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The Truth of Thermite & Leapfrogging

grandmastershek

Graduate Poster
grandmastershek
Joined
Nov 2, 2009
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Hey guys I am new so I apologize if it's repetitive. I was just arguing with a guy on youtube and some thoughts came to me and I was wondering if anyone had further information or clarification. Thanks in advance.

Let me first say I am not very "hard science" savvy (I am an MSEd grad student though), so I am sorry if my terminology is not entirely correct or my statements are entirely incorrect. That being said I found some interesting inconsistencies in the argument of the whole thermite vs nano thermite position of the TM.

I remember a few years ago it was claimed the reason we couldn't hear explosions is because thermite burns and doesn't explode. However, it became quite apparent that thermite itself was not viable. Now we have moved to NT. Well they claim that NT is viable and it explosive properties would make viable as a source, though I know Jones & Harrit have both said conventional explosives were used as well. We need an explanation of quiet explosions again. Also, I notice truthers are still talking about the excavated molten material. Wouldn't it stand to reason that if NT is explosive that it wouldn't yield molten material? At least hours after the fact? Wasn't it the conclusion that the continuing thermite reaction caused a continuing heating and that lead to pools of molten metal? If NT is explosive wouldn't that prevent the molten effect? Moreover, don't conventional explosives "burn" through as well and not leave molten material? If that is the case, shouldn't that be a regular effect of a CD?

Thanks for you patience and reading.
 
Speaking as another complete layman:

First of all, nano-thermite is a made-up thing. Basically, when everyone pointed out to the "truthers" how thermite simply didn't have the properties they were claiming it had (and how it would be impossible to plant it the way the "truthers" claimed it was planted), someone made up the term "nano-thermite" which of course could have any properties they wanted in order to support their foregone conclusions. Made-up materials are pretty handy that way.

Of course, as you noticed, these new properties somehow conflicted with what they claimed was a result of the properties of the regular thermite. Which isn't surprising, since internal consistency is never a strong point when you've made your conclusion and try to make (up) all the facts fitting in.
 
As I understand it Nano Thermite isnt "made up" its just absolutely not anything like how Jones or Harrit claim it is.
 
Edx said:
As I understand it Nano Thermite isnt "made up" its just absolutely not anything like how Jones or Harrit claim it is.
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Fair enough. To be more accurate, the nano-thermite in the "truther" dreams is a made-up substance which just happens to be be named after something that exists in the real world.
 
Edx said:
As I understand it Nano Thermite isnt "made up" its just absolutely not anything like how Jones or Harrit claim it is.
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Yeah..I thought they referenced actual papers on the subject to make their research appear like it's not total nonsense.

Update...I was on a We Are Change LA channel and they banned me shortly after bringing these issues up and the differences between a CD & the WTC...shocking I know.
 
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grandmastershek said:
Hey guys I am new so I apologize if it's repetitive....etc
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Refer your profs to this board. It's safe you will earn an A+ because you understand the difference between reality and "completely made-up ****."

Trust me, as one on the other side of the hiring parallelagram, that counts for something.
 
Hours after the fact? The troofers claim there were tons of molton metal weeks after the fact. They have yet to explain what version of thermite causes that.
 
Hawk one said:
Speaking as another complete layman:

First of all, nano-thermite is a made-up thing. Basically, when everyone pointed out to the "truthers" how thermite simply didn't have the properties they were claiming it had (and how it would be impossible to plant it the way the "truthers" claimed it was planted), someone made up the term "nano-thermite" which of course could have any properties they wanted in order to support their foregone conclusions. Made-up materials are pretty handy that way.

Of course, as you noticed, these new properties somehow conflicted with what they claimed was a result of the properties of the regular thermite. Which isn't surprising, since internal consistency is never a strong point when you've made your conclusion and try to make (up) all the facts fitting in.
Click to expand...

Nano-thermite is real, but as Truthers know absolutely nothing about it and only picked up on it (following the dismal failure of their claims about traditional thermite) because it sounded high-tech and nefarious, they've pretty much treated it as if it were made up, viz. assigning it properties it doesn't have (explosive, high-energy), in effect making it into an unfalsifiable panchreston.
 
JamesB said:
Hours after the fact? The troofers claim there were tons of molton metal weeks after the fact. They have yet to explain what version of thermite causes that.
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Eh...I was just trying to be reasonable. I know that's not something truthers are very good at, but I am trying to understand it while maintaining some form of sanity. Catch 22 I guess.
 
Slayhamlet said:
Nano-thermite is real, but as Truthers know absolutely nothing about it and only picked up on it (following the dismal failure of their claims about traditional thermite) because it sounded high-tech and nefarious, they've pretty much treated it as if it were made up, viz. assigning it properties it doesn't have (explosive, high-energy), in effect making it into an unfalsifiable panchreston.
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Sharks with friggin laser beams!
 
Welcome to the forum. Just to answer a couple of specific questions:

grandmastershek said:
Wouldn't it stand to reason that if NT is explosive that it wouldn't yield molten material? At least hours after the fact? Wasn't it the conclusion that the continuing thermite reaction caused a continuing heating and that lead to pools of molten metal?
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Insofar as the truthers have a theory at all, their suggestion appeared initially to be that the molten iron produced by the thermite reaction heated the steel and melted it. This contradicts the commonly cited claim that the severing of the columns had to be very precisely timed for the collapses to occur as they did (which isn't true anyway), because thermal processes are simply too slow to time this precisely. The suggestion as to how NT was used are even vaguer, but even more NT would be required than regular thermite to melt a given volume of steel (because the energy yield of NT is only about 40% of large grain formulations), hence NT would produce even more molten iron. Since no evidence of re-solidified molten iron has ever been found, that makes NT even less viable as a candidate for demolition.

grandmastershek said:
If NT is explosive wouldn't that prevent the molten effect?
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Uncertain. NT is faster burning, but doesn't generate gases, so it won't explode in the same way as something like TNT, RDX or C4. Additives could be included to generate gas, but that would have the effect of scattering the molten metal away from the column to be cut, as you surmise. If there weren't any additives, then there would be no significant difference between the effects of NT and regular thermite on the column.

Quite simply, as you've already worked out, none of the thermite hypotheses make any sense on any level whatsoever.

Dave
 
Thermite burns extremely brightly. If thermite, of whatever stripe, was present in the towers in ton quantities, setting it off all at once would have produced light that would have been visible from the freaking MOON.

So, why wasn't there a big freaking flash of light just before the Towers collapsed? No Truther has ever even tried to answer this question.
 
Wouldn't it be fun to introduce a new element for discussion into the truther forums, like say Red Mercury? Then watch them fall over themselves trying to integrate it into their other wacko theories. Just imagine them trying to prove that Ground Zero was radioactive for months afterwards due to the effects of said mythical substance.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, I say.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Quite simply, as you've already worked out, none of the thermite hypotheses make any sense on any level whatsoever.

Dave
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Is that so?

Kindly tell us, Dave, what you think would happen if 3.7 mm layer of non-explosive nano-thermite was placed on the outside of one side of a load-bearing column (say loaded to 50% of capacity), and then 2 inches of vermiculite fire-proofing was placed around that, and the nanothermite ignited. (I don't remember what column thickness I used for my 3.7 mm calculation. Figure a 'typical' thickness of columns at the impact level in WTC 1).

The steel will melt in the vicinity of 1370 C, the vermiculite at about 1350 C, but the thermal conductivity of steel is about 100X that of the vermiculite. The thermite reaction can reach 2500 C.

I am describing what I call a slow CD scenario.
 
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metamars said:
<snip>.
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3 mm of any thermite would fall short of the penetration threshold for the column. You can get the temperatures, but the reaction would require time to effect a complete penetration of the column. If the reaction runs out of fuel before that happens, then no cut.
 
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