Split Thread Was global collapse of WTC inevitable?

[1337m4n]

Let me get this straight: ergo's theory is that X pounds of rubble is somehow significantly less destructive than an X pound solid block of the same material?

I'm tempted to ask him to prove his theory by asking him to drop 500 lbs of sand on his head and survive, but I'm afraid that he'd be dumb enough to actually try it.

 

[Furcifer]

I may not be able to refute what he's saying, but others can and have.

Another Newb mistake, you'll find this forum don't take kindly to folks making things up.

You've been shown irrefutable proof of Bazant's mastery of the subject. The guy's so smart he could probably think you out of existence if he wanted to.

But here you are perpetrating what amounts to some Truther urban legend "I don't know, but I know a guy who knows a guy and he said it was wrong!"

Ridiculous claims require ridiculous evidence bro, cite your source please. (please let it be Anders, please )

 

[excaza]

Let me get this straight: ergo's theory is that X pounds of rubble is somehow significantly less destructive than an X pound solid block of the same material?

Yes. And, according to him, a moon sized pile of rubble may not be sufficient to destroy a skyscraper. I'm too lazy to find the post, but he did say it.

 

[triforcharity]

Sarcasm aside, the real problem with Bazant is that as soon as you take what he's actually saying outside the cloak of mathematical jargon, it becomes immediately apparent that what he's proposing is absurd.

I really don't mean to cast aspersions on his character, but you have to wonder why someone with such obvious accomplishments would risk all that to find some scientific legitimacy to the WTC collapses--and then to defend it so obstinately! He's not interested in revising his theory towards any resemblance of reality. He's not interested in scientific collaboration or really listening to what anyone else has to say. For whatever reason, he felt compelled to find a natural explanation for something that is very difficult to explain naturally, and seems more interested in defending that than in considering any other possible explanations.

Maybe that is because of his superior knowledge, and his extensive education that he doesn't consider anything else.

And you see, he STILL to this day is employed at Northwestern University. I mean, if he was wrong, don't you think someone would have brought that up? To date, I have NEVER seen anything that Bazzant has published proven wrong.

Care to be the first?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

And you see, he STILL to this day is employed at Northwestern University. I mean, if he was wrong, don't you think someone would have brought that up? To date, I have NEVER seen anything that Bazzant has published proven wrong.

Care to be the first?

No need for hyperbole. Bažant is human, and the Bažant and Verdure paper I cited in post #114 contains a couple of minor math errors I spotted on my first reading. If I were to show those errors to Bažant, he might be puzzled for a few seconds, but then he'd say something like "Yeah, but that's trivial to fix." And he'd be right: those minor errors are trivial to fix, and do not threaten the paper's conclusions in any way.

That's a far cry from publishing raw data that contradict the main conclusion of the paper in which they appear, which is what a couple of ergo's heroes did. When the error was pointed out to him, Szamboti denied it for months until he realized that even twelve-year-olds could see through his denials.

ergo, of course, continues to side with the folks whose papers debunk themselves. Although he bad-mouths Bažant, ergo can't seem to find a single error in any of Bažant's papers. If ergo hadn't told us otherwise, I'd be about ready to conclude that ergo possesses no knowledge of his own, can't think for himself, and has been reduced to regurgitating the swill he's been fed by other truthers.

 

[Furcifer]

Yes. And, according to him, a moon sized pile of rubble may not be sufficient to destroy a skyscraper. I'm too lazy to find the post, but he did say it.

That's too bad, he/she otherwise seems capable of understanding this.

It's pretty easy to understand the simple principle of mass and energy. I guess friction and drag isn't.

I think this whole "dustification" nonsense is responsible in some way. They really think the rubble layer, which was for the most part giant chunks of steel, behaves like dust.

They refuse to believe what they are being told, and don't have the capacity to understand the numbers shown to them.

They're so deluded they believe the math involved is mystical, some sort of ancient symbol manipulation used by the elite to fool the simple masses into doing their bidding. "The symbols can't refute what I saw with my own eyes and believe in my heart"

"A pile of moon dust can't crush a building, because in my mind it would just pile up and the rest just blow away in the wind"

Oh well, can't say we didn't at least try and help them to understand what the rest of the sane world can see easily.

 

[sheeplesnshills]

Didn't Ronan Point's failure start near the top or even the top when a small gas explosion blew out the wall which was load bearing and then the rest unzipped to the bottom?

When they did the post mortem on the building, one problem was the cement between panels only covered barely 1/2 of the entire joint.

Yes, I remember the incident at the time. The building panel interconnects were inadequate and the section came down like a house of cards. Building regulations were changed and a lot of very expensive retrofit work was required.
I believe they also stopped allowing gas to be used in such buildings.

 

[Architect]

Close but no cigar.

The problem was not just the design of the system, but also (and perhaps to a far greater degree) the very poor workmanship. When they opened-up the joints, the architects and engineers found that instead of being tightly grouted they were filled with any old crap including pieces of newspaper. In the absence of mechanical ties or anchors, this led to an inherrent weakness.

The other issue, however, was a realisation that - even if built properly - the partial collapse of part of the structure could cause a pancake or cascade effect and lead to dispropportionate failure.

This in turn led to the removal of gas from the affected properties, although it continued to be used in other high-rise properties of the period.

As an aside, architects and engineers study this - usually around first year at university. I therefore find it rather amusing that Truthers, for all their professed knowledge, barely know of it. Very peculiar indeed.

 

[ergo]

An extreme example: if you drop an anvil on a sand castle, the force applied to the sand castle will be exactly the same force applied on the anvil. This is Newton's Third Law, which states only the existence of a pair of action-reaction forces.

Which actually demonstrates why rubble has less ability to apply force than intact material. Thanks.

Bee dunkers always bring up these ridiculous examples, thinking they're somehow analogous.

 

[Furcifer]

Which actually demonstrates why rubble has less ability to apply force than intact material. Thanks.

Bee dunkers always bring up these ridiculous examples, thinking they're somehow analogous.

Really? What have you decided to call this new principle? Have you determined what constitutes "rubble"?

Mass is mass ergo, there's no magic "rubble" detector that reduces the force it can apply.

There's a force involved here, but it's more advanced than your current level of understanding. Let's just say Galileo weeps every time you post this nonsense. It's been 400 years after all.

 

[ergo]

Actually, the strength in Bazant and Zhou's work (and in later iterations, add Benson, Greening, and Le) is that it reveals energetically that the towers global collapse is indeed completely natural as well as fully expected once it initiates. What truthers seem to miss is that the work is correct regardless of whether the collapses were started by impact and fire damage or whether some nefarious scheme (thermite, explosive demolitions, etc.) were used. All Bazant and Zhou (and Benson, Greening, and Le) ever did was discuss the energetics of the collapse once it started.

It "reveals" nothing of the kind. The work is not correct, as the model does not match the reality. Even bee dunkers are starting to recognize this.

Bazant uses an intact upper block which rides an ever-growing rubble layer down to the bottom. Sorry, no. Drives a rubble layer, which supposedly crushes everything, pulverizing all matter underneath it, for 80 to 90 storeys of undamaged building, all in under 15 seconds. If we didn't know this was someone supposedly respected in his field, we would think this was dreamed up by a five-year old.

His energetic analysis ignores the force of the impact on the upper block and how it would be referred through the lower intact building. It also assumes an initial "crash" which is not observed and most likely not possible, given the estimated remaining 85% column structure in the impact zone.

You see, if truthers had any smarts about them and worked to understand studies conducted about the collapses, they'd latch right onto the BZ and BLBG papers and posit that the demolitions were used in the collapse initiation zones.

You can go back to Major Tom's thread then.

 

[Dave Rogers]

So ergo takes an example in which an anvil applies a force, and a pile of sand applies an equal and opposite force, and comes up with the following conclusion:

Which actually demonstrates why rubble has less ability to apply force than intact material.

Equal, less than, what's the difference? I'd nominate it for a Stundie, but it's too stupid to be even funny.

Dave

 

[ergo]

Equal, less than, what's the difference? I'd nominate it for a Stundie, but it's too stupid to be even funny.

??? It's hard to know what various bee dunkers are imagining. Whether they subscribe to the ROOSD model, or to Bazant's "crushing layer" model. So I can't really decipher what Dave Rogers is trying to imply here, much less be able to respond.

 

[Furcifer]

It "reveals" nothing of the kind. The work is not correct, as the model does not match the reality. Even bee dunkers are starting to recognize this.

Liar.

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's not correct.

 

[Dave Rogers]

His energetic analysis ignores the force of the impact on the upper block and how it would be referred through the lower intact building.

No, it doesn't. The other thing it doesn't do, which upsets truthers no end, is that it doesn't pretend that the rubble generated by the crushing of both parts somehow mysteriously vanishes. Instead, it describes what happens to that rubble, what the rubble does to the upper block, and what the rubble does to the lower block. And the result is that the damage to the upper block self-terminates because it's not outpacing the rubble, whereas the damage to the lower block propagates, because the rubble alone is enough to crush it. But to people stupid enough to think that rubble has less mass, energy, momentum, destructive power, or whatever other synonym for magically vanishing they like to substitute to fool their fellow idiots into thinking they understand, that's just too complicated; they have trouble thinking about two things at once, let alone three.

Dave

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Really? What have you decided to call this new principle? Have you determined what constitutes "rubble"?

Mass is mass ergo, there's no magic "rubble" detector that reduces the force it can apply.

There's a force involved here, but it's more advanced than your current level of understanding. Let's just say Galileo weeps every time you post this nonsense. It's been 400 years after all.

I think Ergo is weakly grasping towards the concept of "impulse" when he's using the word "force". But as you know better than I and can see for yourself, he's pretty clueless as to what Δt is in this specific application of the concept.

 

[Furcifer]

So I can't really decipher what Dave Rogers is trying to imply here, much less be able to respond.

He's implying you don't understand physics.

Rock beats paper.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Liar.

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's not correct.

Wait a minute, wait a minute... I have that guy on ignore. Did he just try to refute Bazant and Zhou's limiting case by claiming it doesn't match the collapse itself? And after all these years that we've been explaining exactly what a limiting case is and means? OMG... Clueless. Absolutely clueless.

 

[ergo]

And the result is that the damage to the upper block self-terminates because it's not outpacing the rubble, whereas the damage to the lower block propagates, because the rubble alone is enough to crush it.

And typing this out as if it's scientific and logical doesn't embarrass you. Really?

So, where is the visual evidence of the existence of either of the upper blocks halfway through collapse progression?

 

[excaza]

It "reveals" nothing of the kind. The work is not correct, as the model does not match the reality. Even bee dunkers are starting to recognize this.

Bazant uses an intact upper block which rides an ever-growing rubble layer down to the bottom. Sorry, no. Drives a rubble layer, which supposedly crushes everything, pulverizing all matter underneath it, for 80 to 90 storeys of undamaged building, all in under 15 seconds. If we didn't know this was someone supposedly respected in his field, we would think this was dreamed up by a five-year old.

His energetic analysis ignores the force of the impact on the upper block and how it would be referred through the lower intact building. It also assumes an initial "crash" which is not observed and most likely not possible, given the estimated remaining 85% column structure in the impact zone.

Can you please express your specific objections mathematically instead of relying completely on incredulity (and an obviously complete non-understanding of physics)? Surely this should be simple given how easily you've pierced through the mathematical cloak of Bazant's toddler formulations.