The Great Thermate Debate

[superlogicalthinker]

Melting from therm?te would leave glaring evidence of extremely high temperatures in the form of resolidified metal and slag.

So it must have been something else.

Something else?? Like what? I guess you haven't seen the dozens of videos out there that show this fuse element that you speak of.

 

[Miragememories]

This seems odd. You accept that there were fires, but not that there was sufficient oxygen and fuel to sustain them? What are the three things a fire needs, MM?

You generalize and over simplify.

There were many pockets of fire. I am not discussing simple surface fires.

We are talking about those that were buried in the debris pile that generated extremely high temperatures and endured for many days.

Hotspots that were water doused by constant firefighting efforts and smothered in dust and tons of packed debris.

MM

 

[Horatius]

But let's hold the sulfur for the time being, what I'm interested in, is the piece of steel Jon Barrnett found, which was once 1 inch thick, reduced to a half inch thickness with gaping holes, curled like a paper scroll, thinned to almost razor sharpness, with a "swiss cheese" like appearence. This peice of steel is documented by FEMA to have come directly from WTC7.

Please Dave, tell me how a thermitic reation could NOT have caused this.

Please tell us how a thermitic reaction could have caused this, first.

 

[excaza]

So you 'imagine' that rubble pile fires, without benefit of any thermitic material, were able to obtain sufficient oxygen and high energy fuel to attain and sustain, temperatures approaching 1000 C?

That argument fails to persuade me and 9/11 Truth supporters.

If it works for you and the Official Conspiracy Borg, go for it.

MM

How much therm*te, roughly, do you think it would take to sustain a reaction for weeks? Thermitic reactions are very short.

Also, how, exactly, did the temperatures stay significantly below the temperatures caused by a therm*te reaction that was supposedly sustaining itself for weeks?

 

[excaza]

Hotspots that were water doused by constant firefighting efforts

How much water do you think these pockets were actually receiving? You've been asked this question repeatedly and have yet to answer.

 

[superlogicalthinker]

Please tell us how a thermitic reaction could have caused this, first.

What, are you serious? After all this time you don't know yet? This is something I should not have to explain to anybody over here at JREF, is it?

Nice try, but you have toanswer the questions in proper orderly fasion, not dodge them. This makes a debate impossible

 

[Horatius]

What, are you serious? After all this time you don't know yet? This is something I should not have to explain to anybody over here at JREF, is it?

Actually, yes, it is something you have to explain, since as far as I know, no one has ever shown that a "thermitic reaction" can produce a piece of steel that demonstrates all the features you listed. Until you can demonstrate that it is actually possible to produce this effect from a thermitic reaction, it is pointless to discuss the issue.

Nice try, but you have toanswer the questions in proper orderly fasion, not dodge them. This makes a debate impossible

Nice to see you recognize the principle, even if you find it a joke. Now, as it was truthers who originally claimed this piece of metal was evidence of a thermitic reaction, it is incumbent upon them to show that this is even possible. Even more so in the face of alternative explanations as provided above.

 

[Dave Rogers]

What, are you serious? After all this time you don't know yet? This is something I should not have to explain to anybody over here at JREF, is it?

Yes, it is, because the explanations offered so far have been limited to "This must have been done by a thermitic reaction". Nobody has outlined a mechanism by which a thermite reaction could have produced this exact morphology of material. So, no, we don't know of any way thermite could have produced this effect, and nobody has come up with an explanation.

As for the experiment in which Cole claims to have proved that the sulphur could not have originated from the drywall, there are several fatal errors in his work. He made no attempt to reproduce, or even measure, the temperature seen by the steel in the rubble pile. He made no attempt to reproduce the duration of the heating of the steel; his total heating time was one or two orders of magnitude too low. And finally, he made no attempt to determine whether any sulphidation of steel had taken place; he simply judged by eye that there was no sulphur in the steel.

So, he didn't set up the conditions correctly and he didn't measure the results. It's a bit difficult to draw any useful conclusions there, don't you think?

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

So you 'imagine' that rubble pile fires, without benefit of any thermitic material, were able to obtain sufficient oxygen and high energy fuel to attain and sustain, temperatures approaching 1000 C?

Look up the flame temperature in a wood fire, then come back and tell me how high it is.

Dave

 

[The Almond]

"The source of the corrosive agents may be gypsum from drywall in the building rubble"

Sorry....there has been a scientific experiment by a P.E. (Jon Cole) where he shows that the sulfur could not have come from the gympum board. it is on You tube, you should check it out. But let's hold the sulfur for the time being, what I'm interested in, is the piece of steel Jon Barrnett found, which was once 1 inch thick, reduced to a half inch thickness with gaping holes, curled like a paper scroll, thinned to almost razor sharpness, with a "swiss cheese" like appearence. This peice of steel is documented by FEMA to have come directly from WTC7.

Please Dave, tell me how a thermitic reation could NOT have caused this.

I'm excited to hear about scientific experiments being done, but I'm dismayed to hear that they're only published on YouTube. Perhaps you could point to a reference in Analytical Chemistry that proves sulfur cannot be liberated from gypsum wallboards exposed to fire.

 

[GlennB]

What, are you serious? After all this time you don't know yet?

The catch is that you don't, preferring instead to chase fantasies.

The eutectic corrosion that caused the 'swiss cheese' effect occurred at a microscopic level along the steel's grain boundaries. If filmed you would not see globs of molten metal dripping off, the steel would simply be flaking off imperceptibly.

With therm?te you'd be looking at much higher temperatures and an actual phase-change from solid to liquid at the macroscopic level. Globs of metal would also be re-solidifying in cooler spots and slag deposits would be left. You've been told this before but appear not to have noticed.

It wasn't therm?te. Therm?te cannot achieve the observed effect. There was some form of sulphur in that area that, combined with near 1000°C temperatures, caused eutectic erosion.

 

[NutCracker]

What, are you serious? After all this time you don't know yet? This is something I should not have to explain to anybody over here at JREF, is it?

Nice try, but you have toanswer the questions in proper orderly fasion, not dodge them. This makes a debate impossible

Look pally boy, you claim therm*te is the only possible cause for the observed phenomenum. You prove it. The burden of proof rests with you. That's how scientific debate works. Now who is dodging to avoid debate, exactly?

 

[Oystein]

You generalize and over simplify.

There were many pockets of fire. I am not discussing simple surface fires.

We are talking about those that were buried in the debris pile that generated extremely high temperatures and endured for many days.

Hotspots that were water doused by constant firefighting efforts and smothered in dust and tons of packed debris.

MM

So you need thermite in the vicinity of that particular piece of steel to heat it to roundabout 1000°C. You must make sure that it isn't so close that the temperature ever exceeds 1500°C (or else the whole thing would have melted clean away), and you need to sustain that level of heat for weeks.

We know of the thermite reaction that
- it releases much less heat than many of the other, more ordinary combustibles found in building debris, so to sustain a heat level, you'd need much more mass of thermite than of, say, plastics, to achieve the same overall (average) heating
- It is somewhat hard to ignite, so once it burns out, it is not likely to start burning again
- Once it burns, it does so at a high rate (unconstrained by scarceness of oxygene, for example) and quite vigorously, producing local temperatures well in excess of 1500°C which would make it melt vertically down through whatever material it is resting on

Given these known properties of thermite, explain how you keep a thermite fire burning for a long time without it going out or melting through lots of material (thereby leaving the vicinity of our steel specimen, and producing large amounts of slack)!

 

[Dave Rogers]

Perhaps you could point to a reference in Analytical Chemistry that proves sulfur cannot be liberated from gypsum wallboards exposed to fire.

Apparently Analytical Chemistry makes a lot of irrelevant, nit-picking demands on authors, like demanding that their conclusions be actually based on some kind of measurement rather than just a quick eyeballing and a comment that it looks like there's no sulphur in that.

Dave

 

[superlogicalthinker]

I'm excited to hear about scientific experiments being done, but I'm dismayed to hear that they're only published on YouTube. Perhaps you could point to a reference in Analytical Chemistry that proves sulfur cannot be liberated from gypsum wallboards exposed to fire.

Yes, it would have been nice if NIST did that test for us now wouldn't it. Nope, they just passed it over with a really good guess.

 

[superlogicalthinker]

Look pally boy, you claim therm*te is the only possible cause for the observed phenomenum. You prove it. The burden of proof rests with you. That's how scientific debate works. Now who is dodging to avoid debate, exactly?

I have not claimed anything. I am raising the question of a thermitic reation that formed a eutectic mxture, and left traces of sulfur on the steel. What that mixture was I don't know. It sure would have been nice for some scientific experiments by the government, but the steel seemed to....well let's face it, disappear pretty fast.

 

[TjW]

You generalize and over simplify.

There were many pockets of fire. I am not discussing simple surface fires.

We are talking about those that were buried in the debris pile that generated extremely high temperatures and endured for many days.

Hotspots that were water doused by constant firefighting efforts and smothered in dust and tons of packed debris.

MM

What are the three things a fire needs, MM?

 

[superlogicalthinker]

The catch is that you don't, preferring instead to chase fantasies.

The eutectic corrosion that caused the 'swiss cheese' effect occurred at a microscopic level along the steel's grain boundaries. If filmed you would not see globs of molten metal dripping off, the steel would simply be flaking off imperceptibly.

With therm?te you'd be looking at much higher temperatures and an actual phase-change from solid to liquid at the macroscopic level. Globs of metal would also be re-solidifying in cooler spots and slag deposits would be left. You've been told this before but appear not to have noticed.

It wasn't therm?te. Therm?te cannot achieve the observed effect. There was some form of sulphur in that area that, combined with near 1000°C temperatures, caused eutectic erosion.

And what would cause the 1000C temp.? If you say fire, I will have to take a break for a laughing session.

 

[superlogicalthinker]

Yes, it is, because the explanations offered so far have been limited to "This must have been done by a thermitic reaction". Nobody has outlined a mechanism by which a thermite reaction could have produced this exact morphology of material. So, no, we don't know of any way thermite could have produced this effect, and nobody has come up with an explanation.

As for the experiment in which Cole claims to have proved that the sulphur could not have originated from the drywall, there are several fatal errors in his work. He made no attempt to reproduce, or even measure, the temperature seen by the steel in the rubble pile. He made no attempt to reproduce the duration of the heating of the steel; his total heating time was one or two orders of magnitude too low. And finally, he made no attempt to determine whether any sulphidation of steel had taken place; he simply judged by eye that there was no sulphur in the steel.

So, he didn't set up the conditions correctly and he didn't measure the results. It's a bit difficult to draw any useful conclusions there, don't you think?

Dave

"Nobody has outlined a mechanism by which a thermite reaction could have produced this exact morphology of material."

Right! Including NIST. They were asked to further investigate the piece of steel, but passed it over for a computer model, that spit out all the right answers LMAO!

 

[Horatius]

And what would cause the 1000C temp.? If you say fire, I will have to take a break for a laughing session.

So you're claiming there weren't any fires in the debris piles?


You do realize there are people in this very conversation who actually worked there, right? Right?