Tower Collapse Questions for Critical Thinkers

[WildCat]

Huh?? I'm confused. Are we talking about 7, because that is EXACTLY what it looked like up untill it fell. I mean, other than the huge multi-storey bulge, and the leaning, and the huge, unfought fires. Yeah, that is exactly what it looked like. Maybe I am confused.

You were there, but kyle has seen fuzzy low-res videos on youtube.

I think we all know that low-res youtube videos trumps all eyewitness accounts in Trutherland. Just like uneducated lay opinions trump the studies of some of the finest engineers in the world.

I don't know what color the sky is in Trutherland.

 

[Justin39640]

i would imagine its hot pink with neon green stripes
(think Dr Tim Leary)

 

[Furcifer]

Sorry little off topic...

My apologies to kyle and the OP but I have a slightly off topic question. I'm on a stupid phone and doing a search would yeild little and take forever on the forum. Could someone give me a quick comparison of the fires on 9/11 and the 3rd? or 4th floor fire from the late 80's early 90's? I seem to remember it was a small fire that was under control both by the fire supression system and the fire department. A friend recently cited this as proof of CD and I couldn't remember the actual facts aside from it being dramatically different from 9/11. Thanks.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Here's something from the Idiots guide of everything you want to know. Everything else is on loony truther sites.

 

[Furcifer]

Here's a mental exercise. Imagine only the four corners of WTC7 standing alone with no structure between. Then suddenly they all fall down together like morror images of each other. This is completely impossibe you say ? Can't possibly happen.

Okay then. Now mentally add some structure between the four corners that will cause all four corners to fall down simultaneously like mirror images of each other.

Tough, ain't it ?

Imagine instead of a table, a building. And instead of a table 2 buildins. Now imgaine 2 jet liners travelling at 400 mph smashing into the buildings with enough jet fuel and momentum to shake the buildings to their cores. Now imagine the fires burning uncontrolled for hours. Imagine a heat so hot people dared to take a 110 story pluge to escape the fires. Imagine... Oh wait, you don't have to imagine there's hundreds of vidoes for you to watch and analyze.
Imagine a group of scientists spent years going over these videos and doing a detailed report on what they saw.
Now imagine a couple of fools on the internet told you to imagine a table or a stack of pizza boxes to understand what they think might have happened.
Imagine how stupid that would be?
Oh wait...we don't have to imagine that either.
Thanks BS.

 

[BigAl]

My apologies to kyle and the OP but I have a slightly off topic question. I'm on a stupid phone and doing a search would yeild little and take forever on the forum. Could someone give me a quick comparison of the fires on 9/11 and the 3rd? or 4th floor fire from the late 80's early 90's? I seem to remember it was a small fire that was under control both by the fire supression system and the fire department. A friend recently cited this as proof of CD and I couldn't remember the actual facts aside from it being dramatically different from 9/11. Thanks.

The only fire I'm aware was in 1975 and is described in
102 Minutes by Dwyer & Flynn (p.67. Steel spans buckled)

The source may be NIST Interim Report May 2003, P.20)

 

[Furcifer]

Here's something from the Idiots guide of everything you want to know. Everything else is on loony truther sites.

Thanks Sam. I suppose I could have Wiki'd it but did not even consider doing so. So it was a 3 story from the 11th to 14th floor in the mid 70's. Almost irrelevant as I suspected, and yet my friend presented it as a tower inferno. Go figure.

 

[Furcifer]

The only fire I'm aware was in 1975 and is described in
102 Minutes by Dwyer & Flynn (p.67. Steel spans buckled)

The source may be NIST Interim Report May 2003, P.20)

You too AL, thanks. I thought there was a more significant fire in the late 80's I was overlooking. The way he presented it I thought there may have been more to it than I had remembered. Another CT victim over exaggerating... :rolleyesandpuke

 

[Sam.I.Am]

Thanks Sam. I suppose I could have Wiki'd it but did not even consider doing so. So it was a 3 story from the 11th to 14th floor in the mid 70's. Almost irrelevant as I suspected, and yet my friend presented it as a tower inferno. Go figure.

It was also mostly in the core area where it was hard to reach inside the plenums and wire chases. The fires in the office areas were knocked down rather quickly. As far as the windows being broken goes firefighters do that routinely to let the heat and soot escape. I don't see why this situation would be any different.

 

[triforcharity]

Thanks Sam. I suppose I could have Wiki'd it but did not even consider doing so. So it was a 3 story from the 11th to 14th floor in the mid 70's. Almost irrelevant as I suspected, and yet my friend presented it as a tower inferno. Go figure.

No, there was no towering inferno. As Sam also pointed out, the initial fire was contained within minutes. Fire in highrises will sometimes travel up the conduit and in chases for electrical and communications wires. Not so much anymore, as IIRC, they are required to have fire-blocks in the openings. But, that doesn't mean that it won't smolder.

A 3-alarm fire in NYC might SOUND huge, but its really not. Sometimes the third alarm is just for some extra eyes to help find the source, or for high-rise confined space specialists.

Plus, not to mention specialized equipment that is used in high-rises and electrical fires. Not every truck is equiped to handle this. Well, in NYC they are equipped for high rises, but some have different equipment.

Oh, and there wasn't millions of dollars of damage, and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, or huge acre-sized fires, or jets that crashed into them.

 

[LashL]

The May 2003 interim NIST report does discuss the fire, which occurred in February 1975 in 1WTC, and says that most of the damage was on the 11th floor, affecting some 9000 square feet. It also says that the fire caused some damage to the bar joists on floors 12 and 13; that it did not damage any of the main bar joists; and that it caused buckling of some top chord members, bridging bar joists and deck support angles.

As far as I can recall from reading about this elsewhere, the fire started on the 11th floor in an office area, spread around the 11th floor, and then spread up several floors via a utility shaft, so the fire on floors other than 11 was mostly contained within the core where that shaft was located.

Hope that helps, as well.

 

[triforcharity]

LashL,

Not only are you the Goddess of Legaltainment™, but you are also very smart when it comes to research. I am looking at a news report from then, and that is basically what it says.

http://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/14/nyregion/14WTC.html

And 9,000 Sq. Feet might seem like ALOT, but when you compare the fact that the floors had 40,000 sq. feet EACH, that could be just one buisness office, or a few meeting rooms. I mean, that place was HUGE!!

 

[Grizzly Bear]

And 9,000 Sq. Feet might seem like ALOT, but when you compare the fact that the floors had 40,000 sq. feet EACH, that could be just one buisness office, or a few meeting rooms. I mean, that place was HUGE!!

[semi-derail]My Grad 1 project site has a ground level area of about 6,000 square feet and we have to fit about 26,000 sq ft into that footprint. I've traveled to the site a couple of times to document it. A standard fire covering that floor area would still be pretty large, but nothing compared to those in the impact regions.

 

[triforcharity]

Sure, but a 9,000 Sq Ft fire in NYC is not all that uncommon, neither is a 3-banger.

But, in the much smaller place that I live now, a 3-alarm covering 9,000 Sq. Ft. of office space would be HUGE!!

But, in comparison to 3 COMPLETE FLOORS on fire at the SAME TIME, that is GINORMOUS!!!

 

[Furcifer]

The May 2003 interim NIST report does discuss the fire, which occurred in February 1975 in 1WTC, and says that most of the damage was on the 11th floor, affecting some 9000 square feet. It also says that the fire caused some damage to the bar joists on floors 12 and 13; that it did not damage any of the main bar joists; and that it caused buckling of some top chord members, bridging bar joists and deck support angles.

As far as I can recall from reading about this elsewhere, the fire started on the 11th floor in an office area, spread around the 11th floor, and then spread up several floors via a utility shaft, so the fire on floors other than 11 was mostly contained within the core where that shaft was located.

Hope that helps, as well.

Thanks LashL.. Hope things find you well. I didn't think this fire thing was anything big but my friend was convinced this was another nail in the proverbial coffin. I don't understand how this stuff gets put out there like gospel even to this day.

 

[kylebisme]

Even NIST admits 2.25 seconds of free fall, which is equivalent to two floors of nothing but air.

My bad, it was late when I made this comment and being tired I completely miconceptulised the height of the floors. Falling 2.25 seconds in free fall from a state of rest is 24.8m, which which is would be over six floors of nothing but air. Granted, the period of free fall didn't start from rest, but there was already some downward velocity at the time, and as NIST reports:

This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories or 32.0 m (105 ft), the distance traveled between times t = 1.75 s and t = 4.0 s.

So, there we have about 8 floors of the building providing no observable resisting force.

Let's see your math proving that this happened and shouldn't have happened.

Sure, Jaydeehess was kind enough to provide the relevant equations:

an object of mass 'm' drops under the influence of gravity

the force on the mass due to gravity is F_g=mg

along the way another force acts in the opposite direction so it is a negative vector here.
call it the resistive force -F_r

The total force on the object is
F_t=F_g+(-F_r)
F_t=F_g-F_r

The resultant acceleration is given by
F_t=ma
F_g-F_r=ma

As Jaydeehess first noted, F_g=mg. So in the last equation he presented we can substitute mg for F_g to get:

mg-F_r=ma

As NIST noted in what I quoted above, the distance traveled for a period of 2.25 seconds was not distinguishable from free fall. As free fall is a situation where the resistive force of air leaves a≈g, we can substitute g for a to rewrite the above equation as:

mg-F_r≈mg

Now we can solve for F_r with simple algebra:

-F_r≈mg-mg

F_r≈0

This means that for every moment of the fall in time over the couse of that 2.25 seconds mentioned above, we have a 32.0 m (105 ft) section of the building providing a resistive force indistinguishable from that of thin air. So again, while it seems many here willingly believe impact damage and office fires caused WTC7 to fall as it did, I have to doubt such a claim just as much as I doubt the claim that Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish into thin air, as both quite simply defy consistently demonstatable laws of physics.

...those of us who do this for a living have many years of university level training in fields such as structural and fire engineering.

I was not disregarding any such credentials, but I can't take them as a rational reason to accept the conclusion you are defending either. If you could design a structure which fire will cause to collapse with a period acceleration indistinguishable from free fall, and consistently demonstrate the ability of your design do so, then I would happily take your conclusion to be a matter of fact. However, since such design would undermine long accepted understandings of the laws of physics, I'm left to disregard your argument here as founded in irrational belief. Please don't take that as an insult though, as knowing we all lack omniscience, I can't rightly expect any of us to be free of irrational beliefs. Given some looking around, I'd bet I could find some structural engineers who believe Copperfield actually did vanish the Statue of Liberty into thin air too, but I'm guessing you'd agree with me that it would be wrong to take their word for it.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I get the impression you haven't seen the video I wanted you to. I wasn't directing you to the video NIST looked at, but rather one from another angle which pans out to a wider view. I roughed out a composite here:
[URL]http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3736/b7composite.th.jpg[/URL]
So, we aren't just talking about 19 floors here, but rather around 37, please watch the video to see for yourself. Even if we just called that distance 125m to err on the side of caution, falling though nothing but air would have taken more than 5 seconds, while the building drops out of view in just over 6. There is a rational explanation for that, but it looks more like this than anything NIST showed.

No, it doesn't look even remotely similar to the Tour Broca verinage. I can't imagine how anyone could think it did. The collapse doesn't start more than half way up, and if you actually watch the WTC7 collapse you can see the building rotate as it falls. I was quite disgusted that the WTC7 video then repeats the blatant lie that the collapse is symmetrical. Look at it yourself, watch the rotation of the building in the last stages of the collapse, then ask yourself: Why is the person who made this video lying to me?

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

Even NIST admits 2.25 seconds of free fall, which is equivalent to two floors of nothing but air. Were there anything resembling a building in the way, even weakening by massive office fires all the way across, it quite simply couldn't have come down like that.

Since the mechanical penthouse had already fallen into the building, I suspect that what was left at that point didn't, in fact, resemble a building very much at all.

Dave

 

[Dave Rogers]

This means that for every moment of the fall in time over the couse of that 2.25 seconds mentioned above, we have a 32.0 m (105 ft) section of the building providing a resistive force indistinguishable from that of thin air.

Suppose, at some point in the collapse, two levels in the structure proved to be weaker, relative to the forces applied to them, than the rest. Would there be some tendency for the structure to collapse at those two levels preferentially? And, were the section between those two levels to be misaligned from the structure above and below by lateral movements caused by the collapse, so that the columns in the middle section failed to fill the gap between the upper and lower columns, how fast would the top section fall over the height of that section?

Alternatively, suppose that a large mass were falling inside the building - as we are wll aware was happening. Suppose that mass encountered a less seriously damaged section of the internal structure as the main collapse began, and was slowed relative to it. Would the momentum of the falling mass then be transferred to the main structure, hence accelerating the latter structure downwards?

Or, for a third possibility, suppose that, as the main collapse began, the acceleration of the falling penthouse relative to the remainder of the building suddenly reduced (which it would, of course), hence allowing the main structure to arrest the fall of the penthouse relative to it. Again, would this cause a downward acceleration of the main structure in excess of that caused by the resultant of gravitational and resistive force?

Those are just three specific and plausible scenarios in which the acceleration of the building could be close to, or even very slightly greater than, gravitational acceleration for a short part of the collapse. I have yet to see any specific, plausible scenarios as to why the conspirators would want or need to destroy several storeys of the structure, at a specific instant, after the collapse had already begun and its completion was assured; because, once a building that big starts to collapse, it doesn't stop.

So again, while it seems many here willingly believe impact damage and office fires caused WTC7 to fall as it did, I have to doubt such a claim just as much as I doubt the claim that Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish into thin air, as both quite simply defy consistently demonstatable laws of physics.

That is simply not true of WTC7, however desperately you may want it to be.

Dave

 

[TruthersLie]

My bad, it was late when I made this comment and being tired I completely miconceptulised the height of the floors.

Yes it was. Have you noticed a trend? You make BS statements, get your head handed to you and then you have to say

My bad

Why is that?

<snip>
This means that for every moment of the fall in time over the couse of that 2.25 seconds mentioned above, we have a 32.0 m (105 ft) section of the building providing a resistive force indistinguishable from that of thin air.

You are missing an important issue. That is the collapse of the outer walls. It does not take into account the interior collapses, or how the inside completely is GONE. Read the relevant NIST report sections.

So again, while it seems many here willingly believe impact damage and office fires caused WTC7 to fall as it did,

Willingly? Sure. When there is a 10,000 page document put out by leading EXPERTS in forensic engineering, structural engineering and it is peer reviewed by the world and there is NO outcry, NO rebuttals saying they are wrong... Yup. I do accept it.

I have to doubt such a claim just as much as I doubt the claim that Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty vanish into thin air, as both quite simply defy consistently demonstatable laws of physics.

strawman and complete bs.
1. comparing the NIST investigation and findings to david copperfield illusion shows a lack of understanding of BOTH forensic engineering and illusions.
2. GREAT that you doubt such a claim. please provide your scientific/engineering formulas and the math to back it up.
OR
3. Find any one of the dozens of (if not hundreds) peer reviewed scientific journals from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, in ANY LANGUAGE which state that NIST is full of crap and wrong.
I'm willing to accept arabic, north korean, russian, iranian and even venezuelan peer reviewed structural engineering journals too... find one. I'll wait.

I was not disregarding any such credentials, but I can't take them as a rational reason to accept the conclusion you are defending either. If you could design a structure which fire will cause to collapse with a period acceleration indistinguishable from free fall, and consistently demonstrate the ability of your design do so, then I would happily take your conclusion to be a matter of fact. However, since such design would undermine long accepted understandings of the laws of physics, I'm left to disregard your argument here as founded in irrational belief.

blah blah blah twoof bleating about not being able to accept experts.

Please don't take that as an insult though, as knowing we all lack omniscience, I can't rightly expect any of us to be free of irrational beliefs.

Ah yes... the appeal to MAGIC fallacy... boring.

Given some looking around, I'd bet I could find some structural engineers who believe Copperfield actually did vanish the Statue of Liberty into thin air too, but I'm guessing you'd agree with me that it would be wrong to take their word for it.

I love ignorant twoofs. Please provide your PROOF and get off the strawman bs... it is boring.