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This is the stuff I find hilarious.
I never took a structural engineering course in my life. I spent two weeks thinking about the destruction of those buildings. I decided there was no way NORMAL AIRLINERS could do all of that in less than two hours.
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And if 2 weeks (with NO formal instructor, I assume) were enough for you to understand all this, then why do we have 4 year engineering programs? With post-doc programs. And apprenticeship programs. And EIT & PE certifications?
Your 2 weeks were CLEARLY insufficient, psi. You've proven that you understand very, very little.
The airliner did NOT "do all of that in less than two hours".
Fire & earth did. Fire in 1-2 hours. Earth in less than 20 seconds.
The airliners did no more than cause a bunch of structural damage & light some fires. Their job was then over. Done. But this structural damage caused the stresses on long thin beams to go from purely compression & tension (which they handle very well) to bending (which they cannot handle well at all).
Then the fire took over. The fire & the bending caused the building to "creep" to the side, increasing the bending stresses, increasing the creep, increasing the lean, increasing side loads, increasing the bending stresses, increasing the creep, increasing the lean, increasing side loads ... A POSITIVE feedback loop. Positive feedback loops ALWAYS end in disaster.
Once the bending limits were (inevitably) exceeded, one final piece failed, there was no more margin, and everything (consequently, not coincidentally) failed at once.
Then the earth took over. And gravity pulled it to the ground.
Gravity caused all that destruction. Or, if you wish, the men & cranes & electricity who perched one piece of metal after another on top of each other in the 1960s. Of course, they did their jobs just fine.
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How can the 14 lightest stories crush 95 heavier stories and accelerate in the process?
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EASY. If you simply understood the numbers involved, you wouldn't make such a silly statement.
Put your head up against a wall. Take a deep breath & blow. How much force is generated by the air coming out your mouth, pushing your head back into the wall? Not much. Without understanding the NUMBERS, you might not think that engineers could use this effect to accelerate a 747 down a runway & up to 600 kts. You'd be wrong about that too.
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Why weren't EXPERTS all over this crap within a few months after the event?
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They were. Some experts (structural engineers) were surprised when the first tower collapsed. Some were not.
After seeing the first one fall, NO competent structural engineers were surprised when the second one collapsed.
That is the beginning and end of your "expert list".
You'll notice that, on that list, appear NO physicists, news anchors, politicians, intelligence agent, pilot, lawyers, firemen, soldier, doctor, astronaut, cosmetologist or president of any engineering firm (businessmen). Conspicuously absent are: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, D.R. Griffin, Alex Jones, Kevin Ryan, college dropouts & students in ANY field of study.
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I can possibly understand architects not seeing through it. At IIT the standard joke was that "architects took funny physics and funny math." But even though physics majors may not study skyscrapers they should have been wondering about the distribution of mass after seeing the videos of 9/11.
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Physicists are amateurs.
I'm a mechanical engineer with 35+ years experience. I'm an amateur, too, because I've never designed or analyzed a skyscraper.
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This just needs to be kept complicated and mysterious so the LAYMEN can't figure out the obvious.
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It isn't complicated. It's easy. Your distrust gets in the way.
You don't have the background, inclination, work ethic, allegiance to the truth, or the disposition frankly, to put in the work to understand it.
Sorry. But it's true.
Tom
