28K, your display of knowledge is somewhat shocking in the last few pages. I trust you will pay close attention to what I am going to say in this post. Please bear in mind that some of what I am about to discuss falls within my expertise field (I have a degree with specialisation in cinematography).
How many times...do I have to address the same facts. NIST even states in their FAQ:
"Pure liquid aluminum would be expected to appear silvery."
To clarify, re: molten aluminium, 28K is correct. Molten aluminium does give off a cherry red glow, however it has very low incandesence, and under direct sunlight it is not noticable to the human eye, thus the metal looks silver.
Any material can glow red/orange, if heated to a high enough temperature. Glass, aluminum, steel - whatever. The problem is that nothing on those impact floors could possibly burn hot enough to turn glass yellow-orange, steel yellow-orange or aluminum yellow-orange. It would take over 2000C, and the max air temp on the impact floors was only 1000C (That's what NIST even says)
28K, here you go way off the reservation. The colour temperature index is only for PURE METALS. It does not apply to ALL substances. Glass is not a metal. Glass becomes molten at about 1000 degrees C, and it is HIGHLY incandescent. It also glows a very strong yellow/gold colour. The most likely explanation for the materials in the video footage is molten glass. Certainly it is not the ONLY explanation. But the most likely.
"Also, you are claiming the color of this molten material could be inaccurate. What is causing it to be inaccurate? The camera which video taped it? The only thing that should affect the color would be the color/contrast settings on our individual computer screens."
You people should be politicians. You said the color of the molten material in the video I presented, may not be accurate. NIST agrees in their FAQ that this flowing material is yellow-orange.
Now, do you think it's the video camera that is changing the color of this molten material? If not, than what could be changing the color of this molten material?
Okay, pay close attention here 28K, this is my area of expertise.
What we are dealing with here is a think called colour temperature. Various colours on the visible spectrum are assigned colour temperatures in degrees Kelvin, with IR at the "cold" end and UV at the "hot" end.
In order for photographic methods to produce accurate colour representations, they have to be calibrated so they know what colour "white" is. This is because the human eye automatically adjusts itself to different lighting conditions. This process is called colour balance.
Now, for film, the stock is calibrated to one of two nominal levels. Tungsten loads are calibrated to 3200K, which is the colour temperate of a tungsten light bulb. Daylight loads are calibrated to 5600K, which is nominal daylight temperature. As a result all film lights are either 5600K Daylight bulbs, or 3200K tungsten bulbs. Any lighting outside these configurations will produce unnatural colour tones (standard neon lights, for example, produce an ugly green look).
Video is a little different. With video, in each environment you have to tell the CCD what colour white is. This is done either through pre-set selections, or through a manual white balance, whereby the entire screen is filled with a white piece of paper or similar, exposed to the ambient light.
The problem with this is the white balance can only be as successful as the quality of the CCD. In low quality consumer products you will never achieve accurate white balances. There will always be minor deviations.
It is important to note that an incorrect white balance will affect the colour temperature of EVERYTHING IN THE FRAME. (Although white subjects will always be more noticable).
Now, an important thing to note. In the two videos you gave - the one of the car being hit with Thermite and the WTC - we have two different white balances and two different exposure settings (exposure will not affect colour temperature, however it will affect how "bright" something us, thus with a brighter exposure bright things in the frame will exceed exposure capabilities and "burn out" to white).
This automatically causes a problem, because identical colour temperature and intensity items appearing in each video will not look the same, thus making comparisons is impossible. In addition, the two items in question do NOT look exactly the same.
-Gumboot
