"Molten Metal" at Ground Zero

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Evidence please, and please forward your evidence to Dr. Jones, he has been requesting evidence of molten metal from fires for a year now. The metal observed and photographed at GZ cannot be aluminum, as it is observed to be solid at orange temps, and dripping liquid at light yellow temps.

"The ceiling fan was there, where that thing is hanging down," Hales said, pointing. "That was the microwave," he added, pointing at another mass of melted metal.

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Fire destroys big hangar at Greenville Municipal Airport. It was fully involved when fire-trucks arrived around 9:30 a.m. yesterday, and took an hour to put out. Flames were fed by aviation fuel, and literally melted metal as they wrecked four small planes and a car. Firefighters and passersby pushed eight planes out of harm’s way. Nobody was hurt. Fire chief didn’t make a dollar estimate for the damage, but those aircraft aren’t cheap and it’s definitely more than a million dollars. Investigation may take a few days, partly because nobody noticed the fire until it was well along.

source

But an hour later, the mobile home he shared with his wife, Chasity, and their three children, ages 11, 9 and 7, was little more than a smoldering hunk of melted metal.

source

A wedding band would incorporate the melted metal blobs from the machinery of the grandfather clock which they burned last night.

source

 

[Nevermore]

Nevermore, welcome to the forum, If I havent already said so ...

(in reference to INUS conditions) ... ummm ya okie dokie...moving on ...

Thanks for the welcome and the response.

I was reading a bit about causality today and came across the concept of an INUS condition. I think it applies well to the discussion here.

From Wikipedia:

J.L. Mackie argues that usual talk of "cause", in fact, refers to INUS conditions (insufficient and non-redundant parts of unnecessary but sufficient causes). For example; consider the short circuit as a cause of the house burning down. Consider the collection of events, the short circuit, the proximity of flammable material, and the absence of firefighters. Considered together these are unnecessary but sufficient to the house's destruction (since many other collection of events certainly could have destroyed the house). Within this collection; the short circuit is an insufficient but non-redundant part (since the short circuit by itself would not cause the fire, but the fire will not happen without it). So the short circuit is an INUS cause of the house burning down.

Loss Leader seemed to imply that this was a simple cause and effect. The plane hit the building causing the building to fall. If he had suggested that the plane was the start of a causal chain of events leading to the building collapse I wouldn't have sought clarification.

Based on your explanation, the NIST report seems to maintain the following (drastically simplified) causal chain of events:

- Plane impact
- Severing of support columns
- Removal of fireproofing
- Multi-level fires (caused by jet fuel and office material) on the upper floors
- Loss of structural integrity
- Collapse

If we think of these as INUS conditions, is it safe to assume that all of them were necessary to cause the collapse? Had less fire proofing been dislodged or if the floors hit were empty would the collapse had happened?

One last note: I'm not trying to put forward any kind of theory or suggest how tax dollars should be spent. I'm trying to understand what happened. As I said before, I've read a lot of the "conspiracy" theories surrounding 9-11 and I'm here trying to sort out information from disinformation. So far, the links some have posted in response to my questions have been extremely valuable to my continuing education. For that and your patience I thank you.

 

[LashL]

The metal observed and photographed at GZ cannot be aluminum, as it is observed to be solid at orange temps, and dripping liquid at light yellow temps.

It is not accurate to say that the molten metal cannot be aluminum, based on its colour, unless you assume (erroneously) that the conditions at the site of the fires at GZ were laboratory controlled conditions, which they clearly were not.

 

[T.A.M.]

TS:

Have you read the PM book (I doubt it). They interviewed Bazant, and Magnusson, and Loiseaux, and many others.

What would be the relevance of studying the collapse once the initiation of said collapse had begun. For the 8 millionth time, once the collapse was initiated, the building structure below the impact floors offered virtually no resistance to the falling portion above it, due to the overwhelming energy involved as the top portion came crashing down.

Now that is from NIST (severe paraphrasing) but I am not a demolition expert, unlike you TS, right?

TAM

 

[Nevermore]

Am I crazy but has no one mentioned what is, probably, the leading cause of heat in the WTC pile? Friction?

The gravitaional energy of the WTC went somewhere, and a very high percentage of it likely was converted to heat via friction. The delta in grav. energy, once the pile stopped moving, was converted almost entirely into heat, plus the chemical energy expended in fires from combustibles and fuel.

I'm not really an expert, but extremely high frictional forces and extremely high pressures at the bottom of a collapsing building would seem to be reach ungodly temperatures. That is, after all, how magma is made.

This is a very interesting hypothesis Anti-sophist.

 

[T.A.M.]

Thanks for the welcome and the response.

I was reading a bit about causality today and came across the concept of an INUS condition. I think it applies well to the discussion here.

From Wikipedia:

Loss Leader seemed to imply that this was a simple cause and effect. The plane hit the building causing the building to fall. If he had suggested that the plane was the start of a causal chain of events leading to the building collapse I wouldn't have sought clarification.

Based on your explanation, the NIST report seems to maintains the following (drastically simplified) causal chain of events:

- Plane impact
- Severing of support columns
- Removal of fireproofing
- Multi-level fires (caused by jet fuel and office material) on the upper floors
- Loss of structural integrity
- Collapse

If we think of these as INUS conditions, is it safe to assume that all of them were necessary to cause the collapse? Had less fire proofing been dislodged or if the floors hit were empty would the collapse had happened?

One last note: I'm not trying to put forward any kind of theory or suggest how tax dollars should be spent. I'm trying to understand what happened. As I said before, I've read a lot of the "conspiracy" theories surrounding 9-11 and I'm here trying to sort out information from disinformation. So far, the links some have posted in response to my questions have been extremely valuable to my continuing education. For that and your patience I thank you.

Thank you for the clarification of your points and what you were having problems with.

carry on.

TAM

 

[T.A.M.]

oh and a comment on the molten metal color, before TS brings it up, as I know he will.

wrt to color, Experts clarify that contaminants in the metals can change their colors when in the molten state. In particular, organics and plastics can have this effect, causing molten aluminum to appear orange to red, instead of its usual whiteish yellow.

Now I know S.Jones and the gang did some "experiments" which they showed videos of on the "Scholars" site. They added in a few wood chips and bits of plastic, and imagine, the bits disappeared, and no color change was seen in the molten aluminum.

#1. The only evidence he provides for us is a quick video of the molten aluminum well after the contaminants are added, and surprise the metal is still near yellow white. I guess we are to take his word that he added in the items.

#2. it is a poorly designed "test" or "experiment" as it is miles from replicating the conditions seen at GZ. A better approach would have been to take a huge pile of wood chips, and into the pile dump the molten aluminum, and see what color change occured.

But he is a scientist, and should have known better, so why didn't he.

TAM

 

[Anti-sophist]

I am 99% positive that "solid concrete" doesn't contain any more or any less potential energy than "powdered concrete". As such, ALL energy used to puliverize concerete is released as heat, after doing the "work" of pulverizing. This heat has never been factored into any calculation done on this topic by any CTers that I've ever seen.

Again, there was ~800 billion joules, per tower, give or take, in gravitational energy. Virtually _all_ of this energy ends up as heat... without any (reasonable) upper restriction on temperature. If my math is right, and it's very quick and dirty, if only 1% of that energy is put into 20 tons of steel, it'll all melt.

Other sources of energy beyond jet fuel:
Combustibles (in oxygen).. everpresent in office buildings
Highly reactive powered/liquid aluminum (in the presense of iron oxide = thermite)
Kinetic energy of the planes (4 billion joules, or so, per tower)

 

[CurtC]

I'm not really an expert, but extremely high frictional forces and extremely high pressures at the bottom of a collapsing building would seem to be reach ungodly temperatures. That is, after all, how magma is made.

I don't think that's right. Temperatures inside the Earth's mantle are hot because of radioactive decay of stuff like uranium, and the slow rate that the generated heat can escape.

I am 99% positive that "solid concrete" doesn't contain any more or any less potential energy than "powdered concrete".

Actually, I think that you have to spend energy to break the inter-molecular bonds in the concrete, therefore that energy is not available as heat. I think.

 

[Hellbound]

"Truth"Seeker:

Arkan and LashL have answered your questions to me, and I'll stand by their responses as if they were my own.

"Dr." Jones has been shown evidence of molten metal in fires, he simply ignores anything that doesn't support his preconcieved idea of what happened.

In any case, your coloration doesn't fit molten steel, either. Just thought I'd point that out.

 

[DavidJames]

False on 2 counts David

1. NIST report is indeed very detailed on the jet impacts and fires. But contains zero detail on the behavior of the "collapses". Zip. Nada.

The fact that you aren't able to understand the report doesn't mean the data isn't available. I agree the report does not address the asinine ideas CTists like you pull out of your butt. Here is a link, tell me exactly what you think is missing and why. But don't bother if the why is you looking at a picture or video and thinking something doesn't look right to you.
http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-6D.pdf

2. The professional organizations and structural engineers who cooked up NIST are most certainly NOT talking. I would love dearly to get Bazant or any number of guys to answer a few questions.

I'm calling your bluff, show me evidence of an intelligent and honest attempt at getting information please along with the response.

Hey IgnoreInconvientTruth1234, still waiting for you to backup your claims.

 

[Loss Leader]

Loss Leader seemed to imply that this was a simple cause and effect. The plane hit the building causing the building to fall. If he had suggested that the plane was the start of a causal chain of events leading to the building collapse I wouldn't have sought clarification.

Based on your explanation, the NIST report seems to maintain the following (drastically simplified) causal chain of events:

- Plane impact
- Severing of support columns
- Removal of fireproofing
- Multi-level fires (caused by jet fuel and office material) on the upper floors
- Loss of structural integrity
- Collapse

If we think of these as INUS conditions, is it safe to assume that all of them were necessary to cause the collapse? Had less fire proofing been dislodged or if the floors hit were empty would the collapse had happened?

One last note: I'm not trying to put forward any kind of theory or suggest how tax dollars should be spent. I'm trying to understand what happened.

If all you were saying, Nevermore, is that I took a logical shortcut by saying the towers collapsed because the planes hit them, I agree. I think, however, that it is just nitpicking. Every statement made takes logical shortcuts and contains unstated assumptions. If such weren't allowed, our conversations would all quickly bog down as we would have to explain, for example, the workings of an internal combustion engine every time we give directions to a restaurant.

What I meant to imply was that the planes hitting the towers were the only purposeful human actions that day that led to the collapse of the towers. But I don't think you agree. I think you were being disingenuous in claiming that all you were demanding of me was logical clarity. The reason I think this is that you sai:

I've been led to believe that 9-11 was the first time in history where two steel framed buildings completely collapsed after an initial, non-catastrophic impact by a plane and subsequent short duration fire.

You catagorize the impacts as "non-catastrophic" and the fires as "short duration." You also state that the towers were "steel framed." All three of these are qualifications which minimize the effects of the collisions. And all three are not supported by evidence.

1) The towers were made of steel but they were not built using the common steel skeletal construction - instead the floors were tethered to a central core with the external steel facing supporting little of the buildings' weight.

2) The term "catastrophy" is defined as "a sudden and widespread disaster." Your statement that the airplane strikes were non-catastrophic makes a mockery of the evidence. They were sudden, their effects were widespread and the results were disasterous.

3) Your phrase "short duration" is a relative one but you still use it disingenuously. The fires burned from the moment the planes hit until the towers fell. They did not go out shortly after the crashes or even one minute before the towers fell. They burned, in fact, for as long as the possibly could have. There was nothing "short" about their duration.

I may have taken a logical shortcut. You, however, attempted to color terms and redefine the debate by introducing equivocation into the vocabulary of the debate. And I find that a far more purposeful and insidious reasoning error.

 

[Nevermore]

...On the other hand, it is not impossible that a building hit by a large passenger jet would burn for an hour and a half before collapsing from the point of the impact down. There was cause and there was effect. It obviously satisfied the demands of logic and there was no reason to go digging around for any further explanation.

I just want to bring your attention back to the part of your post I was replying to. In my opinion, everything I said was a valid and unbiased consideration of causality and how it applied to your claims that "... there was cause and there was effect ..." and "... it obviously satisfied the demands of logic ..."

It seems rather hypocritial of you to brush off your statements as a legitimate "shortcut" and to accuse me of "nitpicking" and then proceed to demand more rigorous standards of me. I have attempted to communicate my thoughts in a precise manner and was not trying to be disingenuous or insulting in my post. I am genuinely interested to know your opinion of how you perceive the chain of events which occured and how they fit into the causation models I've posted (necessary, sufficient, INUS or something I haven't considered).

Just to be clear:

- I used the term "steel framed" in reference to the building because it was not framed with wood, concrete or some other material. Many houses built in the U.S. are "wood framed" meaning the load bearing structure is constructed of wood on which sheet rock is hung. Out of curiosity, do you agree with this description from Wikipedia?

To solve the problem of wind sway or vibration in the construction of the towers, chief engineer Leslie Robertson took a then unusual approach — instead of bracing the buildings corner-to-corner or using internal walls, the towers were essentially hollow steel tubes surrounding a strong central core. The 208 feet (63.4 m) wide facade was, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39 inch (100 cm) centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core took the majority of the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure was built by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient area, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. The core supported the weight of the entire building and the outer shell containing 240 vertical steel columns called Vierendeel trusses around the outside of the building, which were bound to each other using ordinary steel trusses. In addition, 10,000 dampers were included in the structure. With a strong shell and core such as this, the exterior walls could be simply light steel and concrete. With the massive core and lightweight shell for structural integrity, Robertson created a tower that was extremely light for its size. This method of construction also meant that the twin towers had the world's highest load-bearing walls.

- I didn't use the word "catastrophy" I said "non-catastrophic." I used this word in the sense of "a final event or conclusion" in an attempt to differentiate between a plane destroying a building immediately on impact and an event where a plane struck a building and the collapse happened later. The term itself could certainly be used as a discussion point for causality and, if you think this is the case, I'd love to hear your thoughts. For example, if the plane is an INUS condition, would the towers have fallen without the impact damage?

- I used "short duration" as a discription for your stated "...would burn for an hour and a half before collapsing..." This is certainly a relative term but I assumed you would make that connection and considered it appropriate.

So, in my future posts am I required to explain "...the workings of an internal combustion engine..." every time I give directions to a restaurant? If so, expect to be held to the same standard.

Cheers

 

[Muckar-duva]

How many times has Jones revamped his paper?

 

[Gravy]

Based on your explanation, the NIST report seems to maintain the following (drastically simplified) causal chain of events:

- Plane impact
- Severing of support columns
- Removal of fireproofing
- Multi-level fires (caused by jet fuel and office material) on the upper floors
- Loss of structural integrity
- Collapse

If we think of these as INUS conditions, is it safe to assume that all of them were necessary to cause the collapse? Had less fire proofing been dislodged or if the floors hit were empty would the collapse had happened?

The NIST report says that the three necessary and interdependent factors leading to collapse were structural damage from the impact, loss of fire resistive material from the structural steel, and fire. It says that if one of these elements was absent, collapse probably would not have ensued.

 

[Kent1]

How many times has Jones revamped his paper?

I've lost count. But its in the dozens. He just updated his latest a few days ago.


If you want to see the VERY first draft version, it's here.
http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/WTCCollapsesDueToControlledDemolitionByStevenJones.htm

Try not to laugh to hard.

 

[Muckar-duva]

Thank you very much for the link, Kent. [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT]

the Popular Mechanics article on this
subject, authored by B. Chertoff (a cousin of M.
Chertoff who heads the Homeland Security Dept.)

You're right, it does induce some hearty laughter.

 

[Gravy]

False on 2 counts David

1. NIST report is indeed very detailed on the jet impacts and fires. But contains zero detail on the behavior of the "collapses". Zip. Nada.

2. The professional organizations and structural engineers who cooked up NIST are most certainly NOT talking. I would love dearly to get Bazant or any number of guys to answer a few questions.

I would love dearly to see a properly peer-reviewed article in an engineering journal that supports your position. It's been five years, TS. Can you point me to one?

And can you explain why an engineer should answer your questions, when you are unable to answer basic questions about your own theories on this forum? Why the double standard?

 

[Kent1]

I would love dearly to see a properly peer-reviewed article in an engineering journal that supports your position. It's been five years, TS. Can you point me to one?

And can you explain why an engineer should answer your questions, when you are unable to answer basic questions about your own theories on this forum? Why the double standard?

He's wrong on both accounts

Page 319 9.3.3 "Events Following Collapse Initiation" of the NIST report has some information on the collapse behavior.
As for number two I have spoken with a member of the NIST, FEMA and Bazant. I guess I'm just lucky.

 

[Muckar-duva]

Has Jones ever replied to the vast critique he's gotten?