By a lucky coincidence the ratio of the weight of a fully loaded Hummer and a six-pack of cold beer in aluminum cans is not unlike that of our plane and building example. There is also a happy similarity in their construction, aluminum v. steel. A frosty sixer of Bud tallboys is about .069% of the weight of a Hummer. The higher ratio gives us a margin of error. It’s as if the plane were over twice as heavy as it really was and allows us to use the entire six-pack, which I always recommend.
Imagine now, as unlikely as it may seem, that I suspend a perfectly good six-pack above a highway at the grille height of the Hummer. Let’s even imagine that the cans are filled with jet fuel instead of beer. Let’s also put an Arab who has never driven before in the Hummer bearing down on the six-pack at 500 miles an hour. (Do not try this with your Hummer.)
If we believe the official explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center, the following is what we would have to believe would happen next to our Hummer.
The Hummer hits the six-pack, which, according to Newton’s third law is exactly the same as the six-pack hitting the Hummer. The jet fuel ignites in a spectacular fireball which engulfs the Hummer and burns furiously but not long. The six-pack passes through the grille, the motor, the firewall, and the seats and shoots out through the back door. All traces of the six-pack vanish. No sign of aluminum is found anywhere on the grille or inside the Hummer. Nor are there any pieces of beer can on the road around the point of impact. Even the pull tabs are gone.
The Hummer careens forward in a billowing cloud of smoke for about another half hour then suddenly disintegrates into a pile of nuts, bolts and smoldering dust that you could hide under a beach umbrella. No piece of the wreckage is larger than a door knob.
Officials find the Arab’s undamaged driver’s license on top of the pile.
Do you think Newton would buy this story?
