Tower Collapse Questions for Critical Thinkers

[jaydeehess]

Didn't you try that whole "fell into own footprint" cannard when you first arrived? Now you are trying to go to the exact opposite position? Wow... I love how it doesn't really matter what the position is, you just adopt it into your delusions and now it supports you...
.

It has been a point that has fascinated me greatly for these 8 years, that 911 conspiracy speculators can on the one hand cliam that it is suspicious that the towers and WTC 7 fell into their own footprint and claim that it is suspicious that debris was flung far afeild from the footprint of the structures.


On another board I have even seen these used in the same sentence as in " The towers fell into their own footprints so what could have caused perimeter column sections to fly 600 feet to WTC 7?"

It takes some severe mental distortions to hold two mutually opposed opinions to be true.

 

[alienentity]

It has been a point that has fascinated me greatly for these 8 years, that 911 conspiracy speculators can on the one hand cliam that it is suspicious that the towers and WTC 7 fell into their own footprint and claim that it is suspicious that debris was flung far afeild from the footprint of the structures.


On another board I have even seen these used in the same sentence as in " The towers fell into their own footprints so what could have caused perimeter column sections to fly 600 feet to WTC 7?"

It takes some severe mental distortions to hold two mutually opposed opinions to be true.

And in a related case of mental contortion, how a thinly painted layer of nanothermite could silently fling debris hundreds of feet and pulverize concrete.
No truther, let alone a physicist/chemist has yet come up with a logical explanation as to why BOTH thermite, thermate and nanothermite would have been used. Based on their poor reasoning and analysis, the shower of hot material (was it even molten metal? I can't tell) and the hot fires require thermite to have occurred, so they are unable to let go of that theory.

I guess they cannot let go of any one fantasy, as the whole CD theory would crumble. So they just keep the whole shebang and hope nobody notices the contradictions.

 

[jaydeehess]

The 'thin layer' contention floored me when, who was it, Gage, mentioned that in the Nat Geo production.

They had just shown him a large quantity of thermite in a container designed to keep it from flowing away could not do significant damage to the column but a 'thin layer' of super thermite could?

This is another fav of the 911 speculators. If there is no present tech that could do what you require it to do for a pet contention, then just invent it out of thin air.

Judy Woods and her unspecified super dustification energy beam, is another prime example.

It is what I refer to as invoking magic and its beauty, as far as the 911 speculators are concerned, is that no one can refute magic using science because it stands 'above' known science and technology and the common retort to anyone who tries is, " You don't know what they have developed".

 

[SpitfireIX]

Rather than this pathetic game of arguing NIST/FEMA/your opponents are wrong-wrong-wrongy-WRONG (it really tells something about your psyche, ya know, all this wrong, wrong, wrong stuffy doing, BTW), why don't you finally start to argue why you are right?

C'mon, lay all the evidence, and I mean, all of it, including the evidence inconvenient for your position, and build your case. C'mon..

For many conspiracists . . . it's not about them being right; it's about you being wrong. It's not about making a case; it's about trashing yours. It's not about the conspiracy theory being right; it's about NASA being wrong -- specifically, about NASA being evil. [italics original]

(Source)

 

[twinstead]

Good old Jay. He knows his conspiracists.

 

[Architect]

Jay Utah. The man is a genius. BAUT Forum forever!

 

[jaydeehess]

Physics 101

an object of mass 'm' drops under the influence of gravity

the force on the mass due to gravity is F_g=mg

along the way another force acts in the opposite direction so it is a negative vector here.
call it the resistive force -F_r

The total force on the object is
F_t=F_g+(-F_r)
F_t=F_g-F_r

The resultant acceleration is given by
F_t=ma
F_g-F_r=ma

If the total force is equal to zero then the object will have no increase in velocity BUT , of course that means that if it started with a velocity then it will still have that same velocity. In order for it to slow down the resistive force would have to be larger than the force due to gravity. That is the only way to have the velocity change negatively (the acceleration due to total force being a negative, ie. upwards) to reduce the initial velocity to zero.
If the resistive force F_r is less than F_g then there will be an acceleration of the object, the velocity will increase.

 

[kylebisme]

This is a good example of the unevaluated inequality fallacy. You're drawing conclusions without data.

I was responding to generalized statements with generalizes statements, with my point being it quite simply doesn't look anything close to what is being described. That said, I'll just leave the discussion of the larger towers to the side and talk about building 47, as I hadn't seen the video of it I presented earlier until just then. I do thank you for setting me straight on the brick and the egg thing, and jaydeehess as well for showing the math.

There are about 19 floors visible out of 47. The height of WTC7 was about 186m, so the distance is about 75m. That gives a time of 3.9 seconds for the ball to pass out of sight. That looks to me about a second faster than the building collapses, but I haven't bothered to try to measure it too carefully.

I get the impression you haven't seen the video I wanted you to. I wasn't directing you to the video NIST looked at, but rather one from another angle which pans out to a wider view. I roughed out a composite here:

So, we aren't just talking about 19 floors here, but rather around 37, please watch the video to see for yourself. Even if we just called that distance 125m to err on the side of caution, falling though nothing but air would have taken more than 5 seconds, while the building drops out of view in just over 6. There is a rational explanation for that, but it looks more like this than anything NIST showed.

 

[WildCat]

I was responding

And you still haven't produced any evidence for inside jobby-job, no evidence for therm*te, explosives, space beams, or anything else.

It's obvious you have nothing except the old "it doesn't look right to me" argument from incredulity.

Let me know when you have something tangible, so far you've produced nothing.

 

[alienentity]

I was responding to generalized statements with generalizes statements, with my point being it quite simply doesn't look anything close to what is being described. That said, I'll just leave the discussion of the larger towers to the side and talk about building 47, as I hadn't seen the video of it I presented earlier until just then. I do thank you for setting me straight on the brick and the egg thing, and jaydeehess as well for showing the math.

I get the impression you haven't seen the video I wanted you to. I wasn't directing you to the video NIST looked at, but rather one from another angle which pans out to a wider view. I roughed out a composite here:
[qimg]http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3736/b7composite.th.jpg[/qimg]
So, we aren't just talking about 19 floors here, but rather around 37, please watch the video to see for yourself. Even if we just called that distance 125m to err on the side of caution, falling though nothing but air would have taken more than 5 seconds, while the building drops out of view in just over 6. There is a rational explanation for that, but it looks more like this than anything NIST showed.

Part of the issue is correctly determining when the screenwall and the parapet wall fall. Unless you're very, very careful, you can miss the small deformations in the building. If you look at my WTC7 videos you'll see exactly what I mean.

To do a really accurate job you should import the video into an editing program, zoom in, and get an accurate frame to start with. Makes a big difference. You will discover that it took 5.4 seconds to fall the first 19 stories, but I don't know how much longer for the rest. You can time it if you want.
Or link me to the video and I'll check it on my system for you.

 

[alienentity]

I was also just browsing to try to find the video you are referencing, with no luck. Correction - just found it.
However, I did notice something I think is important: If you look at the video used by NIST, you can see the whole building widen out slightly as it starts to collapse down. Just around that time, the West PH collapses into the building.

Now take a moment to consider the implications - if the facade is moving downwards, and the PH is disappearing (falling) into it still, that means the facade is moving more slowly.
I can't be in freefall in that case, at that time. There's no other way to interpret the behavior at that point. And it does strike me as very odd that truthers keep ignoring the PH, because the only way it could 'fall' into the building is if structure has collapsed beneath already, out of view.

It doesn't seem like most truthers are very observant in that regard. That's a problem.

 

[alienentity]

I was responding to generalized statements with generalizes statements, with my point being it quite simply doesn't look anything close to what is being described. That said, I'll just leave the discussion of the larger towers to the side and talk about building 47, as I hadn't seen the video of it I presented earlier until just then. I do thank you for setting me straight on the brick and the egg thing, and jaydeehess as well for showing the math.

I get the impression you haven't seen the video I wanted you to. I wasn't directing you to the video NIST looked at, but rather one from another angle which pans out to a wider view. I roughed out a composite here:
[qimg]http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3736/b7composite.th.jpg[/qimg]
So, we aren't just talking about 19 floors here, but rather around 37, please watch the video to see for yourself. Even if we just called that distance 125m to err on the side of caution, falling though nothing but air would have taken more than 5 seconds, while the building drops out of view in just over 6. There is a rational explanation for that, but it looks more like this than anything NIST showed.

OK, I've looked at it carefully in a video editing suite. There are several problems with the video in terms of getting accuracy.
1) The resolution is rather poor, so it's quite difficult to see when the top disappears
2) The start of collapse is not really visible, because the video is zoomed in on broken window sections, then zooms out as the building is already falling.

Using other footage to compare, I was able to identify the little puff of dust which comes up on the E. Side as the W PH collapses in. Based on my previous research, that's the point when the whole building starts to widen out - in other words, global collapse is underway. By the time the camera zooms out, the white puff is already visible.

I get a time between 6 seconds 22 frames and almost 7 seconds 05 frames. [edited: think my first start time was too late.] I don't know how much longer the building fell past the point where it disappears, so one has to guess. I believe the acceleration rate was slower toward the end, but I don't remember what it was.

A rough guesstimate would give you about 7 seconds for that part of the collapse. It could've been even longer (by about 1/2 second), but not any shorter. I can estimate the time it took for the last ten floors to fall out of view at about 1 second (from about 5.5 seconds). If the rate was about the same, adding 1/2 a second to the observed time is pretty safe. It probably wasn't much longer than that, because it didn't collapse all the way to the ground, but into it's own rubble.

Split the difference and call it something over 7 seconds. But that's only an estimate at best. You just can't tell exactly from the videos IMHO.

 

[Heiwa]

From the NIST WTC 7 report:

The report includes also figures 3.10-13 showing the collapse below floor 16 at 0.5, 2.5 (shown above), 4.5 and 6.5 seconds. Apparently everything above Column 79 drops down due to vertical failures' progression - there are free-flying parts! But the remainder of the structure below floor 16 is just locally damaged during 6.5 seconds. Nothing drops down from below = there is no free debris there. The horizontal failure's progression has not started ... and is not shown by NIST.
So the NIST computer simulation of the destruction does not reflect what is seen on the videos.

 

[alienentity]

Note: I just used another clip (the same one Chandler used) which shows the roof really well. I get 6 seconds, 20 frames before the top disappears in that clip, but I don't know how many floors aren't visible.
I'm beginning to think that it must've taken closer to 7.5 seconds, based on my latest analysis. I'd never bothered to take the videos that far, because I don't really care all that much what the exact number is. It doesn't change anything material IMHO.

HOpe that helps.

New calcs! I decided to calculate the average acceleration based on 7 sec and 7.5 sec. I got:

a) a=7.59m/s2, or 77% the time of freefall for 186m
b) a=6.6133m/s2 or 67% the value of freefall.

So my latest analysis puts the overall time of the facade collapse at something like 70% of freefall overall, not including the earlier parts of the collapse. Add all those together you get something like 15 to 16 seconds just for the visible part. That fits extremely well with the seismic data at around 18 seconds.

 

[Reactor drone]

From the NIST WTC 7 report:

[qimg]http://heiwaco.tripod.com/NISTWTC7.jpg[/qimg]

The report includes also figures 3.10-13 showing the collapse below floor 16 at 0.5, 2.5 (shown above), 4.5 and 6.5 seconds. Apparently everything above Column 79 drops down due to vertical failures' progression - there are free-flying parts! But the remainder of the structure below floor 16 is just locally damaged during 6.5 seconds. Nothing drops down from below = there is no free debris there. The horizontal failure's progression has not started ... and is not shown by NIST.
So the NIST computer simulation of the destruction does not reflect what is seen on the videos.

You do realise that the times are from the start of the collapse,not the start of the outer walls descending don't you?You may also notice that there's a lot of red in that picture,do you know what the red indicates?

 

[kylebisme]

Alienentity and Reactor drone, I don't doubt you both mean well, but haggling over the moment the roof line first trembles is overlooking the issue at hand. Even NIST admits 2.25 seconds of free fall, which is equivalent to two floors of nothing but air. Were there anything resembling a building in the way, even weakening by massive office fires all the way across, it quite simply couldn't have come down like that. To put it another way, nitpicking the bends in the roof is like driving 90Mph down the highway and then arguing you didn't speed because you took the on ramp slow. Granted, the the molten steel at the base explains part of what happened, as does watching the NIST guy dance around like a puppet when being asked about it:



If you watch to the end, you'll see a NASA shot showing the base of all three buildings, with building 7 being the hottest. That is the work of some fancy incendiary used as a corrosive, and I wouldn't be surprised if hydraulics were what brought down the center first. Also, on a hunch I googled a phrase, and found an excellent video suggesting who might have done it:



Seems like the right team for the job, eh?

 

[tsig]

It just doesn't look right. The basis for all the truther claims. Problem is they can't say how it should look.

 

[kylebisme]

It just doesn't look right. The basis for all the truther claims. Problem is they can't say how it should look.

Of course I can say; it should have looked like a standing building with some structural damage and heavy office fires, despite all the falser claims to the contrary.

 

[Reactor drone]

Of course I can say; it should have looked like a standing building with some structural damage and heavy office fires, despite all the falser claims to the contrary.

So you don't believe that fire was able to cause enough damage to eventually cause the buckling of column 79 and the subsequent global collapse?

Do you believe that removal of that column would cause a global failure or does your corrosive incendiary/explosive need to be widely placed throughout the building?The fourth run that NIST did of their LS-Dyna model had no damage other than removal of column 79 and the building still collapsed,what does your model show?

 

[NutCracker]

Of course I can say; it should have looked like a standing building with some structural damage and heavy office fires, despite all the falser claims to the contrary.

allegation: you are using arguments from personal belief.

you: No! Because I can say <an argument from personal belief>


You are a genius.