Physics Professor says WTC collapse caused by thermite

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Begreen @ Apr 11 2006, 04:12 PM) [snapback]238158[/snapback]</div>

An open mind at work indeed I see.... :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:16 PM) [snapback]238165[/snapback]</div>

Look the guy has a job running the country, he can't sit there and contemplate everyone's criticism! Maybe that comment was harsh, maybe it wasn't, I suppose it all depends upon what was said (maybe she was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist :lol: ), how, and so on and so fourth. No matter what you do, what type of business you run, there are ALWAYS going to be opponents/resistance to some extent, are you going to spend all your time attempting to please the complainers? Of course not.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:13 PM) [snapback]238160[/snapback]</div>

Some idea? Sure. WTC7 was structrually compromised by falling debris from the other two WTC buildings. Is that right? No idea. My point is that I don't believe that anyone here or the Physics prof from BYU is qualified to make that judgement.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Apr 11 2006, 04:14 PM) [snapback]238161[/snapback]</div>

That's total nonsense. Really.
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An open mind at work indeed I see.... :lol:
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Wow. This is a beautiful exchange, I have to say. Apparently your off-the-wall non-standard theories are junk, Squid, while their theories are Gospel.

Well, I guess the explosive theory is on the internet, so it must be true. :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Betelgeuse @ Apr 11 2006, 04:25 PM) [snapback]238172[/snapback]</div>

I was at ground zero shortly after 9/11 and took a lot of pics. Just about every building around the towers had all sorts of debris damage to some extent, from broken windows to huge gashes maybe 6 or 7 stories up...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:29 PM) [snapback]238173[/snapback]</div>

A-HA! A Jewish conspiracy such that the US would go to war with the Arabs, kill them off, so they can have their holy land free and clear! I KNEW IT!!!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:29 PM) [snapback]238173[/snapback]</div>

I don't find it "amazing." After all the damage to WTC7 (i.e. before the collapse), I don't think anyone thought that people would inhabit that building again. I'm not surprised that the developer should think it should be demolished. (is that what you interpret "pulled" as?) Is it a coincedence that he said it right before it collapsed? Perhaps. On the other hand, maybe it was the same damage that he observed (that suggested that it would have to be demolished) that caused the building to collapse.

Do I have evidence this is true? No. But I figure if you're allowed to spin a story, I should be able to, as well.

Just out of curiousity, what is your background, jared2? I don't mean that antagonistically at all, but I'm curious what credentials you have to judge what you've read.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:49 PM) [snapback]238187[/snapback]</div>

You're right, no doubt, I took off on Silverstein's name...and offered another conspiracy variation...!

 

Okay. So let's say they planted explosives.

Then why bother with the planes?

 

I think that we have to remember that we're a bunch of armchair observers and we all have a right to an opinion and whether it is a sane or logical opinion doesn't necessarily matter. Is this a conspiracy THEORY ? Yes, we all know that this is all that it is. There is no defnitive PROOF one way or another. Is it possible that what this prof says could be true? Seems like a possiblity to me. Doesn't necessarily mean I believe it but I can accept the possibility. I agree it would be interesting to hear from structural engineers on this but having worked with engineers over the years, I can tell you that they can't commit to anything. They're worse than pathologists, who I also have worked with a lot. You get 3 engineers in a room and you'll get at least 9 opinions and they won't necessarily even agree with their own conclusion because they never have enough data! But I digress...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mitchbf @ Apr 11 2006, 04:57 PM) [snapback]238195[/snapback]</div>

While at the same time, we can't sit around and dwell on what conspiracy theorists come up with. Many of these posts are very indicative of the prevailing irrational liberal mindset, constantly sitting around spinning. You can argue varying grades of "proof" all day long, you can ultimately prove nothing can be 100% proven. This sort of time wasting irrationality is precisely the BS that bogs down many forms of progress.

I take the stand there was NO CONSPIRACY, period. <------- look a decision, something the left can't seem to grasp the concept of.... :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mystery Squid @ Apr 11 2006, 05:07 PM) [snapback]238199[/snapback]</div>

As someone who is stauchly left-wing, I take the same stand. What do ya think of that, Squidy? B)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Betelgeuse @ Apr 11 2006, 05:14 PM) [snapback]238207[/snapback]</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 11 2006, 04:49 PM) [snapback]238187[/snapback]</div>

See. This is the type of argument that drives me crazy. Particularly the first part. You say you "have enough common sense" to know some detail about structural engineering. People make the exact same kind of claims about, "well, I don't know much about that all that stuff that those evil scientists are telling you, but I have enough common sense to know that God made the Earth in seven days." If you have evidence, you have evidence. If you don't, you don't.

 

Yup that is exactly what happended, and the stuff was supplied by the guy that was on the grassy knowl in Dallas that shot Kennedy. I am sure you are one of those people that don't believe we ever went to the moon either.

Get a life, terrorists flew planes into the building loaded with jet fuel which burned and caused the heat.

 

I love a good Conspiracy Theory discussion, because most conspiracy theories have at least a small grain of truth. Why do I say that? Consider these two cases:

The Tuskegee Experiment was a “study†conducted on African American men with syphilis to determine the long-term effect of *not* treating the disease. Naturally, the African Americans involved in the “study†– without their Informed Consent or knowledge – received placebos instead of the proper course of treatment for syphilis.

The “study†ran from 1932-1972 until it was “outed†by a NY Times article in 1972. One can figure out the many social, ethical, moral, etc issues on their own:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/tuskegee/time.htm

Another example that is very close to me – I lived in various parts of southern Utah from ’74-’84 – is the Downwinder exposure to radiation from nuclear tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (Nevada Test Site).

Folks especially around St George (Washington County) were routinely blanketed with radiation from the early 1950’s up to the late 1960’s. All that time they were told there was nothing to worry about, that everything was done with their best interests in mind. Yeah, right. When the sheep and cattle started croaking of weird ailments, that was natural too.

The “truth†didn’t really come out until the early 1980’s. It’s probably quite safe to live in that area now and I still visit friends and family there. If I ever moved back to the U.S. I wouldn’t mind a place like St George or perhaps Mesquite, NV.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635180019,00.html

http://www.downwinders.org/

The point to any widespread Conspiracy Theory – including criminal conspiracies like gangs and the Mafia – is that the group carrying it out can get away with it for awhile. Unfortunately, a lot of that is due to the sheep-like nature of the average person, who blindly trusts whatever government is in charge or whatever the large company tells them.

The “planned implosion†topic has been extensively discussed around the office as we’re an engineering firm with PE’s in the field of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Urban Planning, Geological, Chemical, Electrical, Electronic, etc.

The consensus here is that *if* it was a planned implosion, it was a shitty one. The popular money is that WT1/2/7 would have withstood the impact of even a fully fueled 767 if – and this is a BIG “if†– they had been constructed properly and to a much higher fire code.

You have to get to the topic of “passive†building fire resistance vs “active†building fire resistance. Some buildings are constructed to be essentially fire “proof†and can remain standing after a catastrophe. This is a very expensive method of construction.

Others are constructed with “active†safety measures (Fire alarms, sprinklers, assurance of speedy fire/rescue service, etc) and cut corners with things like fire resistance. Or, well-intentioned efforts can have disastrous consequences, like asbestos abatement.

Let’s compare the method of construction of WTC1-2 to The Empire State Building: WT1/2 depended on a central core of columns and an outer skin of steel beams to provide strength/rigidity.

The floors are thin cast over steel I-beam trusses. The central core stairwells have “fire rated†gyproc instead of heavy concrete pours. That provides lots of empty space for better office utilization and happier tenants. It also saves a small fortune in construction cost too.

The critical point is the central core columns, where the I-beam trusses are joined, along with the joins along the outer wall steel beams. That’s a wide span, which could buckle under the heat of a fire, so a good fireproofing agent is needed. Ideally asbestos makes the best fireproofing agent, but there is one critical health issue with asbestos used in that application:

The “dead space†between floors is where they run ductwork for A/C, wiring, phone lines, water pipes, etc, sandwiched above the suspended acoustical ceiling. Typically the return air wasn’t run in separate ducts, but the entire suspended ceiling area became one giant return air duct. Asbestos fibers could be suspended and picked up by the HVAC and circulated throughout the building.

So they had to remove the asbestos. The substitute material isn’t as impact or fire resistant, and that was clearly evident. Couple the very long spans of the I-beam floor joists, cost-saving gyproc instead of cement in the central core column/stairwell, and we’re lucky the building remained standing as long as it did.

The Empire State Building is a hefty structure built with a lattice of girders that are riveted/bolted together. It’s a very strong structure that withstood the impact of a B-25 flying in zero visibility in 1945. The impact and fire almost totally destroyed the floor of impact and severely damaged 4 floors up/down from impact. A lot of the gasoline from the fully fueled B-25 went down stairwells and elevator shafts, causing fires on other floors too.

The key difference with the Empire State is that the dense lattice of girders don’t have long spans, so they’re under much less stress. In the engineering world, it was *way* overbuilt. You would never see such a building made now, it would be far too costly.

It’s much like the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. As you may recall, Timmy McVeigh set off a diesel/fertilizer bomb from inside a Ryder cube truck parked in front of the building. The building should have remained standing from this “big boom†but it mostly collapsed.

Like most reinforced concrete structures with poured floors, the rebar between the columns and floors was *not* integrated. The exception is an active seismic zone, like LA and San Francisco, where the rebar *must* be integrated between horizontal and vertical elements.

The overpressure from the blast momentarily nudged up the concrete floors in the Murrah building. This ruptured the weak link between the floors and columns, leaving nothing to hold the floor up. Once the overpressure wave dissipated, collapse was almost instantaneous. This had the effect of pulling out a critical support beam too. One floor pancaked on top of another and down it went.

In the interests of aesthetics or architecture, a lot of corner-cutting happens to provide dramatic open spaces and the “wow factor.†I toured around Manhattan back in ’94 and saw the Citibank building, the tall one built on stilts to clear the church. Looking up at those stilts I became queasy and had to walk away.

As far as pancake floor collapses, a similar collapse happened in England in the late 1960’s at a 22 storey high rise apartment building called Ronan Point. The entire building was constructed of precast concrete “modules†based on the Larsen-Neilsen Method developed in Denmark for LOW rise buildings.

These precast “modules†are notched to fit together like giant Lego Blocks. There was *no* mechanical fastening whatsoever! Everything depends on the force of gravity to apply pressure on all the interlocked “modules.â€

A natural gas leak on the 18th floor caused an explosion in the kitchen, which immediately initiated a partial collapse of the entire corner of the building. When the explosion happened, the overpressure very momentarily lifted up the ceiling in the kitchen, which took the load off that critical load-bearing wall. At the same moment, the overpressure pushed against the wall, and it moved out of position.

Suddenly the 4 floors above had no support, and down they came, initiating a pancake-like collapse. This wasn’t intentional, just “overlooked†risk factors (Failure Mode Analysis and Damage Mode Analysis) and cost-cutting.

The engineers on staff here have a critical eye for most large commercial buildings, as they know very well just how poorly designed and constructed they really are. In the end, it isn’t so much deliberate action but just sloppy engineering, cost-cutting, and shoddy workmanship.

 

Jayman, you make many good points. One that you miss is that this plane crash happened in the 2000's not the 1960's. When the WTC was designed it was designed to survive being crashed into by the largest plane of its day, a Boeing 707. No one had any idea that something like a 767 would be flying to smash into it at some point.

While the empire state building is a different and stronger design, I wonder if it would withstand a fully loaded 767 -- I hope we never find out.

The other problem with WTC construction deals with unions and corruption in the NYC building industry. Many contractors are forced to cut corners and payoff inspectors to get around requirements. During the building of the WTC there were contractors that did not apply all the flame proofing materials to the beams they were supposed to in order to save both time and money. I know one that was involved with this.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Apr 11 2006, 01:55 PM) [snapback]238193[/snapback]</div>

To increase the terror of the act.

But the planted explosives theory has a hole in it big enough to fly a 767 through. Both buildings began collapsing where they had been struck by the jets. If detonated explosive initiated the collapse instead of the harmless burning of jet fuel, how did the explosives planting team, days ahead of time, know WHICH FLOORS to plant their charges on?

Or did the "pilots" of those jets fly them accurately into the designated floors?

It is a remarkable commentary on the credibiity of the U.S. Gov't that this kind of lunatic conspiracy theory gets the legs it has. If the public at large didn't mistrust Bush & Co. so deeply, this nonsense would never have made past the fringe.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA