WTC Dust Study Feb 29, 2012 by Dr. James Millette

[BasqueArch]

Elephant or Zebra?

White Kaolin Clay Profile
Origin- USA
Extraction- 100% naturally occurring quarry mined and water washed
Other Common Names- White Cosmetic Clay, China Clay, Ceramic Clay and Kaolin Clay
…..
Specifications
Color- White
Mesh Size- US #100 Mesh
Moisture- 1-2%
pH - 6.0
Bulk Density (lb/cu.ft) - 25.3

Typical Mineral Content
Total Kaolinite- 97%
Silicon Oxide- 46%
Aluminum Oxide- 37%
Iron Oxide- 0.79%
Titanium Oxide- 0.37%

From the Bentham paper:
“…..
All of the dust samples that were inspected were found to
contain red/gray chips. The chips are characterized by a red
layer in which XEDS analysis identifies carbon, oxygen,
aluminum, silicon, and iron, and a gray layer in which
mainly iron and oxygen are found.
…..
CONCLUSIONS
We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in significant
numbers in dust associated with the World Trade Center
destruction. We have applied SEM/XEDS and other methods
to characterize the small-scale structure and chemical signature
of these chips, especially of their red component. The
red material is most interesting and has the following characteristics:
1. It is composed of aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon and
carbon. Lesser amounts of other potentially reactive
elements are sometimes present, such as potassium,
sulfur, lead, barium and copper.
…..
The gray layer was found to consist mostly of iron
oxide so that it probably does not contribute to the exotherm,
and yet this layer varies greatly in mass from chip to chip.”

Conclusions:
1. Harrit et al, Millette elements and compounds match those of primer paint atop iron rust.

2. Harrit et al chips do not match their literature of sol-gel thermite compositions referenced in their papers.

3. The thin red layer of Harrit et al. “super nano-thermite” chips cannot significantly warm steel, let alone melt it.

4. The silicon and aluminum oxides plates are the paint filler kaolinite. (Sunstealer, Oystein, Ivan Kminek, Millette).

5. No “super nano-thermite” formulae contain kaolinite because kaolinite is inert.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Elephant of Zebra?
Zookeper to elephant: Why did you destroy my car?

Elephant: I didn’t. I couldn’t have done it. I was asleep in my cage all day.

Zookeeper: Yes you did. I have your picture from my security camera.

Elephant: It couldn’t have been me. It was the zebra that destroyed your car.

Ravens to zookeeper: You must not rush to a hasty conclusion. We’ll examine the evidence, scientifically match the animal that destroyed your car and rationally come to the right conclusion.

Next day:

Ravens to zookeeper: The animal pictured atop your car has four legs, a tail, two eyes and two ears, as does the zebra.
We whacked the zebra’s hind with a 2x4 and the zebra complained. This fits the zebra perfectly. All zebras complain when whacked with a 2x4, that’s their nature.

We also weighed the elephant and the zebra, measured the footprints on the car and whacked the elephant’s hind with a 2x4, but we forget where we placed the results.
The zebra crushed your car.

Owls to zookeeper: Wait a minute. The elephant also has four legs, a tail, two eyes and two ears. The photograph has the appearance of an elephant, not a zebra.
We additionally weighed the elephant and the zebra, and the zebra doesn’t weigh enough to have crushed your car. Tusk scratches on the car paint and the footprints also match the elephant’s, not the zebra. It was the elephant that crushed your car.

Ravens to zookeeper: But … But it could have been a “Super Mega-Zebra”! It’s not the same test ! The owls didn’t whack the elephant’s hind with a 2x4 ! We don’t know if the elephant would have complained !

Zookeeper: Well, the evidence is sufficient to prove it was the elephant, not the zebra that destroyed my car.
No more mud baths for you, elephant!

 

[Oystein]

Heat.

You raise the ambient temperature to 430C or higher and the thermitic red chips will ignite.

The red chips that do not ignite are thus eliminated.

MM

Ok.

Let's look at the MEK-soaked chip. Figures (12)-(18) in the Bentham paper.

What do you think - was it heated to 430 °C or higher by Jones or Farrer?
Was it a thermitic chip, or a non-thermitic chip?


Or, for that matter: Chips a-d - were they heated to 430 °C or higher by Jones or Farrer?
Were they thermitic chips, or a non-thermitic chips?


Or, for that matte, the multi-layered chip - was it heated to 430 °C or higher by Jones or Farrer?
Was it a thermitic chip, or a non-thermitic chip?

 

[Redwood]

But, you basically inspired me to ask here another interesting, theoretical question (for me, Oystein and any other potential enthusiasts):

It is clear that bulk charges of thermite can reach extremely high temperatures when burning. But, is it even possible that burning of thermitic chip 20 micrometers "thick" (with attached iron oxide layer also ca 20 micrometers "thick", but this can be omitted for simplicity) could generate temperatures close to melting of steel or iron oxide?

Well, here's your data: Heat capacity of iron is 0.45 J per degree per gram.

Melting point of iron is 1811 K.

Heat of fusion of iron is 247 J/g.

Density of iron is 7.9 g/ml.

Enthalpy of thermite is 4,000 J/g

Thermal conductivity of iron is 80 J/second/degree per meter.

IIRC, the thinnest steel used in the WTC was about 6.5mm or 6500 microns.

 

[chrismohr]

Heat.

You raise the ambient temperature to 430C or higher and the thermitic red chips will ignite.

The red chips that do not ignite are thus eliminated.

MM

MM,

This reminds me of the old Salem witch test. Dunk a woman and if she drowns she is not a witch. Burn the chips and no further tests on them are possible.

 

[chrismohr]

As you know Chris, Kevin Ryan has trust issues with Dr. Millette.

Having observed and financially contributed to the Millette research, I can quite understand Kevin Ryan's reluctance to participate.

The problem is not so much Kevin Ryan's refusal to provide relevant red chip samples, but Dr. Millette's refusal to test them in the same manner followed by Dr. Harrit.

Dr. Millette happily accepted $1,000 for work on a paper he had already started and was under obligation to produce anyway.

Dr. Millette used his own WTC dust samples, his own equipment, and his own time.

He also followed a methodology which appeared to duplicate the original study by Dr. Harrit et al only so far as the red chip separation and some preliminary microscopic analysis. Up until that point, his observations were pretty much in agreement with the original study.

But Dr. Millette's company does not own a DSC and he had no interest in sub-contracting one for comparison purposes.

Such a definitive approach would go to the heart of the Bentham Paper, but it would also expand the number of people familiar with those test results (re: DSC technician).

Assuming Dr. Millette actually read through the original Bentham Paper, he would have been well aware of the sensational nature of the DSC red chip residue.

Clearly, even without a DSC, if Dr. Millette had heated his collection of red chips to 430C or higher, he should have ignited some of those red chips and produced a similar residue containing iron-rich microspheres as those observed by Dr. Harrit et al.

But then, he would have a serious quandary.

MM

To clarify: Jim Millette said DSC testing was unnecessary because his other tests conclusively showed chemical signatures that were NOT consistent with thermite. But he did give me a list of names of labs I could approach for a DSC test, and I even found some financial backing for it from a 8/11 Truth guy. But every place I called refused to do the test. As one guy said, "if there's any chance it's thermite, I won't risk it burning through the crucible i would be holding it in during the test." I gave up, but if anyone wants to organize and pay for a DSC test, neither I nor Jim Millette has the slightest concern about the results.

MM your assumption that Millette would have a problem with finding thermite is simply false. I asked him repeatedly, by email and by phone, if he is ready to "take the heat" if he finds thermite. he said he's used to upsetting his customers in forensic exams when he finds something that does not support their case. As Millette said about thermite, "if I find it I'll publish it." I believe him because I asked him nine ways to Sunday about this very issue. I was fully prepared to find thermite and wanted to make sure the person I hired was ready too.

Also false: he had not already started the paper on thermitic material. I approached him and my offer of $1000 got the ball rolling. And BTW Millette IS interested in the iron-rich spheres. We'll see if it appears in the final report abut I will continue to ask him to look into this.

 

[jtl]

I was hoping this study would end the debate, why drag this on with a study seen as incomplete? Truthers have suggested Millette has the wrong chips so why not rule that out by following Harrit´s study to the letter? I am no expert but it seems there are some more clues in the paper, such as chips remaining hard after MEK and no titanium which Millette chips seem to have. And twoofies will never accept a paper without all the tests, so it seems obvious that Millette will have to arrange DSC testing. Won´t all whole chips produce those spheres anyway, if they have a gray layer?

 

[Dog Town]

I was hoping this study would end the debate...

This must be your first Rodeo!

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Well, here's your data: Heat capacity of iron is 0.45 J per degree per gram.

Melting point of iron is 1811 K.

Heat of fusion of iron is 247 J/g.

Density of iron is 7.9 g/ml.

Enthalpy of thermite is 4,000 J/g

Thermal conductivity of iron is 80 J/second/degree per meter.

IIRC, the thinnest steel used in the WTC was about 6.5mm or 6500 microns.

Thanks for the data. I probably did not formulate well my question, which should be like: "Is it even possible that burning of thermitic chip 20 micrometers "thick" ("free standing" purely nanothermitic chip, surrounded only by standing air and not attached to anything including gray layer and sample holder) could generate temperatures close to melting of steel or iron oxide?"

I don't know at present how to calculate such temperature, do you?
It seems to be natural that even in such flat chip, temperatures reached would be high enough to melt steel or iron oxide, but is it true? Heat losses should be really high for such very thin chip.

Imagine the case when such calculated temperature is conclusively and significantly lower than melting point of steel of iron oxide. This would instantly stop arguments of truthers (e.g. MM) that temperatures around 1500 degrees C had to be reached in chips heated in DSC device (because of the microspheres formation). Indeed, the real situation in DSC device was in favor of much lower temperatures reached in burning chips, since the heat of thermitic reaction would be absorbed by gray layer and sample holder as efficient heat sinks.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Well, here is the post of Dr. Greening, who attempted to calculate the elevation of steel temperature caused by burning of 100 micrometers "thick" thermite layer:

"Metamars:

Is this what you want:

Calculation of the Heating Effect of a Thermite Coating on a Steel Column:

The thermite reaction of interest is Fe2O3 + 2Al = Al2O3 + 2Fe

The energy released by 1 kg of a stoichiometric mixture of ferric oxide and aluminium undergoing this thermite reaction is 3988 kJ/kg.

Consider a 100-micron layer of this mixture coated on a steel column on an upper floor of one of the Twin Towers.

For simplicity we shall assume the coated surfaces are on all four sides of a box column that is 20 cm wide spanning one 3.7-meter high floor. Thus we have a total surface area per column of 3.7 x 0.2 x 4 = 2.96 m^2. (We could also consider an equivalent wide-flange column)

The volume of our 100-micron coating is then = 2.96 x 100 x 10^-6 m^3 = 296 x 10^-6 m^3

The density of the thermite mixture is assumed to be ~ 4500 kg/m^3, so the mass of our thermite coating per one floor column length is = 4500 kg/m^3 x 296 x 10^-6 = 1.332 kg

Using the 3988 kJ/kg heat release of the thermite reaction we have a total heat release per one floor column length of 1.332 kg x 3988 kJ/kg = 5312 kJ.

Next we need to calculate the mass of steel that was exposed to this 5312 kJ of heat energy.

Column specifications for the upper floors of WTC 1 indicate the typical mass of structural steel per column per floor was about 1500 kg.

The heat capacity of steel is 0.45 kJ/kg so 1 kg of steel requires 0.45 kJ to be heated by 1 deg C.

Therefore 1500 kg requires 675 kJ.

The heat released by our 200-micron layer of thermite is 5312 kJ. Thus the expected temperature increase is (5312/675) x 1 deg C, or about 8 deg C."

Good start, but what I need to know is what would be the temperature increase of the thermite layer itself, without any contact with anything except air (and having thickness only 20 micrometers, not 100 micrometers).

(On the other hand, the situation regarded by Frank Greening is not so far from the situation in DSC device, where the most of heat of alleged thermitic reaction would be anyway absorbed by sample holder and the whole apparatus. I think)

 

[Ivan Kminek]

After we failed to calculate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, it comes down to this.

Even if this stuff were nanothermite it would be utterly ineffective as a destructive agent deliberately used to destroy a massive building.

Hehe You are of course right, but try to consider some attempts to calculate possible temperatures reached in thin thermite layer etc. as some exercise in physical chemistry/thermochemistry, perhaps good as a task for university students or so.

 

[Oystein]

MM,

This reminds me of the old Salem witch test. Dunk a woman and if she drowns she is not a witch. Burn the chips and no further tests on them are possible.

There is actually an easy way around this, at least for chips of sufficient size: Cut it in 2 pieces; test one piece in the DSC, and do all other tests on the other piece.

But this is NOT what the Bentham authors did with their chips. It most certainly is not what Jones did with the MEK chip. Farrer describes in an AE911Truth interview how they did SEM-work and found this and that, and then they thought "well what else can we do", thought of DSC, and then had to go search around for a lab that has a DSC. So the temporal order is such that the DSC test almost certainly came last, but the paper makes it clear that the author consider all red-gray chips selected by a magner to be similar and essentially the same - they do NOT mention DSC as a selection method!
Also, if DSC is the selection method, and they could not have known prior to the DSC test which chips would turn out energetic and which not. So I'd expect them to have put non-energetic chips in the DSC, too, and make a mention of it.
Mark Basile, in his recent radio interview with Bernie Suarez, says that "the vast majority of them actually are primer paint, from what I'm finding". "Them" meaning "red chip you're gonna pull out of there" (WTC dust). (Note to MM: See the quotation marks? Yes, these are actual and verbatim quotes from Basile. Find them in my blog, along with a precise source reference.) So in fact Farrer ought to have put mostly mundane chips in the DSC, if that was the actual method to distinguish them.

 

[Oystein]

I was hoping this study would end the debate, why drag this on with a study seen as incomplete? Truthers have suggested Millette has the wrong chips so why not rule that out by following Harrit´s study to the letter?

Millette DID follow Harrit's study to the letter: The paper has a section on Chip Size, Isolation, and Examination that describes how they selected the chips to be studied:
1. pull particles out with a magnet that are attracted by it.
2. By visual inspection, select those that are chips and that have a gray and a red layer

Millette did exactly that. In addition, he selected chips whose XEDS spectra from the gray and from the red layer had the same elemental composition as chips a-d.

So yes, he did follow the paper to the letter.

I am no expert but it seems there are some more clues in the paper, such as chips remaining hard after MEK

But
- The MEK-soaked chip wasn't tested in the DSC
- Chips a-d weren't tested in the DSC
- The elemental composition, as per XEDS spectrum, of the MEK chip does not match that of chips a-d at all
- Chips a-d were not soaked in MEK
So there is zero proof that
* Chips a-d were energetic
* The MEK-soaked chip was energetic
* The MEK-soaked chip was the same material as chips a-d
In fact, all the data actually published indicates that the MEK-soaked chip was markedly different from chips a-d, i.e. a different material.

So no, you are mistaken, none of properties seen in this one MEK-soaked chip can be construed as being typical for "energetic" chips and untypical for mundane chips.

and no titanium which Millette chips seem to have.

This is incorrect.
Fig (25) of the Harrit paper (link) shows "Spheres formed during ignition of red/gray chip in DSC, with corresponding typical XEDS spectrum (although spheres with predominately iron and some oxygen are also seen in the post-ignition residue)." Obviously, the authors think this is one of the "thermitic" chips, with the spherical iron residue. And look what you see at ca. 4.5 keV: A clear peak for titanium! So clearly, at least SOME of the "energetic" chips must contain titanium. That is not a criterium to toss out specimens.

And twoofies will never accept a paper without all the tests, so it seems obvious that Millette will have to arrange DSC testing.

Millette is doing his stuff for serious academics, not for "twoofies". It is us who are doing this for "twoofies".

Mark Basile has a test proposal that includes DSC both under inert gas and air, and is collecting money for it. I am all for it.

Won´t all whole chips produce those spheres anyway, if they have a gray layer?

Difficult to say. That would mean that the gray layer alone, stripped off the red layer, would produce such spheres if slowly heated to 700 °C? I think the iron-rich blobs that Harrit e.al. found are not all from the same source and process. Some may be agglomerations of iron oxide pigments pulled together by cooling organic char. Some may be the result of a purely metallurgical transformation found in alloys with manganese. Some may be the result of interaction of the gray iron oxide layer with reducing gases formed when the organic matrix of the red layer decomposed. That's three processes; one only depends on the nature of the gray layer; one only on the composition of the red layer; and the third comes from the interaction of both and would thus depend on the composition of both.

 

[Oystein]

...what I need to know is what would be the temperature increase of the thermite layer itself, without any contact with anything except air (and having thickness only 20 micrometers, not 100 micrometers).

(On the other hand, the situation regarded by Frank Greening is not so far from the situation in DSC device, where the most of heat of alleged thermitic reaction would be anyway absorbed by sample holder and the whole apparatus. I think)

Good question, good thinking. I can't answer it.

You are surely on a right track: The entire method of the DSC is premised on the idea that the specimen is kept at a tightly controlled temoerature, and you measure how much heat you have to add or take away to keep it at that temperature. This only works, or the results only make sense, if in fact the specimen has the same temperature as the crucible (or, more to the point, as the inert sample on the other crucible that it is being compared to. Remember - Differential SC?). Part of the reason the DSC device can control the temperature is that the crucible has a mass far far greater than the specimen. The largest chips Harrit e.al. tested were under 1 mg, the crucible certainly weighs more tha gram, so there a proportion of more than 1000:1.

Here is an article in French that criticizes the Harrit study - and has some more detailed information on how DSC works:

http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698

Running it through Google translate, first about the author:

Philippe Gillard is a professor at the University of Orléans, team leader Risks, Explosions, PRISM Institute Structures (Multidisciplinary Institute for Research in Systems Engineering, Mechanics and Energetics), expert in the field of energetic materials.

And then just one bullet point on the question you ask:

• characteristics of the exothermic peak does not suggest that there could be a deviation between the setpoint temperature and the temperature of the sample, we can consider that the measured DSC signal is valid and that the temperature of the sample did not exceed the set temperature of 700 ° C;

Note the premise: "we can consider that the measured DSC signal is valid".

The argument really seems to be: IF the DSC signal is valid, THEN the sample never got hotter than 700 °C

Formally: IF a THEN b
The correct reverse of this is:
IF NOT b THEN NOT a

Here:
IF the sample temperature exceeded 700°C (and by a wide margin!) THEN the DSC signal is NOT valid!

In other words, if the authors are correct that their sample got to melting point of iron, then they are fools to present the DSC traces in the paper.


I think it is an established fact that none of the authors, and specifically not Jeff Farrer, who actually carried out the DSC test, had any prior experience whatsoever with doing DSC. Presumably, they had little to no prior experience with interpreting DSC results. They are to be considered in that regard as much amateurs as you and I ought to be. So MM's constant attempt to invoke the scientific or professional authority of these men fails at least in the case of DSC. As it turns out, the test was not properly performed, and test results were incorrectly interpreted.

(And I'd bet a few bucks that MM, if he responds to this post, will only respond to the last paragraph, and not the meat of the argument I present, by citing Prof. Gillard)

 

[pgimeno]

[...] the paper makes it clear that the author consider all red-gray chips selected by a magner to be similar and essentially the same - they do NOT mention DSC as a selection method!

That's indeed supported by the link provided by Spanx in #1281:

At the Boston Tea Party conference last Saturday, I announced that I had found peculiar "red chips" in the WTC dust, and the possible significance of the findings. The chips are bi-layered, red on one side, gray on the other -- and present in all four samples that I and colleagues are exploring in depth at this time.
​

http://911blogger.com/node/13090

It seems to me that only after writing the paper they realized that there were many kinds of chips.

 

[pgimeno]

Good start, but what I need to know is what would be the temperature increase of the thermite layer itself, without any contact with anything except air (and having thickness only 20 micrometers, not 100 micrometers).

(On the other hand, the situation regarded by Frank Greening is not so far from the situation in DSC device, where the most of heat of alleged thermitic reaction would be anyway absorbed by sample holder and the whole apparatus. I think)

Remember the chips burned (er, sorry, "ignited") in the DSC had a gray layer attached that also acted as a heat sink.

 

[Oystein]

...
It seems to me that only after writing the paper they realized that there were many kinds of chips.

Well, I would rather word is as "only after writing the paper seeing that Chris Mohr was about to debunk them they realized reluctantly started to acknowledge explicitly that there were many kinds of chips".

They certainly realized it before writing the paper. In fact, they explicitly mention the fact that some chips show significant differences in their elemental composition:

We have observed that some chips have additional elements such as potassium, lead, barium and copper. Are these significant, and why do such elements appear in some red chips and not others? An example is shown in Fig. (31) which shows significant Pb along with C, O, Fe, and Al and displays multiple red and gray layers.

So what this says is:

• There is one kind of chip that is different from the others (expecially chips a-d and "MEK" which we present in detail as "representative" of all chips) in that it has significant Pb, while the other chips do not have significant Pb
• There are, in addistion, one or two kinds of chips that are different from the others (expecially chips a-d and "MEK" which we present in detail as "representative" of all chips) in that they have significant Ba and/or Cu, while the other chips do not have significant Ba or Cu
• And then there are of course the "other" with no significant Pb, no significant Ba and no significant Cu

(Plus: That chip in Fig 32 and 33, which has an additional carbon layer in between the red layer and the gray iron oxide layer).

So they are basically saying: "We found different chips, but we think they are all the same." Find the error

 

[Sunstealer]

I was hoping this study would end the debate, why drag this on with a study seen as incomplete? Truthers have suggested Millette has the wrong chips so why not rule that out by following Harrit´s study to the letter? I am no expert but it seems there are some more clues in the paper, such as chips remaining hard after MEK and no titanium which Millette chips seem to have. And twoofies will never accept a paper without all the tests, so it seems obvious that Millette will have to arrange DSC testing. Won´t all whole chips produce those spheres anyway, if they have a gray layer?

Truthers will never accept any result that doesn't conclude thermite. Even if Harrit and Jones came out and said it is a fake paper and a hoax they would still believe that thermite was found. MM is evidence of this.

As I've said before - if Millette did DSC and microspheres where found post testing then truthers will claim thermite even though all the other data shows that the material is paint adhered to oxidised steel and that it's paint adhered to oxidised steel that produces microspheres. Truthers will ignore any result that doesn't fit with their fantasies.

The fact of the matter is the material that Millette analysed is the same material as samples a-d in the harrit paper. There is no getting away from this.

If you accept that the authors of the paper say that samples a-d are the same material then you must conclude that Millette's material is the same stuff because you have to judge the similarities between a-d by thesame criteria that you'd have to judge Millette's spectra.

MM will not even commit to agreeing with Harrit et al that samples a-d are the same material because he knows that to do so must lead him to conclude that Millette's samples are the same stuff. It's a weird situation whereby MM agrees with the false conclusion of thermite, but refuses to agree that the samples a-d in the Harrit paper are the same even though that's what the authors of the paper rightly conclude.

The same reasoning led Senenmut to conclude that the samples are the same material.

Any forensic metallurgist will conclude that the material is the same stuff because the data shows that it is. It's only truthers that will rule that out because they simply cannot admit that they are wrong.

DSC is a worthless test because other methods have categorically proven what the material consists of. Only in lala trutherland is this conclusion not accepted even though the data is there in black and white.

Notice how no truther will ever analyse or challenge Millette's data. Notice how none of them even discuss these results.

Take the time to go through Millette's data and check it against Harrit et al. Simple pattern recognition is all that is needed.

This one shows that these 4 samples are the same material:

And this one tells you what that material is

If you are still unconvinced because you think that the material cannot be the same then you have to show how Millette's method is wrong and why this is - Remember he followed Harrit et al's method of separation and used Harrit's EDX spectra as the criteria for making sure the material was the same (along with visual and SEM microscopy)

Just because he didn't perform a pointless DSC test doesn't mean you can just chuck his data in the bin and ignore it like truthers do.

Is this

not the same as this

Or how is this

different from

Or how the hexagonal platelet EDX spectra in Harrit

differs from the spectra from Millette

Now I could go on and on and on and on and on showing you and the truthers the similarities between the data in Harrit et al and the data in Millette's progress report - conclusive proof that samples a-d are the same as the vast majority of samples Millette separated and analysed.

It will make zero difference to the truthers like MM. Even though it's staring them in black and white on the page they will never accept it. Never.

The similarities can be spotted by a young child because the only tool being used is pattern recognition. i.e. does this look like this? Truthers have such ingrained cognitive dissonance that even though the eyes see that the data proves that the material is the same they will simply refuse to acknowledge it.

Notice how none of them ever quote Millette in any topic even when discussing his data. Note how none of the truthers ever post a picture or a graph from Millette or analyse any of his data. Note how truthers always evade and never answer the simplest of questions.

This should tell you everything you need to know.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

pgimeno: I'm aware of this and I've mentioned it

Oystein:
Gash et al showed us, how the really rapid nanothermitic reaction curves should look like (Fig. 6):

Well, this peak at ca 550 degrees C is pretty sharp! We see genuine nanothermite ignition/burning here! (not those boring very broad peaks from Bentham paper) But it was not recorded by DSC, but by DTA (differential thermal analysis) instead. Here, the increase of temperature is recorded, which is what we want to know in this respect....

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
And back to my thinking about increase of temperature during burning tiny chips of thermite.

Following Greening's calculations, it is easy to roughly calculate the temperature reached in bulk thermite charge (considering adiabatic conditions, so as there are no heat losses).

Let's have (for simplicity) the cube of thermite 1x1x1 m, i.e. 1 m³
Such cube would have mass 4500 kg.

According to Greening, : "The energy released by 1 kg of a stoichiometric mixture of ferric oxide and aluminium undergoing this thermite reaction is 3988 kJ/kg" (roughly 4000 kJ/kg[/I]).
Hence, the overal heat released by thermitic reaction of this cube would be 4000x4500 = 18 000 000 kJ.

Heat capacity of aluminium is 0.9 kJ/kg, heat capacity of hematite is 0.78 kJ/kg, therefore heat capacity of thermite should be around 0.8 kJ/kg (iron oxide prevails in thermite by weight)

Therefore, heat necessary for the heating of 1 kg of thermite by one degree should be ca 0.8 kJ.
Hence, heat necessary for heating of 4500 kg of thermite by one degree should be ca 0.8x4500 = 3600 kJ

Therefore, finally: the temperature increase caused by complete thermitic reaction in this cube should be 18 000 000 divided by 3600, which equals to 5000 degrees (C or K, whatever, the difference is almost negligible).

Although this value sounds comparatively realistic for bulk thermite, it has absolutely nothing common with the conditions for the tiny thermitic chips with the thickness of mere 20 microns. And I fear that such a system, burning tiny chips, with sharp temperature changes and very high heat losses by radiation and convection is too complex for some calculations (at least to me)...
Here, some direct measurements (recording of real temperatures of chip e.g. by DTA mentioned above) would be much better

(Note: as in the case of MCC (microscale combustion calorimetry) I mentioned several days ago, DTA is again more suitable for some specific task than DSC. But truthers would never think so, since according to them, all badly chosen methodology in Bentham paper must be scrupulously followed in any falsification of the paper.)

 

[Oystein]

Ivan, again: The principle of the DSC method is premised on keeping temperature of specimen equal to that of the inert control sample. If the temperature of the specimen exceed that of the inert control sample by a significant margin (anything > 1°), that immedieatly renders the DSC curve invalid.

Harrit e.al. did and do not know that.

When Tillotson and Gash did their DSC test, they presumed it would be valid. Gash has in the meantime qualified that somewhat - he thinks that DSC is not a very good method to measure the heat if such a reaction, and I think part of the reason is that indeed they can't control the temperature as tightly.

However, keeping deviations low enough (say, <1 °C), and having them run away to >800 °C are massively different things.

The truth is somewhere in the large middle. So while I don't have absolute proof that temperature of the sample in the DSC never exceeded 1500 °C or even 1000 °C, everything speaks for that assumption.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Thanks, Sunstealer. This your last post (response to jtl) is something which should be even published elsewhere, not only here. Perhaps on ScrewLooseChange?

Although I indeed know all this stuff quite well, your comparison of micrographs of chips cross-sections from Bentham paper and Millette's report is something new, and very telling

You wrote: "Truthers will never accept any result that doesn't conclude thermite. Even if Harrit and Jones came out and said it is a fake paper and a hoax they would still believe that thermite was found."

Do you really think that "nanothermite meme" would survive even such event? The deep belief of nanotruthers seems to be quite tightly bound to some nanothermite proponents like Jones, Harrit or Ryan...