Ivan: Agree with most - exxept of course the "Oystein autistic" bit - I think I'd vote "Asperger" ^^
Orphia: Potassium perchlorate is a colorless (white) salt; if very pure, it forms rhombic prisms, if contaminated it mainly just forms fine crystal needles (acicular crystals). It is often used in pyrotechnic didplays together with aluminium powder. The Potassium in that reaction gives the flame a typical purple color - highly desirable and attractive for fireworks, perhaps less so if you want to clandestinely destroy a building.
Lots of salts form rhombic or acicular prisms, so seeing those on a paint chip would be far from being a proof for KClO
4. Also, identifying both K and Cl in the EDS spectrum of a dust particle isn't a smoking gun - I just now opened my McCrone Particle Atlas (Volume III, 2nd edition) at random page, in this case page 760/761. Each double-page in that Atlas shows SEM-images and EDS spectra of 6 different particle samples. Pages 760 and 761 have a headline "Other industrial dusts". Two of the six I am presently looking at ("Masonite Sawdust" and "Epoxy and Glass, Milled") have some Cl, three ("Masonite Sawdust", "Mica Exfoliated" and "Oil Shale") have some K, so one "Masonite Sawdust", happens to have both K and Cl. "Masonite" seems to be a brand name for some construction material, it is described here as "a wild mixture of fibers, usually wood, fillers such as clay and a plastic binder".
Thumbing further through the atlas, other samples containing both K and Cl include "Paper Mill" (p.763), "Cigarette Ash" (p.772), "Leaf Burning" (ibid), "Incinerator, Industrial" and "Incinerator, Municipal" (ash) (p.779), "Air Conditioner, Chicago High-Rise Apartment" and "Blood, Spray-dried" (p.781), "Dust Rolls under the Bed" (p.783) - I think that should suffice to make the point.
But is there any K and Cl in any spectrum as shown by Harrit e.al. or Millette? K would show most prominently at 3.3 keV, and Cl at 2.6 keV.
Remember that the only chip in which Harrit e.al. seem to have detected the presence of some elemental Al is the MEK-soaked chip, and Poseidon tries to capitalize on that chip. It's EDS spectrum before the MEK-wash should then not only show Al, but an approprriate amount of both Cl and K. As I mentioned elsewhere, that spectrum has an Al-peak that would indicate 0.6% by mass Al. It has no labeled peaks for CL and K, although there seems to a small peak at 3.3 keV indicate an tiny trace of Potassium. An even tinier signal near 2.6 keV is not really distinguishable from noise. At any rate, these small signals would be very difficult to quantify. The Al/potassium perchlorate reaction would require 3 mol K and 3 mol Cl for 8 mol Al. In mass proportions, you'd need 0.48g Cl and 0.54g K for 1.00g Al. You don't see those proportions on or on the MEK-chip. K:Al could 0.33:1, but Cl:Al has to be lower than that. So there would be insufficient oxidizer, even if we assumed Poseidons dear wish that KClO
4 is present.
None other spectrum in Harrit e.al. has K
and Cl.
In Millette's prelim report, there is nothing that would indicate the presnce of KClO
4.
Some epoxies (a plastic binder, if you will) contain Cl, some clays and other minerals contain potassium. It would be totally unremarkable to find traces of either
in paint, and even less remarkable to find either as contamination
on paint in a bag of dust. This is very very far from being evidence for perchlorate.
So as far as data goes, Poseidon has absolutely no evidence at all for his pet theory, only wishful thinking.
Ivan again: This is the wrong thread, but looking again at
Fig.17 (
here is a version without the x-axis and labels), I find it fishier the longer I look! When you do EDS on a sample at 10 kV (strange that they used only 10 kV there, when 20 kV was the standard for almost all other spectra), you should see background noise from a phenomenon called "Bremsstrahlung" (this is a technical term in English; it is actually German word that means "braking radiation", with "brake" = "decelerate") visibly up to at least 4 keV. However in that spectrum, Bremsstrahlung is clearly there up to the Al-peak at 1.5 keV, and then suddenly ends - the Si-bump at 1.74 is already lower than the Bremsstrahlung to the left, and after that it's practically a flatline. This would indicate the voltage was even lower, perhaps 4 kV - but then the Al:O ratio would speak even stronger for elemental Al. I really do wonder if that graph is somehow doctored. I would speculate that it should show Calcium (3.7 and 4 keV) from Calcium Aluminate, an ingredient of Tnemec.
Yes, that is
my wishful thinking; but I can't really make sense otherwise of the absence of Bremsstrahlung beyond 2 keV (or its very low level compared to the region before 1.5 keV).
Oystein, I remember that you are being occasionally "accused" to be a little bit "autistic personality", having so much strange fun with all these detailed calculations and analyses, but here, Poseidon clearly beats you (not speaking to me) in this regard
). "Unlike WTC1, WTC2 did not have a large group of consecutive upgraded floors, and so the perpetrators would have had to resort to another (more efficient, I.K.) demolition technique," Poseidon writes
