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An email from a Conspiracy theorist, and I have no idea how

Ask any Structural Engineer and they'll tell you that it's actually very hard to get a building to collapse vertically downward.
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I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination but this sounds like bullocks. Aren't controlled demolitions usually done vertically and downwards???

Of course, you can identify with vanishingly small things much more easily than I can.
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What a pedantic pr*ck
 
a cardboard box with a big weight on top of it. How does it collapse? Well what a surprise! it kinks in one side and keels over.
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This idiot must live in a cardboard box. this is what you get when you have free internet access at the public library.


For every engineer you'll find to say one thing you'll find another to say the exact opposite (that's the thing with engineers. They're basically physicists that aren't clever enough to do proper physics.)
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Obviously he has never met any real engineers.
 
you'll just have to take my word for it that the most important property of chaotic systems is that a very small change in the initial conditions (the position of the plane strike. The scale of the fire and the distribution of mass above the weakened section) produces a very large change in the final state of the system, in this case the building. The probability of the buildings collapsing vertically is vanishingly small because there are very many more ways for it to topple sideways that the one vertical collapse.
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This guy learned all about this subject from Jeff Goldbum in the movie "Jurasic Park."

Too bad he never grasped the concept of strange attractors.
 
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Pardalis said:
I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination but this sounds like bullocks. Aren't controlled demolitions usually done vertically and downwards???
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Yes, they are. I suspect that he meant "collapse without explosives".

A building is a far more complicated system than a rope with a weight. Think about this - a cardboard box with a big weight on top of it. How does it collapse?
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Hmm, I just tried this- the box not only collapsed vertically, leaving hundreds of small pieces of cardboard behind, but the styrofoam inside was reduced to dust and blown all over the room. Then, a short time later, the box of Cheerios on my kitchen counter collapsed.
 
I would point anyone who wants a good, concise explanation, to this clip from "World Trade Center - Rise and Fall of an American Icon"

This is the Gene Corley clip. I think the important part is when he talks about removing lateral support for a column. This is a key failure mode.

 
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Pardalis said:
I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination but this sounds like bullocks. Aren't controlled demolitions usually done vertically and downwards???
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Well, not allways. If you have a monolithic structure like a large chimney, a grain elevator or a silo, they sometimes elect to tip them over in a certain direction. The key word here is "monolithic."
 
Alferd_Packer said:
Well, not allways. If you have a monolithic structure like a large chimney, a grain elevator or a silo, they sometimes elect to tip them over in a certain direction. The key word here is "monolithic."
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True. The four smokestacks of the Lakeview Generating StationWP here in Mississauga were destroyed not long ago (yes, using controlled demolition). There's some nice pictures of the stack demolition at Wikipedia (linked above). The main building was just destroyed last month (and it didn't tip over).

ETA: Even then, the stacks didn't fall like a tree, as the troofers would claim; they were mostly in their own footprint!!!111!eleventy!1 :D (at least it looks that way from the photos).

ETA 2: I take that back:

Note that the blasts from the charges are audible, even for these relatively small structures.
 
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There are a few crazy people who will not take the time to understand 9/11. If this guy says he is an engineer, the school needs to remove his degree.
 
After the plane strike the buildings were what's called a chaotic system. I did have a think about trying to explain that but I don't think I'll bother to be honest. you'll just have to take my word for it that the most important property of chaotic systems is that a very small change in the initial conditions (the position of the plane strike. The scale of the fire and the distribution of mass above the weakened section) produces a very large change in the final state of the system, in this case the building. The probability of the buildings collapsing vertically is vanishingly small because there are very many more ways for it to topple sideways that the one vertical collapse.
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What you are overlooking is that the chaotic system you describe has an attractor. I thought about explaining what an attractor is, but I don't think I'll bother. You'll have to take my word for it that the attractor for this system is a big pile of rubble centered in the building's footprint.

Also note:

I don't think I'll bother to be honest.
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Indeed.

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
This guy is really pissing me off. Can you help me compile a response to shut him up once and for all?

I am currently sitting in front of my computer shaking my head at how someone with an IQ of more than 80 (at least) can fail to grasp what I'm trying to say so completely.

Are you honestly trying to tell me a mass suspended from a string is more like the WTC buildings than a box. Actually the WTC pretty much was a box with a central core so the cardboard box example is not a bad thought experiment. If you put a stinking great weight on top of a cardboard box, much like the situation the WTC towers found themselves in, the box will kink on one side and the weight will fall off sideways. Tell me that it won't. Go on!

What was so cool about the towers was just as you say. There was no skeleton but the exterior supported the building along with the core (which did have girders within it, incidentally) In order to make the tower collapse vertically then you'd have to take out a whole horizontal section of the exterior which I'll let you get away with even though i still have doubts about the fire. The floors, perhaps but not the exoskeleton.

What I will not let you get away with is the core. Where did that go ehh? Even if the floors collapsed causing the exoskeleton to fall as well (dodgy) then the core should still have been sticking up. how did that collapse mr. NIST report?

If you asked me why the exoskeleton was being pulled inwards as it was collapsing I would guess that the core itself had collapsed. That would certainly explain why the core wasn't left there. It would also explain the witness reports of secondary explosions and the reports of floors being closed for 'maintenance' in the weeks leading up to 11/9/01.

I tell you what really stinks, even more than the main collapses of the twin towers is the other building that collapsed - WTC 7. It is just way too convenient that the offices of the CIA and the USSEC just happened to be destroyed, losing records of goodness knows what. Why 7 and not 3, 4, 5 or 6 which were closer to the twin towers?
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Cardboard boxes are dominated by shear strength. The core of the WTC Towers was quite the opposite.

Some of the core columns survived the initial collapse, but fell about ten seconds afterwards. This is barely visible on the videos. It also proves just how little shear strength they had. The core was designed to carry gravity loads only, and the wind forces were borne by the perimeters. It's all in the NIST report.

Since the exterior columns were pulled in over the course of tens of minutes, it makes no sense for it to have been caused by core collapse.

I think his observations on IQ are unfounded. :D
 
Why 7 and not 3, 4, 5 or 6 which were closer to the twin towers?
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Umm am I wrong or didn't a couple of those buildings get destroyed anyways?
 
What kind of cardboard boxes is he using for his experiments? When I place a weight on top of a cardboard box in my house, the top of the box fails and the weight falls through.

Of course, it could be the fact that cardboard boxes make [rule8] analogies for structures such as the WTC towers.
 
He's rather loud and arrogant for someone who lies about being an Engineer...then he says this (whilst claiming to be an engineer):

For every engineer you'll find to say one thing you'll find another to say the exact opposite (that's the thing with engineers. They're basically physicists that aren't clever enough to do proper physics.)
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What is 'proper physics'? I wouldn't trust an Engineer to model a collapsing star, but I don't want Stephen Hawking designing the world trade center for that matter.

Did you point out this guy's flagrant lies about his 'profession' yet?
 
I'd suggest he sets his cardboard box on fire and then watch the direction it collapses in.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
you'll just have to take my word for it that the most important property of chaotic systems is that a very small change in the initial conditions (the position of the plane strike. The scale of the fire and the distribution of mass above the weakened section) produces a very large change in the final state of the system, in this case the building.
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Wrong. The principle of sensitive dependence on initial conditions is only relevant when considering what happened in the collapse zone, which was almost entirely within the building's footprint. Change the location of one desk on the 80th floor, and beams that were ejected outward might have burst inward instead, that kind of thing. It's actually a useful concept, considering the many truthers who seem to think that if we'd just investigate enough, we'd be able to account for the movement of every atom that day.

The "very large change in the final state of the system" to which he refers is only accurate in terms of where individual pieces of material in the collapsing and final debris piles were located, relative to where they would have been under different initial conditions. The notion that the aggregate result - a gravity-driven, vertical collapse - should have been different is nonsensical. The collapse area was a big 'ole mess, with a million different girders, slabs, chunks, etc., going in a million different directions. It was chaos, but the chaos pertained to the relative movements of the individual pieces of debris. This has nothing to do with, and in no way invalidates, the (observed) cumulative result of the process.

He brought up a relevant concept by accident, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't understand it. Ask for his thoughts on attractors.
 
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