the building is not solid; it is 95 percent air and, hence, can implode onto itself.

To summarize all of these points, a 500,000 t structure has too much inertia to fall in any direction other than nearly straight down.

No normal office fires would fill 4,000 square meters of floor space in the seconds in which the WTC fire developed. Usually, the fire would take up to an hour to spread so uniformly across the width and breadth of the building.

I think this article clearly shows how the towers could have fallen without explosives. As for #7:

Skyscrapers are designed to support themselves for three hours in a fire even if the sprinkler system fails to operate.

And #7 burned for what, 8 hours?

 

[Xenocrates]

F=MA?

So the Force should build as the first part tumbles (acceleration). As each floor crumbles their mass is added. Thus the force increases at each level

Thusly, each floor would not have decelerated the falling mass. Its like, its tough to stop a 230 pound guy once he gets going...

I know you want to question these things and all, but really, I just googled this and it gave me this kind of answer, on building construction. There would be minimialyl resistant

Give me a break. Any mass will decelerate a moving mass. I didn't say that there wouldn't be acceleration, just that it wouldn't be 9.803 m per sec per sec (I checked the exact figure for NY just for you), because of the force exerted on the falling mass by the stationary mass would reduce it. Another invokation of 'special' physics.

Geeze, if my internet wasn't so slow today I'd upload a picture of a straw for you to clutch at!

 

[brennan]

No, what i'm saying is that people are discounting a theory because it's a conspiracy while supporting another conspiracy theory. I think technically they're not ad hominems.... Cheap yes (and richly deserved ), but not ad hominems.

I think you'll find people are supporting a credible theory, supported by the evidence, that is about a conspiracy; and discounting a conspiracy theory...

A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event (usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence. Researchers who advocate the conspiratorial view claim that most major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes.

The term "conspiracy theory" is usually used by mainstream scholars and in popular culture to identify a type of folklore similar to an urban legend, especially an explanatory narrative which is constructed with methodological flaws.[1] The term is also used pejoratively to dismiss claims that are alleged by critics to be misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish, irrational, or otherwise unworthy of serious consideration. For example "Conspiracy nut" is used as a pejorative term. Most people who have their theory or speculation labeled a "conspiracy theory" reject the term as prejudicial.

The two are not the same.

 

[Xenocrates]

All that site says is what you said. It doesn't take into consideration the fact that the building may have been designed to withstand forces '30 times greated than the weight of the plane', but in fact that weight was concentrated into a relatively small area. Now, I don't have the math to write the equation, but there's a big difference in forces when it's spread out over the entire length of the building or concentrated on a couple of floors.

Yes I noticed that he was talking about mass and not momentum/pressure. I'm not supporting the link, I found it because you asked I and didn't give it too much thought. There are other links.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bamspeedy may have removed one of the legs from the 'pull it' = demolish with explosive theory (for building 6) with his post on the last page. I'm going to check it out so I'll see you all later.

 

[Xenocrates]

One last post:


Interesting how Bam uses a link to support the non-explosives theory while Turner finds a major problem with it, while both Turner and Bam are (I guess) both adherents to the non-explosive theory.

You two can debate it with weach other while I check out Bam's post.

 

[brennan]

Give me a break. Any mass will decelerate a moving mass. I didn't say that there wouldn't be acceleration, just that it wouldn't be 9.803 m per sec per sec (I checked the exact figure for NY just for you), because of the force exerted on the falling mass by the stationary mass would reduce it. Another invokation of 'special' physics.

Geeze, if my internet wasn't so slow today I'd upload a picture of a straw for you to clutch at!

Simple: assuming conservation of momentum if you drop 30 floors onto the next you get a 3.3% increase in mass, which means a reduction in velocity of only 3.3%. That will decrease every floor, sorry.

Edit: btw I am wincing at the idea that the accelaration would decrease. you show an alarming lack of knowledge of Physics.

 

[brennan]

Bamspeedy may have removed one of the legs from the 'pull it' = demolish with explosive theory (for building 6) with his post on the last page. I'm going to check it out so I'll see you all later.

How about this: Larry Silverstein meant pull the fire-fighters out of the building when he said 'pull it'. Or do you have a reasonable explanation of the use of a technical term - used by explosives experts - by a real-estate investor?

How do you explain the fact that he only said this when the fire-department said the situation was hopeless? Was the plan to let everyone out of WTC7 but let everyone in the twin towers die? An odd inconsistency.

 

[JerichoHill]

and don't forget that acceleration keeps piling on.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

And why destroy WT7? "Hey, lets kill 3000 people in the Twin Towers and then, to show we mean business, destroy the mayor's emergency bunker!!"

 

[brennan]

Hell why stop pointing out the idiocy of the conspiracy theory there:

'Let's rig explosives up to actually demolish the towers, on the remote possibility that flying bloody great airliners into them at 500mph doesn't do the trick!'

 

[Bamspeedy]

Stephen Jones at BYU posted a paper a few months ago on chemical analysis that proved that thermate was used to heat the steel. The University has chosen to remove his paper now, so I have to link it from here:

Thermite can be used to heat steel, but it is impractical:

Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition.

No office workers noticed anybody moving in thousands of pounds of thermite into the building?
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

The plumes of smoke coming from the sides of WTC are interesting. I don't know the cause, but if you want to argue that they were due to air being compressed by the falling debris then good luck to you.

The ceiling of your house falls to the floor. Where is all the air that was in your house going to go? It shoots out all sides. On another subject, flames and smoke could also have shot down the elevater shafts, giving the illusion that bombs went off at the bottom floors. There was reports of elevators failing and falling down and crashing onto the first floor or basement, which could be confused with an 'explosion'.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-04-elevator-usat_x.htm

If explosives were used and placed into the building before 9/11, how come the explosives withstood the crash and fires for so long instead of exploding on contact with the initial explosion from the plane hitting the building? Did someone go up there during the fire and put the explosives there?

Interesting how Bam uses a link to support the non-explosives theory while Turner finds a major problem with it, while both Turner and Bam are (I guess) both adherents to the non-explosive theory.

Two theories (A, B) on exactly how the building collapsed without the use of an explosive does not mean that neither one of them is true and that there was explosives (C). If A does not equal B, that does not mean the answer is C.

Regarding the reports of molten steel:

Photographs that we have examined purporting to show demolition equipment extracting 'molten steel/ from the debris at Ground Zero are inconclusive at best, and most are inaccurate as described. Extracting various hot metallic compounds or debris is one thing, but 'molten steel beams' is another. As a fundamental point, if an excavator or grapple ever dug into a pile of molten steel heated to excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit it would completely lose it's ability to function. At a minimum the hydraulics would immediately fail and its moving parts would bond together or seize up. The heat would then quickly transfer through the steel componenets of the excavator and there would be concern for its operator.

http://www.reopen911.org/WTC COLLAPSE STUDY BBlanchard 8-8-06.pdf (analysis done by implosionworld.com)

The clear up workers said that it was steel

Implosionworld talked to clean up workers and they did not find any molten steel. I'd like to hear from the workers that claim they found molten steel, not from a third party that puts words in their mouth.

This, like all the evidence, it seems, has someone saying that A is true, but B is false, while the other side has someone saying that A is false and B is truth.

When the vast majority of experts in a field support one conlusion, I'd trust that more than the one or two experts who claim something else. And in every subject dealing with details of 9/11, the theorists are always the one with only one or two experts on their side.

I laughed when one theorist from a conspiracy site went into the national airlines forum and tried telling 20,000 pilots his theories, claiming to be an expert. They instantly found him to be a fraud since his knowledge of aircraft was terribly inaccurate.

 

[woody60707]

I laughed when one theorist from a conspiracy site went into the national airlines forum and tried telling 20,000 pilots his theories, claiming to be an expert. They instantly found him to be a fraud since his knowledge of aircraft was terribly inaccurate.

Do you have a link for that.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Do you have a link for that.

Well, you'll have to look in the archives, but it was a few years ago. The conspiracy site was http://letsroll911.net/ and part of the event was mentioned (them discussing if they should go ask the pilots, and then later some of the pilots came to the forum and commented) on the conspiracy website's forum. This happened shortly after that website started up, so would be one of the oldest threads (if it is still there, I personally was following the discussion so I know it happened, but not sure if there is proof in the archives or not).

I see that their site was hacked on the anniversary, so I don't know if their forums are back up. As you can see, these theorists have tried saying there was missiles on one of the planes

Edit: Oh, and then when all these thousands of pilots came to that conspiracy website, the webmaster started bragging about how many hits he was getting.