Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative*?

[sylvan8798]

Don't we all?

No, I am not an expert or even an advanced level student into all the matters relevant into 1,000+ tall buildings. Not to be ignored, I've asked questions about the WTC collapses for years now and no one, not even when I've contacted official channels, could answer my questions. All I hear is a giant vacuuming noise where what I see hasn't been translated into words yet I.e. what's happenin' in the building as I watch it collapse.



I'm trying as hard as I can given the resources and limited contacts I have to use, man. But I am tryin' here.

Perhaps the kind of indepth understanding you think you are looking for requires a lot of background knowledge which you do not currently possess? There is a cure for that. All you have is time. This thing isn't going anywhere. You can study physics, statics, strength of materials, structural analysis, steel design, more structural analysis, concrete design, and yet more structural analysis, until you have gained a background that some of US possess. Plenty of resources available for the study of these subjects.

At that point you can then revisit the explanations given by the many experts who have studied the collapses and see if they make more sense to you. No need to take our word for it, but at the same time you should not expect US to be able to fill in your background gaps.

Or you could take chrismohr's advice.

 

[JayUtah]

That pretty much summarizes it. On matters of highly specialized, highly expert fields you have two rational choices: trust an expert or become an expert. What you cannot rationally do is insist that the relevant problems and questions be simplified down to whatever layman's knowledge you presently have. It especially does not accommodate whatever lay preconceptions one brings in.

 

[Jango]

And that's the problem in a nutshell. You have no idea what the collapse of a 110 storey building should look like, but you've decided for some unknown reason that what you saw wasn't what it should look like. It's something I coined the term "unevaluated inequality fallacy" to describe, a few years back. You're comparing two things - in this case, what the collapse looked like and what it should have looked like - and saying they're not the same, despite the fact that you admit you have no idea what one of them is. Can you see why that doesn't really bolster your credibility or advance your argument?

Dave

I said it looked odd, and for the aforementioned reasons.

 

[JayUtah]

I said it looked odd, and for the aforementioned reasons.

But you didn't show that those reasons were based on anything but your uninformed expectations.

 

[LSSBB]

I said it looked odd, and for the aforementioned reasons.

Shouldn't a skyscraper collapsing from fire and airplane impact look odd?

 

[Jango]

Jango, On #2 I am happy to help. Like you I have very little technical expertise. So I kept asking technical experts until I understood as well as a layperson could. Then I put out 22 YouTube videos summarizing what I learned from scientists. Much of what I got was not from Skeptic Forums like this (though some certainly did). To a very large degree, I asked scientists not engaged in the 9/11 debate. I kept getting answers consistent with the common narrative (plane crashes + unfought fires). On everything I researched. Everything. From literally hundreds of physicists, structural engineers (one NY structural engineer was even a LIHOP guy who still explained the natural collapse scenario), chemists, heavy equipment operators, metallurgists, fire chemists, demolition workers, metalworkers, architects, firefighters, the EPA guy who issued Appendix C about the sulfidized steel, Rich Lee of the RJ Lee Report, Leslie Robertson the WTC Architect)... every expert I talked to directly or read their comments supported some aspect of the common narrative with real expertise talking about their area of knowledge. Those YouTube videos are the result of years of asking and asking and asking. Here you can see what one non-expert was able to put together. Watch all of that and I promise you, if your #2 claim is correct, your mind will be at least partly changed.

Thank you for the civil and generous approach. I will take a look at yer videos.

 

[jaydeehess]

Jango, do posts 127, 131, & 133 answer your questions wrt Palmer and the fires on the 78th floor?

I note, too late for editing, that in post 127 I used the number 75 twice when it should have been 78.

 

[Brainster]

3. Both the Twin Towers and Building 7 are shown on video falling in the manner I described -- with an appearance of no resistance.

On this issue you can easily put your mind at rest without any professional knowledge. Watch any of the numerous videos of the collapse of the two towers and time them. You will see that they do not come down at anywhere near freefall acceleration. Indeed, you don't even have to time them, because you can see quite obviously there is a significant amount of material ejected outside the building footprint that is falling more rapidly than the collapse itself. Since the collapse is occurring at less than freefall acceleration, the towers are clearly providing resistance against the collapse.

 

[cjnewson88]

I can't imagine a collapsing steel and concrete skyscraper to look any different to be honest..

Sorry, but it's been 13 years, if those buildings had explosives in them it would have come out (with actual evidence) years ago. Logistically, technically, and practically speaking, it is impossible.

 

[Jango]

I can't imagine a collapsing steel and concrete skyscraper to look any different to be honest..

Sorry, but it's been 13 years, if those buildings had explosives in them it would have come out (with actual evidence) years ago. Logistically, technically, and practically speaking, it is impossible.

13 years, in the scheme of information coming out, isn't too long a period of time.

 

[beachnut]

13 years, in the scheme of information coming out, isn't too long a period of time.

If the 911 truth nuts took 13 years to earn a PhD in engineering >99.9 percent of them would stop being idiots in 911 truth. The collapse of the WTC happened in real time, cause by fire - on the spot. 13 years, you are late, 13 years late.

How long did take to break Watergate?

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

13 years, in the scheme of information coming out, isn't too long a period of time.

Jango explosives would have left visual evidence on the steel itself, shrapnel or evidence of Monrue's effect. I studied the photos of the steel in 2005 after talking to Jones, there was absolutely no evidence of any explosive or cutter charge non.
Then I looked at the videos and By the way the buildings started moving I could see a hinge was forming under the impact zones.
I could tell by the way the hinge was guiding the fall the center of mass would bring the towers down inside the funneling outer structure of the buildings.
The primary failure mode was weld fracture do to off center strikes the heated sections actual absorbed significant amounts of energy though bending the cold steel was stiffer could not bend deform so it was subject to weld failure do to off center strikes.
When I watch the buildings fall knowing the structure of the buildings, and how steel fails,
I can see how and why the structure fails like it does.

 

[Spanx]

Jango, its probably going to be easier if you say what you think should have happened.

Maybe the tops should have fallen off ? It will give people an understanding of where you're coming from.

If you say what you think rather than reciting what you have read on the net. It will save you from from looking like a fool.

 

[jaydeehess]

Falls through the path of greatest resistance straight down.https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KIo9gU.K9UVHUAAA77w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBzcmQxMWhmBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMTg-?p=building+a+house+of+cards&vid=7dc4bed32821cefcf6a6d6ca09d687c4&l=3%3A34&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608032413067182231%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DerLUfcZb5Eg&tit=CASTELLO+DI+CARTE+how+to+make+a+house+of+cards+Card+Tower&c=7&sigr=11bebho6q&sigt=11p43q7s4&age=0&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av%2Cm%3Asa&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b

 

[JayUtah]

If the 911 truth nuts took 13 years to earn a PhD in engineering...

You wouldn't need a PhD. It would be more helpful to get an undergraduate degree and then take the licensing exam for structural engineers (or the P.E. exam if your state doesn't require a separate S.E. exam). But yes, 13 years is plenty of time for conspiracy theorists to get legitimate credentials in the professions they so ignorantly ramble on about. None has, though.

Jango, its probably going to be easier if you say what you think should have happened.

Yes, but the why is more important. What does he think should have happened, and why should it have happened that way? Only then can he figure out what his broken preconceptions are. One of the big misconceptions, for example, is that high-efficiency structures should offer at least some resistance to a huge falling mass. That's the layman's intuition. The engineer's knowledge is that a severely compromised high-efficiency structural system has negligible strength.

 

[tsig]

1. I've never seen anything like the WTC collapses anywhere else so I do not have anything to compare it to.
2. ...that I have more questions than answers.

1. Then let's have a conversation. Just two dudes on the Internet, eh?

2. I'm not trying to change yer mind. I'm trying to change my mind. Want to help?

3. Both the Twin Towers and Building 7 are shown on video falling in the manner I described -- with an appearance of no resistance. A licensed individual could explain to me exactly what's happening in there but he or she cannot discount what I see as the buildings fall to the ground.

4. I'm not worried about thread clutter. I don't get quote notifications anyway, so why spread myself even further out across more-and-more threads? Or, perhaps, a thread with a wide-open OP about 9/11 is in order?

Humm...

 

[Hellbound]

That's the layman's intuition. The engineer's knowledge is that a severely compromised high-efficiency structural system has negligible strength.

This is very, very true.

For example, if you built a scale model of the twin towers using toothpicks, at say 1/100th scale, the toothpicks would be MUCH stronger, comparatively, than the steel girders in the actual structure. People don't understand that things like structural strength don't scale linearly with size. They don't understand the basic load placed on a building just from the floors and furniture. They don't understand the force the wind applies (after all, steel beams don't move in the wind when they see one) to the side of a building, which can be measured in TONS.

I've often wondered if some examples, built accurately to scale, might help the inutition. One that simply scales size, for example, and another that scales properly with strength.

 

[JayUtah]

This is very, very true.

And very, very counterintuitive. That's why we have experts. Expertise is the opposite of intuition.

For example, if you built a scale model of the twin towers using toothpicks, at say 1/100th scale, the toothpicks would be MUCH stronger, comparatively, than the steel girders in the actual structure.

That's a good analogy. I think a lot of people's intuition for structural strength in buildings comes from the standard balloon framing in residential houses, employing sawn lumber. In terms of structural efficiency (load-bearing capacity divided by dead load), the WTC towers were orders of magnitude more efficient. Balloon framing with lumber is cheap, easy to do, and has lots and lots of reserve strength. That's why we build houses that way. Building a high-rise steel structure is a totally different animal.

People don't understand that things like structural strength don't scale linearly with size.

This is why the Wrights succeeded where Langley failed. Langley was a physicist, not an engineer. He made a mistake while scaling up his gliders into a full-sized airframe. It broke.

They don't understand the basic load placed on a building just from the floors and furniture.

Or just from the floors. There was a well-publicized building collapse in (I want to say) Korea, where the investigation determined that -- astonishingly enough -- the engineers had neglected to account for dead load in the structural analysis of the design. Hence the building fell down.

They don't understand the force the wind applies (after all, steel beams don't move in the wind when they see one) to the side of a building, which can be measured in TONS.

The bending moment on the Saturn V rocket (another remarkable example of a highly efficient structural design) during a typical flight was 80,000 lb-ft. That was from steering to accommodate wind. It was actually possible for the rocket to steer so violently it would tear apart. Imagine driving a car that would literally fall apart if you swerved to avoid a pedestrian. That's the difference in structural efficiencies we're talking about.

Wind loads across a high-rise structure are heinous, especially since most of the wind activity occurs high upon the structure and has the entire height of the building as a moment arm to work with.

I've often wondered if some examples, built accurately to scale, might help the inutition. One that simply scales size, for example, and another that scales properly with strength.

The example I refer to, both for the qualitative and quantitative aspects, is standing on an empty aluminum soda can. It will bear the load of a full-sized adult until you tick the side of it in and cause it to buckle. The structure then fails completely and the full-sized adult drops at near free-fall speed.

 

[cjnewson88]

Like I said Jango, any controlled demolition theory is logistically, technically, and practically impossible.

 

[LSSBB]

Like I said Jango, any controlled demolition theory is logistically, technically, and practically impossible.

Logistically impossible is so very true. As a professional project manager and statistician, I can see no possible way such an effort could be pulled off within a year of Bush taking office, and on top of that with no sign whatsoever that the supply chain for the effort ever existed. Something would have gone wrong, and something would have been revealed. I'm not talking about supposed discrepancies, I'm talking about stray paperwork, fabrication equipment, broken or misfired detonators, blabbermouth participants, any of the things that revealed much simpler conspiracies in the past. A vastly complicated conspiracy would have so many opportunities for error, that the probability for noticible error is approximately 100%.