Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
But how did your measurements end up contradicting the G Urich, R Mackey and the NIST?
As Charles Babbage put it, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Let me try and explain it at a simple enough level for Major Tom to comprehend. Several measurements show that the top block of the North Tower rotated 8º before it began to descend (a very vague statement, since its CoG must have descended for any rotation to occur, but we'll let that pass). Now, since it's impossible for the top block to have rotated from 0º to 8º without passing through all the angles in between, there must at some point have been an instant at which it had rotated only 2º. Are we clear on that so far, or is Major Tom suggesting that the angle of the top block changed abruptly and discontinuously from 0º to 8º without rotating through all the intervening angles?
OK, now let's remember what Tony Szamboti was claiming. He was claiming that the top block could not have rotated at all before the first impact (assuming that any such event as "the first impact" can even be defined). My aim was not to determine the exact angle that the top block rotated, but to demonstrate that Tony was wrong in that claim.
So, I found a clear pair of pictures, from video screen captures, and was able to measure the following features from them: in both, the height of fixed features was the same, indicating a constant scale; the vertical separation from the nearest fixed object (another building) to the topmost corner of the top block differed by less than two pixels, which from the scale of the building corresponded to half the height of a single storey; and a line drawn through the corner of the top part of the structure was vertical in one, and inclined at 2º in the other.
From these pictures I was able to determine, and illustrate beyond possible doubt (which was my aim all along), that the top block rotated through at least 2º before it had fallen through a distance equivalent to the height of one storey. Quoting other authorities is all very well, but Tony will happily reject any sources he doesn't agree with; posting pictures is a bit more difficult to refute without resorting to outright denial of visible reality.
I hope that's clear enough even for Major Tom, and that I don't have to explain that a measurement of at least two degrees rotation at some instant prior to descent does not contradict a measurement of eight degrees rotation at some other instant prior to descent. I doubt whether a five-year-old would have too much trouble grasping this point.
Dave


