Tower Collapse Questions for Critical Thinkers

Ragnarok said:
Do you really believe that the best computer in the world couldn't have mapped or modelled what happened after collapse initiation?
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Why do you think air crash investigators find out why a plane crashed but don't bother with detailed analysis into what happened to it after it hit the ground?
 
Ragnarok said:
It's not the engineers that would have been doing the modelling; they just set the parameters. If a computer couldn't do it, it's because they likely didn't apply enough computer to the task. Or didn't even attempt to, which is curious seeing how inquisitive scientists are meant to be!

Do you really believe that the best computer in the world couldn't have mapped or modelled what happened after collapse initiation?
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In order to model the exact dynamics of a building collapse, at the level of predicting where each beam goes, the engineers would have to include among the "parameters":

- The precise weight distribution on every floor such as where each tenant placed banks of filing cabinets and how full they were.

- The dimensions and placement of any material that could locally stiffen a bit of the framework -- this might include the layout of aluminum-framed drywall partitions on each floor, where each elevator was in its shaft when the collapse began, even whether individual doors were open or closed.

- Any local variations in the precise quality and dimensions of the steel members, including surface flaws, internal cracks, and tiny amounts out of spec and out of true that even though within contracted tolerances could still affect the outcome.

- The exact materials, routing, and attachment of all cable and plumbing runs. (For instance, at some point in the event that could make the difference between a large broken-off floor panel immediately falling through a void below, or dangling for half a second from several 200-conductor telephone trunk cables before falling -- which changes the whole subsequent sequence of events.)

Where do you suppose your hypothetical investigating engineers mere data-entry technicians get this information?

Do you really claim that academia has either the ability to obtain all of this information that no longer exists once the building has collapsed, or the even more remarkable ability to model a chaotic event in precise detail without precise details of the initial conditions? All while lacking the basic competence to make judgments such as whether a given building would/would not collapse under the general known conditions, that are supposedly obvious to a high school student?

Respectfully,
Myriad
 
Ragnarok said:
It's not the engineers that would have been doing the modelling; they just set the parameters. If a computer couldn't do it, it's because they likely didn't apply enough computer to the task. Or didn't even attempt to, which is curious seeing how inquisitive scientists are meant to be!

Do you really believe that the best computer in the world couldn't have mapped or modelled what happened after collapse initiation?
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Or the software didn't exist. Computers can't solve problems until engineers write the software.
 
Ragnarok said:
And so, NIST, the brightest and the best, charged to investigate the towers for use in improving future building's safety standards, hasn't even a cursory interest in how the building behaved all the way down? No thoughts at all for how they might save anyone in a similar situation in the future who might make it two thirds of the way down and then have a building collapse on them. And you don't find that surprising?
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They were tasked with finding out how the towers collapsed and that's what they did. The exact details of what happened after initiation is irrelevent beside the fact that global collapse insues. And even if they did model the collapses, the exact details wouldn't have been the same as happened in real life as the events were highly chaotic with many, many variables.
 
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Ragnarok said:
And so, NIST, the brightest and the best, charged to investigate the towers for use in improving future building's safety standards, hasn't even a cursory interest in how the building behaved all the way down? No thoughts at all for how they might save anyone in a similar situation in the future who might make it two thirds of the way down and then have a building collapse on them. And you don't find that surprising?
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No, because sensible people realize that skyscrapers without a concrete core have no hope of arresting a top-down collapse like the WTC towers.

There is nothing that one could place on, say, the 50th floor that would somehow stop a gravity-driven sledgehammer of 50,000 or 120,000 tons.

The best way to prevent such a problem from even arising in the first place would be to construct skyscrapers with concrete cores (as most are), which would lesson the likelihood of such a structural failure - as it did in the Madrid fire of 2005.

The potential flaws in the WTC design were recognized long before 9/11.

Although if you want to read an impressive paper on the collapses themselves I'd recommended Frank Greening's work
 
Ragnarok said:
Why, do you think if it had been a great design, everybody would have been copying it?
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It was a great design when it came to expanding floor space.

Not so great when it came to dealing with airliner impacts and fires, sadly.

If I recall correctly, it was also much more expensive than most.
 
Ragnarok said:
Now that's interesting! How well recognised?
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Well, considering these 'flaws' were really only of relevance when nearly fully loaded, large passenger jets were rammed into them at 500+ miles per hour, I think it's safe to say these 'flaws' were well outside the normally expected range of operations for the buildings.
 
CHF said:
It was a great design when it came to expanding floor space.

Not so great when it came to dealing with airliner impacts and fires, sadly.
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Well, from what I recall, they seemed to do alright for a hour each approximately. If only they hadn't had all that flammable crap lying around their offices, eh? Health And Safety should have been more on the ball there.
 
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Ragnarok said:
Well, from what I recall, they seemed to do alright for a hour each approximately. If only they hadn't had all that flammable crap lying around their offices, eh? Health And Safety should have been more on the ball there.
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Stop trying to be funny. You're not.
 

'haggling over the moment the roof line first trembles is overlooking the issue at hand.' Facepalm and groan in response. If you're going to trivialize the main issues to that degree, you're not prepared to have a serious discussion Kyle.
That's a gross misrepresentation of what actually happens at that point in the collapse. I guess you weren't able to comprehend that the whole facade 'breaths' or deforms, if you look at the close up videos. If that is not the point of global collapse, then I'm Ronald Reagan.
'it quite simply couldn't have come down like that' You haven't offered a coherent, intelligent analysis to support that statement.

Instead what you did was to immediately deflect away from the issue to an irrelevant analogy, and to fictitious molten steel.

You 'conveniently' avoid the careful analysis I did to determine the minimum time for those events, which gives us an overall time some 70% of that produced by freefall.
You focus instead on the event, which happened roughly halfway thru the progressive collapse, and lasted about 15% of the entire collapse.

In other words, you're ignoring most of the information relevant to the collapse - about 85% of it, by my count. And you don't even pause to consider that your approach is terminally flawed.

If you are brave enough to discuss the actual collapse, from start to finish, without resorting to empty analogies and deflecting to anomalies, but using mathematics and engineering, as well as accurate video analysis, that will be a big change in your approach.

I won't hold my breath.
 
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A huge plane with, what, 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, crashes into a tall building and starts a large fire. The tall building relies on steel pillars for strength, and those pillars weaken in the heat, buckle, cannot support the mass above, and precipitate a collapse.

The building does not collapse like a brick on top of wet sand. Instead, the huge upper mass gets accelerated more or less vertically by gravity. The huge force necessary to redirect the direction of the massive collapse could possibly indicate foul play if it were observed. Efforts to misdirect the argument and suggest that the lack of this mystery force is evidence of foul play suggest an inferior intellect has too much time on their hands.

Accordingly, the thesis is rejected, stamped with "EPIC FAIL" and inserted into the shredder. Nothing to see here, move along.
 
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