Neil MacInnis
New Blood
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2006
- Messages
- 8
Okay! Science time!
Aluminium oxidises in air with a slightly exothermic reaction until an aluminium oxide coating forms isolating the aluminium from the air. This coat is extremely hard and chemical resistant and blocks all further oxidisation by ambient oxygen. In order to continuous oxidise the aluminium then you can coat it with something such as a mercury paste which would and does dissolve this layer react fresh aluminium then drop the dissolved aluminium oxide repeating this over and over till the aluminium crumbles. Aluminium will not will never, can not burn in ambient air at STP when it is a solid and not in dust form.
Don’t believe me? Well then go hold a match to aluminium foil, try a blow torch try an oxygen torch. The aluminium will never self sustain as the oxide layer puts the fire out in ordinary conditions. Now molten aluminium if sprayed in the air can burn because as it is molten it is highly reactive. Using a sand blaster on it would be sending a jet of air carrying particles with it, into the aluminium. This would lift tiny blobs of Al into he air where it’s already at a temperature that it can burn. The deciding factor is that there is nothing for the oxide to adhere to so it can burn, that being said a crucible of molten aluminium thrown into the air will not burn as its still not a likely thing. The ingot you saw burning was very possibly laced with Mg, which will burn and resemble the burning of aluminium right down to the white smoke and white fire.
Even ultrasonic vibration is not enough to shred the aluminium oxide coating from the surface of solid aluminium its simple to well bonded so no, there is no chance the plane hitting shredded off the oxide coating causing it to ignite explosively, in and of its self. Aeroplane skins are also never pure aluminium on the out side. Its like a pop can, acid rain would etch and damage it. There is a layer of paint, like on pop cans, basically a thin layer of plastic.
Aluminium will burn in fire works and such (think military flash bangs) when it is combined with strong oxidisers and ignited as it is then super heated and bathed in pure radical oxygen.
The thermite reaction is the reducing reaction imposed on a pure metal with a metallic oxide. In thermite black this looks like this
3Fe3O4(s) + 8Al(s) → 4Al2O3(s) + 9Fe(L)
This reaction transfers the oxygen from the iron to the aluminium. It can be created using pure magnesium instead of ground aluminium as well. In terms of the oxides that will work, boron, manganese, chromium, copper, titanium... the list goes on. But there must be an oxygen containing metal oxide for the thermite reaction to take place and there must be a reducing agent. Calcium oxides, sodium oxides, potassium oxide zirconium oxides will not function in the thermite reaction with aluminium, as they are simply to strongly bonded.
As for the space shuttle, an object going 25 times the speed of sound produces huge friction of course. The space shuttle is NOT made of aluminium how ever, its titanium mainly. The titanium when heated to its melting point burns explosively in air with a white flame, this is why titanium is melted with inert gasses such as argon and not in a open crucible like aluminium, in furnaces. Even then look at the space shuttle and say it is mainly Al not Ti, you are talking about an object going Mack 25. The air acts as a non-stop abrasive removing metal not as a solid but as a gas. You are not talking about solid Al you are talking about gaseous Al reacting with oxygen that is super heated as well. You are also talking about plasma forming temperatures not plain boring old impact with a cement building temperatures.
Have you ever taken a look at the plans for aeroplanes? Look at the cubic volume of the shell compared to the mass. Then factor in structural steel things such as the landing gears and the skeleton, then factor in the non metals such as upholstery and foam insulation, then factor in all the non aluminium mechanical things such as fuel tanks and engines (ever seen how much the engines and landing struts for a 767 weighs?) now in looking at the mass when fuelled to take off, almost onehundredforty thousand pounds of the gross weight is fuel alone. When you do all the math you will find that pop cans and aeroplanes have a lot in common. The skin of the aircraft is just that, a thin skin. Most of its thickness is non-metallic padding and insulation. The amount of aluminium is so minimal that it’s not worth considering in terms of a deciding factor in any thermo reactions. there is simply not enough aluminium there to do anything in comparison to the space the aluminium is spread out over.
Now that we have looked at the lack of our first ingredient for a thermite reaction (the reducing agent) lets look at our second. For a thermite reaction there would have had to be a massive supply of oxides. The most comment oxide present would most likely have been manganese... in batteries! Yeah! The second most common oxide would be aluminium, in light bulbs. and we wont bother to mention the silicon oxide in glass and computer chips as that is almost endothermic in the thermite reaction with aluminium, if it can be even started.
There was simple nothing for the aluminium to react with using the thermite reaction. Aluminium’s oxides and silicones are the most commonly used oxides for buildings. Most others are useless for anything structural.
So it could not have been a thermite reaction.
Now lets go back to burning aluminium and change our view. Do you know what JP-1 is? It’s a jet fuel that has fallen out of use in many places but in essence is 100% pure kerosene. IT WILL NOT BURN if you toss a match in a bowl of it. It will not burn if you hold a lighter flame to the surface of a large pool of it. It will how ever burn if it has a wicking medium, such as newspaper, or if it’s heated to its flash point. The reason is it produces no vapours at room temperature in anywhere near the amount that would be needed for its combustion to start and self sustain. Now what does a wick do? It creates a means of super heating SMALL amounts of the fuel to the vaporising point where the fuel evaporates/boils out of the wick and then can burn with ambient oxygen. In summary you must vaporise the fuel to ignite it. With oil burners for in houses and in jet engines, high-pressure nozzles provide a fine mist of fuel, which can then burn. Vaporising drastically increases the surface area.
Lets look at one more thing before we go on, flour. Flour in a pile will not burn. Flour in the air in a confined space will blow apart reinforced concrete in a violent FAE. The reason? Fire triangle. You need heat, oxygen, and fuel to have a fire (that is commonly toted but incorrect as hydrogen will burn with chlorine, correct would be you need a fuel, and a oxidiser and you need the activational energy eg heat, UV light Etc…) now in a pile flour does not have the surface area to burn with the mere 20% oxygen that is the roughly normal level for ambient air. However if spread through the air each piece becomes sounded by O2 even in its low concentration and can ignite. Now back to our friend Al.
Aluminium is self-anodising as we discussed. It produces a chemically bonded ionic metal oxide in air. This layer under normal conditions prevents further oxidisation. Now lets look at what we need to do to make it burn.
For flash powder germanium or ‘grey’ aluminium is used. This powder is so finely ground that on a cumulative scale, a teaspoon of it most likely is close to half a foot ball field in terms of reactive surface area. If blown into the air it can burn even explode like the flour, if mixed with oxidisers such as potassium perchlorate it will do the same. In the right conditions a pile of it can even be ignited. The reason is surface area. Aluminium does no present enough surface area for oxidisation to become self-sustaining. The layers of oxides that form from its oxidisation unless removed as they form also smoother this reaction. With the air compressor, did you use compressed argon as the propellant for the sandblaster? Did you do it in an entirely enclosed space with a purely inert atmosphere? You were atomising the aluminium with the impact of both air and foreign objects in the form of sand; this would create a cloud of tiny droplets in close proximity with oxygen all around them. Of course they burnt!
Have you ever ground aluminium with an angle grinder? Amazing not even a single spark. Have you ever scrapped the enamel off a pop can and scratched the aluminium? Have you ever used a chainsaw?
Aluminium completely free of oxides such as that made by an angle grinder or by simple cutting/scratching/tearing it does not ignite as shown above. Even pure sodium does not spontaneously ignite in dry air. As for chainsaws, lawnmowers, etc- the engine block is aluminium. Imagine the vibrations in a large block diesel, they are so intense as to produce cavitation in some cases, within the cooling fluid, the aluminium oxide does not even notice it.
So… lets look at your idea the tower falling caused the aluminium from the plane to ignite…
Each plane had around 91,000 litres of fuel. If you dribble the fuel into an air stream at a set rate of about ten ml a second and have it atomises in the air blast then ignite it in a nozzle, you can create temperatures hot enough to melt steel. Think about 91,000 litres on fire. The heat from the fuel present and burning would have been hot enough to boil aluminium. Of course there would have been aluminium oxidising in the flames as it was vaporised and combusted, but god no, it would not have contributed in any meaningful way. As for when the towers fell, you could argue that it was entirely hot enough for steel to have burnt, just looking at the amount of heat that could have been evolved from eh fuel alone.
"I am going to put this into layman's terms.
Since it takes mechanical energy, to cause a nano thermite-mate reaction, basically thermal energy causing the aluminum to expand, causing the oxide to break really fast.
Thank you Dr. Steven Jones for that.
How was all mechanical energy eliminated in the collapse since that is what causes all metal Oxide reactions, in other words what proof would there be that thermite-mate, instead of aluminum brought down the Twin Towers?
Is it unfair to use Dr Steven Joneses work to debunk the conspiracy theorists, is it a fair question?
I have asked it a thousand times and I have always been told by conspiracy theorist that the question is unfair or not based on real Science, what do you Nice intelligent people on here have to say on this?
I am working on the temperature curve this moment, the hotter the aluminum the weaker the bonds in the crystalline structure of the oxide coating, I am working on a mathematical model for the strength of the oxide, at different temperatures."
So in short, there is no such thing as a ‘nano thermite reaction’
Aluminum burning or oxidizing is just that, aluminum oxidizing
The thermite reaction is in many ways like the potassiumperchlorate + aluminum reaction, aluminum gets hot free oxygen from another medium reducing the oxide and being oxidized it’s self.
Mechanical energy causes virtually no chemical reactions on the small scales we experience. For a chemical reaction on the chemical scale you could say that is so, as the molecules must collide with sufficient force to change bonds, on the non atomic scale that is incorrect. Mechanical force eg kinetic energy is the motion of things. When there is an impact, the kinetic energy dissipates. This can be in clearly visible signs such as a pane of glass shattering when hit, and in much less visible changes such as molecules within the objects being acted on, shifting against one and another. Very few substances are activated into chemical reactions by kinetic energy on any earthly scale. Think of mercury of fulminate, nitrocellulose, trinitrotoluene, and ammonium iodide. Notice anything? They are all very unstable self-decomposing substances. Back on the atomic scale, the motion of the atoms that increases the reactivity to create reactions such as burning metal, are all based on the excitations of the individual atoms and molecules. The faster they move the more readily they will react as the more collisions there will be, between the different molecules.
As for how was mechanical energy eliminated in the collapse? Do you remember the dust cloud? The very materials of the tower where shredded to dust and debris, each piece would carry off energy with it.
Aluminium oxidises in air with a slightly exothermic reaction until an aluminium oxide coating forms isolating the aluminium from the air. This coat is extremely hard and chemical resistant and blocks all further oxidisation by ambient oxygen. In order to continuous oxidise the aluminium then you can coat it with something such as a mercury paste which would and does dissolve this layer react fresh aluminium then drop the dissolved aluminium oxide repeating this over and over till the aluminium crumbles. Aluminium will not will never, can not burn in ambient air at STP when it is a solid and not in dust form.
Don’t believe me? Well then go hold a match to aluminium foil, try a blow torch try an oxygen torch. The aluminium will never self sustain as the oxide layer puts the fire out in ordinary conditions. Now molten aluminium if sprayed in the air can burn because as it is molten it is highly reactive. Using a sand blaster on it would be sending a jet of air carrying particles with it, into the aluminium. This would lift tiny blobs of Al into he air where it’s already at a temperature that it can burn. The deciding factor is that there is nothing for the oxide to adhere to so it can burn, that being said a crucible of molten aluminium thrown into the air will not burn as its still not a likely thing. The ingot you saw burning was very possibly laced with Mg, which will burn and resemble the burning of aluminium right down to the white smoke and white fire.
Even ultrasonic vibration is not enough to shred the aluminium oxide coating from the surface of solid aluminium its simple to well bonded so no, there is no chance the plane hitting shredded off the oxide coating causing it to ignite explosively, in and of its self. Aeroplane skins are also never pure aluminium on the out side. Its like a pop can, acid rain would etch and damage it. There is a layer of paint, like on pop cans, basically a thin layer of plastic.
Aluminium will burn in fire works and such (think military flash bangs) when it is combined with strong oxidisers and ignited as it is then super heated and bathed in pure radical oxygen.
The thermite reaction is the reducing reaction imposed on a pure metal with a metallic oxide. In thermite black this looks like this
3Fe3O4(s) + 8Al(s) → 4Al2O3(s) + 9Fe(L)
This reaction transfers the oxygen from the iron to the aluminium. It can be created using pure magnesium instead of ground aluminium as well. In terms of the oxides that will work, boron, manganese, chromium, copper, titanium... the list goes on. But there must be an oxygen containing metal oxide for the thermite reaction to take place and there must be a reducing agent. Calcium oxides, sodium oxides, potassium oxide zirconium oxides will not function in the thermite reaction with aluminium, as they are simply to strongly bonded.
As for the space shuttle, an object going 25 times the speed of sound produces huge friction of course. The space shuttle is NOT made of aluminium how ever, its titanium mainly. The titanium when heated to its melting point burns explosively in air with a white flame, this is why titanium is melted with inert gasses such as argon and not in a open crucible like aluminium, in furnaces. Even then look at the space shuttle and say it is mainly Al not Ti, you are talking about an object going Mack 25. The air acts as a non-stop abrasive removing metal not as a solid but as a gas. You are not talking about solid Al you are talking about gaseous Al reacting with oxygen that is super heated as well. You are also talking about plasma forming temperatures not plain boring old impact with a cement building temperatures.
Have you ever taken a look at the plans for aeroplanes? Look at the cubic volume of the shell compared to the mass. Then factor in structural steel things such as the landing gears and the skeleton, then factor in the non metals such as upholstery and foam insulation, then factor in all the non aluminium mechanical things such as fuel tanks and engines (ever seen how much the engines and landing struts for a 767 weighs?) now in looking at the mass when fuelled to take off, almost onehundredforty thousand pounds of the gross weight is fuel alone. When you do all the math you will find that pop cans and aeroplanes have a lot in common. The skin of the aircraft is just that, a thin skin. Most of its thickness is non-metallic padding and insulation. The amount of aluminium is so minimal that it’s not worth considering in terms of a deciding factor in any thermo reactions. there is simply not enough aluminium there to do anything in comparison to the space the aluminium is spread out over.
Now that we have looked at the lack of our first ingredient for a thermite reaction (the reducing agent) lets look at our second. For a thermite reaction there would have had to be a massive supply of oxides. The most comment oxide present would most likely have been manganese... in batteries! Yeah! The second most common oxide would be aluminium, in light bulbs. and we wont bother to mention the silicon oxide in glass and computer chips as that is almost endothermic in the thermite reaction with aluminium, if it can be even started.
There was simple nothing for the aluminium to react with using the thermite reaction. Aluminium’s oxides and silicones are the most commonly used oxides for buildings. Most others are useless for anything structural.
So it could not have been a thermite reaction.
Now lets go back to burning aluminium and change our view. Do you know what JP-1 is? It’s a jet fuel that has fallen out of use in many places but in essence is 100% pure kerosene. IT WILL NOT BURN if you toss a match in a bowl of it. It will not burn if you hold a lighter flame to the surface of a large pool of it. It will how ever burn if it has a wicking medium, such as newspaper, or if it’s heated to its flash point. The reason is it produces no vapours at room temperature in anywhere near the amount that would be needed for its combustion to start and self sustain. Now what does a wick do? It creates a means of super heating SMALL amounts of the fuel to the vaporising point where the fuel evaporates/boils out of the wick and then can burn with ambient oxygen. In summary you must vaporise the fuel to ignite it. With oil burners for in houses and in jet engines, high-pressure nozzles provide a fine mist of fuel, which can then burn. Vaporising drastically increases the surface area.
Lets look at one more thing before we go on, flour. Flour in a pile will not burn. Flour in the air in a confined space will blow apart reinforced concrete in a violent FAE. The reason? Fire triangle. You need heat, oxygen, and fuel to have a fire (that is commonly toted but incorrect as hydrogen will burn with chlorine, correct would be you need a fuel, and a oxidiser and you need the activational energy eg heat, UV light Etc…) now in a pile flour does not have the surface area to burn with the mere 20% oxygen that is the roughly normal level for ambient air. However if spread through the air each piece becomes sounded by O2 even in its low concentration and can ignite. Now back to our friend Al.
Aluminium is self-anodising as we discussed. It produces a chemically bonded ionic metal oxide in air. This layer under normal conditions prevents further oxidisation. Now lets look at what we need to do to make it burn.
For flash powder germanium or ‘grey’ aluminium is used. This powder is so finely ground that on a cumulative scale, a teaspoon of it most likely is close to half a foot ball field in terms of reactive surface area. If blown into the air it can burn even explode like the flour, if mixed with oxidisers such as potassium perchlorate it will do the same. In the right conditions a pile of it can even be ignited. The reason is surface area. Aluminium does no present enough surface area for oxidisation to become self-sustaining. The layers of oxides that form from its oxidisation unless removed as they form also smoother this reaction. With the air compressor, did you use compressed argon as the propellant for the sandblaster? Did you do it in an entirely enclosed space with a purely inert atmosphere? You were atomising the aluminium with the impact of both air and foreign objects in the form of sand; this would create a cloud of tiny droplets in close proximity with oxygen all around them. Of course they burnt!
Have you ever ground aluminium with an angle grinder? Amazing not even a single spark. Have you ever scrapped the enamel off a pop can and scratched the aluminium? Have you ever used a chainsaw?
Aluminium completely free of oxides such as that made by an angle grinder or by simple cutting/scratching/tearing it does not ignite as shown above. Even pure sodium does not spontaneously ignite in dry air. As for chainsaws, lawnmowers, etc- the engine block is aluminium. Imagine the vibrations in a large block diesel, they are so intense as to produce cavitation in some cases, within the cooling fluid, the aluminium oxide does not even notice it.
So… lets look at your idea the tower falling caused the aluminium from the plane to ignite…
Each plane had around 91,000 litres of fuel. If you dribble the fuel into an air stream at a set rate of about ten ml a second and have it atomises in the air blast then ignite it in a nozzle, you can create temperatures hot enough to melt steel. Think about 91,000 litres on fire. The heat from the fuel present and burning would have been hot enough to boil aluminium. Of course there would have been aluminium oxidising in the flames as it was vaporised and combusted, but god no, it would not have contributed in any meaningful way. As for when the towers fell, you could argue that it was entirely hot enough for steel to have burnt, just looking at the amount of heat that could have been evolved from eh fuel alone.
"I am going to put this into layman's terms.
Since it takes mechanical energy, to cause a nano thermite-mate reaction, basically thermal energy causing the aluminum to expand, causing the oxide to break really fast.
Thank you Dr. Steven Jones for that.
How was all mechanical energy eliminated in the collapse since that is what causes all metal Oxide reactions, in other words what proof would there be that thermite-mate, instead of aluminum brought down the Twin Towers?
Is it unfair to use Dr Steven Joneses work to debunk the conspiracy theorists, is it a fair question?
I have asked it a thousand times and I have always been told by conspiracy theorist that the question is unfair or not based on real Science, what do you Nice intelligent people on here have to say on this?
I am working on the temperature curve this moment, the hotter the aluminum the weaker the bonds in the crystalline structure of the oxide coating, I am working on a mathematical model for the strength of the oxide, at different temperatures."
So in short, there is no such thing as a ‘nano thermite reaction’
Aluminum burning or oxidizing is just that, aluminum oxidizing
The thermite reaction is in many ways like the potassiumperchlorate + aluminum reaction, aluminum gets hot free oxygen from another medium reducing the oxide and being oxidized it’s self.
Mechanical energy causes virtually no chemical reactions on the small scales we experience. For a chemical reaction on the chemical scale you could say that is so, as the molecules must collide with sufficient force to change bonds, on the non atomic scale that is incorrect. Mechanical force eg kinetic energy is the motion of things. When there is an impact, the kinetic energy dissipates. This can be in clearly visible signs such as a pane of glass shattering when hit, and in much less visible changes such as molecules within the objects being acted on, shifting against one and another. Very few substances are activated into chemical reactions by kinetic energy on any earthly scale. Think of mercury of fulminate, nitrocellulose, trinitrotoluene, and ammonium iodide. Notice anything? They are all very unstable self-decomposing substances. Back on the atomic scale, the motion of the atoms that increases the reactivity to create reactions such as burning metal, are all based on the excitations of the individual atoms and molecules. The faster they move the more readily they will react as the more collisions there will be, between the different molecules.
As for how was mechanical energy eliminated in the collapse? Do you remember the dust cloud? The very materials of the tower where shredded to dust and debris, each piece would carry off energy with it.
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