"other columns failed from the heat of the fires"
NIST flatly states that 157 of 160 pieces of Steel they tested reached no more than 500 degrees.
There is zero evidence any impact zone steel MELTED(or failed from the heat of the fires). NONE.
Show me where in the NIST report they found melted steel from the impact zone?
Give me a minute, i better go check all my pots and pans from my Kitchen, some of those have been subjected to 500 degress of heat way longer than an hour.
Just got back, all my pots and pans are fine.
None of them had to melt to fail. That point has been made time and time again in this forum. Steel loses approximately 40 to 50% of its load bearing capacity at 600 °C, which
was reached in the fires, despite your attempt to paint a picture to the contrary. Speaking of which, you're being disingenuous with that 500 degrees figure. Since you're saying that NIST says that, there are only two places I can think of where that came from: The exterior panels test:
Most perimeter panels (157 of 160 locations mapped) saw no temperature T > 250 °C, despite pre-collapse exposure to fire on 13 panels
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P3MechanicalandMetAnalysisofSteel.pdf[/size]
... of which people should note the following: Those were
exterior panels (If steel on the edges of the buildings and therefore the edges of the fires got that hot, how hot were the temperatures in the most intense part of the conflageration?).
Or, the only other place I can think of is NCSTAR 1-3:
NCSTAR 1-3 said:
Similar results, i.e. limited exposure if any above 250 °C were found for the two core columns recovered from the fire-affected floors of the towers, which had adequat paint for analysis. Note that the perimeter and core columns examined were very limited in number and cannot be considered representative of the majority of the columns exposed to fire in the towers.
... in which case, the 250 °C figure (roughly 482 °F, close to the 500 degree figure you gave) is the
low end. Read again: "... if any
above 250 °C...".
In either case, the "500 degrees" figure you cite was never intended by NIST as being the highest temperature reached at all. It was either the temperature a steel component on the periphery of the fire didn't exceed, or the bottom-most figure for a core column. Either that, or some misquote from a conspiracy peddler; you tell us where you got it from. In either case, it doesn't represent what they say the highest temperatures were.
So what
does NIST say those highest temperatures were? They lay it out in NCSTAR 1-5: Up to 1000 °C for periods at a time, and up to 600 °C for the rest of the time the steel members were engulfed in flame. That's degrees
celsius, not fahrenheit. I really doubt your stove can reach 500 degrees celsius.
No matter what, your argument fails in that it brings up a total red herring in the steel temperature you cite, as well as failing when you say the steel had to melt to cause collapse. No one's sane is saying that, and only conspiracy peddlers have ever tried to make that claim. The myth of steel needing to melt in order to cause the collapse is such an old argument that it was settled back in 2006. Your response fails to refute my statement.