POLITICS: Physics Prof Says Explosives, Not Fires Brought Down WTC Towers

Originally posted by LaBTop
Where on earth you pull that "clock at 17-16 seconds" from, is a mystery to me, alike as that "clock reaches 0" remark of yours.

Appologies PLEASE ! For both insults of my intelligence.

The 16-17 seconds and 0 seconds clock, he is getting that from the 911eyewitness_wtc1.swf file
The first explosion is heard beween 17-16 seconds before collapse, adding that 8.5 seconds travel time gives maximum 25.5 seconds before collapse began.

You are talking about different explosions by the sounds of it.

[edit on 26-11-2005 by AdamJ]

[edit on 26-11-2005 by AdamJ]

Mod Edit: Please watch the big quotes... Thanks

[edit on 11/27/05 by FredT]

Originally posted by AdamJ
So for someone who knows very little about engineering and physics, the buildings are contructed to resist two different forces.
We have lateral loading (horizontal force), for example wind, and gravity loading (downward force).
The exterior walls? columns? supports? whatever you call them, are there mainly to resist lateral loads
The interior columns to resist gravity loads.

If we are lookng at the collapse due to gravity, its the central columns that are important.

Is that correct, anyone disagree?

exactly. that is what i was implying with my insulting attack on sillyness.

how do naysayers explain the flash that initiates the collapse of the remaining core? where is their 'plunger', now?

oh, wait. i know. it was the dread AIR PUFFS!

Originally posted by AdamJ
So for someone who knows very little about engineering and physics, the buildings are contructed to resist two different forces.
We have lateral loading (horizontal force), for example wind, and gravity loading (downward force).
The exterior walls? columns? supports? whatever you call them, are there mainly to resist lateral loads
The interior columns to resist gravity loads.

If we are lookng at the collapse due to gravity, its the central columns that are important.

Is that correct, anyone disagree?

Makes sense.

I retract what I said about the buildings needing support from both types to stand until I have reason to believe otherwise.

The swf file was ripped from the DVD. The producer of the DVD has shifted the synchronization for the viewer to account for the delay so that you can hear the sound of the events exactly as you see them occurring. That is why I later provided the links to the original, unedited footage. Muadibb has added another 8.5s delay to the delay which was already accounted for, ending up with the 16.5 we calculated plus his extra 8.5 to come to 25s or so.

Here are the original footage files again, for the third time:

WTC1: terrorize.dk...

WTC2: terrorize.dk...

Here is a link I found recently to a copy of the WTC1 footage which is shorter, but with much clearer sound:
www.plaguepuppy.net...

The producers of the DVD at www.911eyewitness.com explain the shifting of the audio stream in the DVD, but that explanation is not included in the swf rip, which was provided at a website unassociated with the DVD producer. Below is a picture I found from the DVD makers' site where they show the two possible locations from where the footage was taken and the sound delay calculation:



They state a 9.2 second delay.

Rounding to the nearest half for simplicity, in the "terrorize.dk" version, the first explosion is picked up at roughly 28.5 seconds:



Which means it occurred real time at roughly 19.5 seconds. The collapse begins at roughly 36 seconds:



Therefore the first and largest explosion occurred roughly 16.5 seconds before the collapse.

[edit on 2005-11-26 by wecomeinpeace]

Originally posted by LaBTop
If you really had taken my advice, you would have crossed (oops) the path of the 11th poster on page 54. I will serve you some quotes of this engineer :

I'm an engineer. Mechanical electrical instead of civil but did some structural analysis of bridges & buildings. This is beyond civil structural though since it heavily relies upon unique chemistry. Beyond only physics but rather multidisciplines.

Well, perhaps you should "first understand what it is that he is saying"....

Second, he is making many assumptions and wrong statements.

Third, he talks about what an explosive is, but gives no evidence of there being any explosives in the buildings... but I guess to someone who "only wants to believe that there were explosives," this is some sort of evidence....

Shall we examine some of the things this man is saying thus providing evidence to what I said above?

Let's start with the following statement.

The burning building Tower has a 'fast infinite' sink above into the atmosphere via fire to wind currents to the sky. The sky is an infinite sink. That is why the fire burned out in minutes.

That's not true....the sky is not an infinite sink for the "fire"....it is an infinite sink for the "heat." There is a difference.

The fire does not expand/dissipate into the infinite, the heat does, and the expansion/dissipation of the heat into the sky does not affect the fire.

What affects the fire is the additional oxygen which does make the fire burn faster and higher, but the fire did not burn out in minutes...which is another erroneous statement. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of jet fuel do not burn in minutes...even if the fire is in the open.

We have seen in the news how thousands of gallons of fuel burn for hours, even days if left unchecked when tanks in a refinery burn. Which of course proves that thousands of gallons of fuel, any fuel, does not burn in minutes...even if it is a fire in the open.

Let's see what else does this man say.

The ONLY Exothermic, heat creating, reaction is "falling building mass". ALL other reactions are Endothermic, heat absorbing.

Appart from the obvious error in that statement, he is assuming that all the oxygen is completly gone, what exactly is this statement supporting? except the fact that the "building is already falling"?......

The only way that "all other reactions" "could" have been endothermic, except the "falling building mass", is if the collapse of the building had been under perfect conditions providing a completly enclosed trap for the fire, and no possible way for any oxygen to be fed into any part of the building, while this could be very possible, it is not always the case, and more often than not, it is not the case.

Either way....as I said...what exactly do you think this means?..... It certainly does not corroborate any "demolition theory".....

Let's continue.

Likewise, all "burnable material" whether it be garbage like paper, plastics, diesel fuel will be completely ENDOTHERMIC. It adds no energy. It only absorbs energy. No gas. No Oxygen. No Exothermic. Only ENDO.

As i said, that would only be true if "all the oxygen" was completly gone, which in itself is a big assumption.

Let's see what does this person say about explosives.....

DYNAMITE - CRYSTALS

What makes dynamite explode?? First it requires less oxygen per volume but more important, it is a crystal. Therefore, the gaps between crystals hold suffient gas for it to react and explode quickly. Else the inside would not burn at all. Soak & remove crystal gaps, no exploding.

Actually "for most explosives", if you soak them is enough to stop an explosion. While what he is saying is partially true, what does this have to do with the topic being discussed?..... it certainly is no evidence that any explosives were used.

Take 10 bottom floors of dynamite, no crystal, no gap, and smash any building tower on top of it. No explosion.

I don't really understand what he is trying to get at with this statement.

If you take the crystals and gaps from an explosive, which would be quite the task, it is not an explosive any more....

Again, what is he trying to say with this statement? I have no idea, but again, maybe for you this is some sort of evidence that corroborates your theory.

Let's continue.

In a collapsing building, all gas is pushed out broken windows.

That is not always the case....again he is making general assumptions which are not true.

BTW, he is also assuming that the windows of the wtc were regular windows, like those found in other regular buildings. But you do have to remember that the wtc was a skyscraper, it was most probably built with impact/shatter resistant windows, which would be the reason why we only see some air pufs from some windows of the towers.

Even 10 floors of diesel fuel is ENDOTHERMIC during mere seconds of collapse because there is little oxygen.

Wait a second... First he claimed that there was no oxygen, and now he is saying that "there was little oxygen"?....

If there was any oxygen as the building collapsed, which could very well be the case, then not all the fires were completly put out by the collapsing building, which is a contradiction to what he said in his other statements.

Originally posted by LaBTop
Are you blind?

Am I blind?....well I am typing in this forum...so, do you think I am blind?....... *sigh*.....

Originally posted by LaBTop
The seconds timer of my Media Player video player reaches 28 seconds when you HEAR that explosion.
It reaches 36 seconds when the tower starts collapsing, which is a visual event in REAL time, let's call that EYE-time.

You are using the timer on "your media Player"..... I am using the timer that is seen in the video..... Why did I use that timer instead of the one from my Windows Media Player? Perhaps you didn't realize, or perhaps for you it is not the case, but for me the video jerks several times (while the original video does not, which is a bit strange)

Originally posted by LaBTop
The difference between SEEING and HEARING is 8.5 seconds. You HEAR it 8.5 seconds later !

Which is exactly what I said.... but i took my time to explain what I was saying...

Originally posted by LaBTop
That means if you had SEEN the explosion, it would have been 8.5 seconds earlier in the video, thus at the 28 -8.5 = 19.5 seconds point.
And not your fabulous 25.5 to 24.5 seconds !

Yes, the explosion occurred 8.5 seconds before, or 8.5 seconds earlier than when it was heard in that video...which means that you have to add 8.5 seconds from the time you hear the explosion, to the time the building collapses......

Originally posted by LaBTop
Where on earth you pull that "clock at 17-16 seconds" from, is a mystery to me, alike as that "clock reaches 0" remark of yours.

From one of the videos you provided......i explained this in one of my statements above....

Originally posted by LaBTop
Appologies PLEASE ! For both insults of my intelligence.

.....................


[edit on 27-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by AdamJ
So for someone who knows very little about engineering and physics, the buildings are contructed to resist two different forces.
We have lateral loading (horizontal force), for example wind, and gravity loading (downward force).
The exterior walls? columns? supports? whatever you call them, are there mainly to resist lateral loads
The interior columns to resist gravity loads.

If we are lookng at the collapse due to gravity, its the central columns that are important.

Is that correct, anyone disagree?

Not really, do you think that taking out the lateral loads from any floors there wouldn't be any collapse?

Do you think that when taking the lateral loads from a floor that has several other floors on top, is not going to precipitate the collapse of the rest of the floors below because of the overload?

Wecomeinpeace, while it does seem that there was at least one explosion, what makes you think it must have been produced by demolition charges?

Why is it that from the time of that explosion to the collapse of the building so much time goes by? in controlled demolitions, buildings collapse right after the explosions, yet in the wtc it takes 16.5 seconds for the collapse to occur, according to your calculation.

I also really doubt that the loud sounds heard as the tower is collapsing are explosions. If there were any large explosions as the building was collapsing, you would have seen more large pieces being thrown out, instead of being deflected as they crash into the lower floors.

Have you ever seen large buildings on fire? There are quite a few explosions in buildings when they have large fires, because of the chemicals, and gases, found in the buildings.

BTW, backdrafts happen in such large fires, and as you should know there is no need for "explosives" for a backdraft.

[edit on 27-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib
Wecomeinpeace, while it does seem that there was at least one explosion, what makes you think it must have been produced by demolition charges?

I think you'll agree that I've approached it fairly objectively and honestly. In fact I think you'll find that I was referring to the 'explosions' as "pulses" for the majority of my posting. Your own posts consistently refer to them as explosions however, which is interesting. (Not laughing at you, just thought it was ironic, considering our respective approaches to 9-11.) They have yet to be confirmed as explosions. If you have an alternative explanation though, I suggest you present it.

Why is it that from the time of that explosion to the collapse of the building so much time goes by? in controlled demolitions buildings collapse right after the explosions, yet in the wtc it takes 16.5 seconds to occur, according to your calculation.

I can show you plenty of demolitions where the charges go off quite a long time before the building collapses. I will have to look around for the videos if you require them, but I'm off to bed now so you'll have to wait. Perhaps bsbray11, LaBTop or someone else can help out if they are online.

I also really doubt that the loud sounds heard as the tower is collapsing are explosions. If there were any large explosions as the building was collapsing, you would have seen more large pieces being thrown out, instead of being deflected as they crash into the lower floors.

The principle is that the explosions - if they were indeed so - were at the base of the tower, not higher up in the structure. The destruction of the base columns is essential to bringing a building down completely like that, as was further stated by the president of Controlled Demolition Inc. specifically in reference to the WTC towers, and as is standard demolition procedure. If the foundation columns weren't destroyed at the base, the bottom third of the building would have been left standing; in fact more than that considering the size of the caps relative to the building and the amount of energy contained in them.

I'm sure you've seen the pictures of the core still standing and then falling down perfectly vertically a few seconds later, despite being the strongest part of the structure and connected directly to the bedrock. Have you asked yourself how that happened?

There is a reason why the foundation is the strongest part of a structure, and there is a reason why the base columns are severed in controlled demolition.

Anyways, I gots ta sleep.

[edit on 2005-11-27 by wecomeinpeace]

PS: Please make sure that you download the original videos located at the "terrorize.dk" website, so that we can all be on the same 'page' when discussing the specifics of the footage. The flash file should be disregarded because the audio track has been synched incorrectly.

WTF have any of you seen how the twin towers were built, it relys on the outer shell its a unique in design and if there were explosions you would hear em since I know people who have lived in New York there whole life and even ex Itialian mafia members they can tell you the difference between a small explosive and a big one when your 8 blocks down the road speeding through traffic sounds like!!!

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
I think you'll agree that I've approached it fairly objectively and honestly. In fact I think you'll find that I was referring to the 'explosions' as "pulses" for the majority of my posting. Your own posts consistently refer to them as explosions however, which is interesting.

(Not laughing at you, just thought it was ironic, considering our respective approaches to 9-11.) They have yet to be confirmed as explosions. If you have an alternative explanation though, I suggest you present it.

Why is it that explosion equates to there being any explosives?

Explosions can occur without there being any explosive charges.

In large fires, when a backdraft occurs, there is a large explosion.

Let's see what a backdraft is.

backdraft: inside buildings, when the oxygen in a room is almost used up, the fire begins to die down from lack of the substance; the flames lower and the room fills with smoke; but if you open the door to the room at that time, the fire sucks oxygen in so hard that fire gases explode

Excerpted from.
library.thinkquest.org...

There is no need to open a door for a backdraft to occur. If the fire in any floor collapses as the fire is dying from a lack of oxygen, the new oxygen found in the lower floor will produce a backdraft, an explosion.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
The principle is that the explosions - if they were indeed so - were at the base of the tower, not higher up in the structure.

Look at the videos again.... The collapse starts from the middle of the building, right where the aircraft crashed into the buildings, downwards.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
The destruction of the base columns is essential to bringing a building down completely like that, as was further stated by the president of Controlled Demolition Inc.

Not really, i have already given several, different, links from several structural engineers, and they all say the same thing, even in that link to the physics forum that was given, several "real engineers" say that the collapse from the top floors, which happened because of the crash from the planes and the large fires, was more than enough to bring down the entire structures.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
I'm sure you've seen the pictures of the core still standing and then falling down perfectly vertically a few seconds later, despite being the strongest part of the structure and connected directly to the bedrock. Have you asked yourself how that happened?

Because the total weight of the falling mass of debris was too much for the columns to support. Nothing physical is indestructible wcip.

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
There is a reason why the foundation is the strongest part of a structure, and there is a reason why the base columns are severed in controlled demolition.

Yet, we see in the pictures that the towers collapse from the point of inpact of the aircraft, not from the base, and where the fires raged for hours.


[edit on 27-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by Muaddib

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace
There is a reason why the foundation is the strongest part of a structure, and there is a reason why the base columns are severed in controlled demolition.

Yet, we see in the pictures that the towers collapse from the point of inpact of the aircraft, not from the base, and where the fires raged for hours.

I have no idea why some people keep pressing on about severing the base when everyone can clearly see the collapse starts at the point where the aircraft entered the building. Severing the base would not accomplish anything and the collapse would have looked completely different.
If anyone wants yo carry on down the explosives path the only going theory is that the building was wired up in a highly extravagant manner and would have to have been detonated in a downward flowing wave from the points of impact.

As for explosions, is aero-fuel anything like Diesel? Because Diesel is not as easy to set light to as petrol under normal conditions but when you heat it up and it is vapourising it can become higly explosive.

Here's an example, we used to have a big oil heater at work which consisted of a large combustion chamber. We used to light the thing using Diesel and it would then be fuelled by Oil. Now once it went out and the pan was very, very hot so one of the guys poured about a pint of Diesel on which started smoking furiously and kicked the door shut without lighting it. A few seconds later the Diesel vapours ignited and literally blew the lid off the heater, just from about a pints worth.

If the aero-fuel had pooled anywhere and/or gone down access shafts then maybe similar things happened, accounting for any explosions some people might have heard. It seems rather likely to me.

you know what's pretty funny, is watching the defenders of the official bunk just make stuff up that completely contradicts their beloved official fema and nist reports.

there were no 'air puffs' in the nist report.
the nist report on tower seven says.........*crickets*
there was no 'syringe theory' in the nist report.
fema said jet fuel melted the supports.

nist 'debunked' that. okay?

i keep hearing, "where's the evidence", while photographs of explosions and squibs and eyewitness reports of explosions by the dozens.....
i SEE the evidence. why WON'T you?

Originally posted by billybob
you know what's pretty funny, is watching the defenders of the official bunk just make stuff up that completely contradicts their beloved official fema and nist reports.

First of all...calling it "the official bunk" is not debunking anything.....

Because you don't agree and don't understand the science behind all of this, and instead you want to believe "no matter what" that "it must have been a controlled demolition," doesn't make it so...

Originally posted by billybob
there were no 'air puffs' in the nist report.
the nist report on tower seven says.........*crickets*
there was no 'syringe theory' in the nist report.
fema said jet fuel melted the supports.

First, I really doubt that you have read the NIST report.... very few of you really read any reports by reliable sources, doesn't have to be a government funded report, instead you want to read and believe the reports which deal in "seudoscience" trying to corroborate the "demolition theory."

Second, there were draft reports and then there have been final and other follow up reports, as new evidence has been uncovered the information in some of the reports have changed. I have presented several links from different structural engineers and other engineers, not all of them agree with the NIST report, or the FEMA report, but neither do they agree with the "demolition theory."

Originally posted by billybob
i keep hearing, "where's the evidence", while photographs of explosions and squibs and eyewitness reports of explosions by the dozens.....
i SEE the evidence. why WON'T you?

Of course there were explosions.... When the planes crashed, there were explosions, there could have been backdrafts which are explosions, the janitor closets could have exploded because of all the chemicals found there, and there are many other reasons why there could have been other explosions without any "explosives" being present....

Why won't I see evidence to corroborate the demolition theory?... because none of the evidence points to that....that's why. Which is the reason why people need to understand how science works if they want to even try to present any evidence to support such wild theory.

[edit on 27-11-2005 by Muaddib]

Originally posted by wecomeinpeace

I can show you plenty of demolitions where the charges go off quite a long time before the building collapses. I will have to look around for the videos if you require them, but I'm off to bed now so you'll have to wait. Perhaps bsbray11, LaBTop or someone else can help out if they are online.

third one along on the bottom row is quite a good example. 10 second gap.
Implosion World

Originally posted by Muaddib
First, I really doubt that you have read the NIST report.... very few of you really read any reports by reliable sources, doesn't have to be a government funded report, instead you want to read and believe the reports which deal in "seudoscience" trying to corroborate the "demolition theory."

having a discussion with you is like having a discussion with a wall. the only reason i didn't put you on ignore, is because i think you're a danger to people who have no knowledge of scientific principals or propoganda techniques.
you have seen the squibs. you call them air puffs.
you have read the eyewitness reports and seen a graph of the explosive soundwave, and you CHOOSE to ignore them. that is not the same as 'no evidence'.
perhaps you could show me where it says 'airpuffs' or 'syringe' in the nist report.
show me in the nist report where it explains the presence of molten steel.
show me in the nist report where they say exactly what INITIATED the collapse.
show me where they state that their explanation is the absolute truth(because i can show you where they say, 'we're guessing'). twenty million dollars and full access to all the evidence(that wasn't already hidden in chinese scrapyards), and they wouldn't even commit to their findings. nor did they, 'show the math'. if i paid 20 mil. for a report that doesn't even prove itself, i would be pretty upset.
the mighty debunkers, however, have amazingly filled in the blanks for nist, and we know now that it was air puffs that knocked down all three towers.

if the official story was true, it would corroborate itself, my poor logically challenged friend.

your constant 'appeals to authority', and 'ad hominem' attacks(i don't mean just me, i mean, ANYONE who disagrees with the official bunk is 'ignorant of science', or 'not a STRUCTURAL engineer', or, 'not qualified'(that last one is both an ad hominem AND an appeal to authority)).

just as a quick reminder, or primer, on PROPOGANDA TECHNIQUES>>>>

1.use stereotypes. - 'those people' are all the same.
2.substitute names, -ie. a 'russian' becomes a 'red'. a democrat becomes a 'tulip-walker', or 'treehugger'
3. selection -a propogandadist, out of a mass complex of facts, selects only those that are suitable for his purpose
4. lying
5. repetition -a propogandist is confident that, if he repeates something enough, his audience will except it. a variation on this is the use of slogan's and keywords, like, 'you're either with us, or against us', or, 'keep the world safe for democracy', or 'they hate our freedom'. thes phrases are mostly meaninglessly vague, yet add artificial weight to an ideal
6. assertion, -the propogandist rarely argues, but makes bold assertions in favour of his thesis. the essence of propoganda is to present only one side of the picture, deliberately limiting free thought and questioning.
7. pinpointing the enemy, -it is helpful for the propogandist to not only be for something, but to be against some real or imagined enemy who is supposedly frustrating the will of his audience (as hitler did with the jews)
8. appeal to authority, - for example, 'doctors in over a thousand skin tests said X makes your skin lovelier'. what doctors? how do you measure 'loveliness'?. another form of this technique, is to appeal to the will of the mass. also known as the 'bandwagon' technique. the successful propogandist will convince you that 'everybody's doing it'.


i willfreely admit to being a propogandist.

I posted something for you on the 757 thread, but since it would be more appropriate here, and since you didn't respond to it, I'll repost the gist of it.

First, have you ever put much thought behind the potential energy within the caps, and how they managed to so utterly destroy all the floors below?

Observe this image, courtesy of WCIP, accurate of WTC1 as per the NIST report:



The red area is the cap that we are told crushed all of the beneath floors.

See the size of the cap in relation to the rest of the building? There's an obvious problem here. That cap is much smaller than the rest of the building, and yet we are to believe it crushed all of the floors below?

Here's something else to consider: the core columns thickened towards the base, as the bottom floors had to support more weight than the top. The cap was much lighter than lower floors.

And here's something else to consider: that cap would not survive very long into collapse before being utterly destroyed and ejected outwards. See?:



The cap is gone in the above pic, obviously. So then what continued to drive the crushing of the building?

Another problem, relating to the cap's destruction, is that an estimated 80% of the debris landed outside of the footprints. This happened all during the collapse, so we can estimate an average of 80% of the debris is being ejected all the way down. This means a vast majority of the driving mass that one might say was collected as the collapse progressed, simply did not land on the floors below. Dissociated pieces of debris are far less momentous, anyway, compared to still-intact floors.

And here's something else to consider: the collapse never really slowed. So, if you are to believe the official explanation, not only did that cap have enough energy to crush the much heavier and much more numerous bottom floors, but there was enough energy that the collapse didn't even slow as it got towards the base.

But there's another problem: if there was enough energy to crush the bottom floors so effortlessly to the ground, why wasn't it faster at start? Why didn't it start faster and slow down as the collapse began to lose momentum? It was steady, with the floors coming out as if to some pulse or allotted amount of time.

Do you not find any of that odd, in the least?

Considering that all of that is perfectly true, it would seem as though once the building started to collapse, it was going to finish whether there was any driving mass or not. We can agree on that, because the driving mass was destroyed before the collapse was over anyway, right? So then what possibilities do we have left?

We could say that the floors would collapse simply because they no longer have a floor to roof them, or something to that extent, which doesn't seem to make much sense,



or we could suppose that maybe, whatever brought down the towers was independent of the building itself, and therefore the architecture had no bearing whatsoever. So far so good, eh? This being purely from a scientific perspective. However you may respond, you may agree that so far this is sound reasoning, no? Whatever brought down the towers was apparently independent of any driving mass.

Unless the WTC Towers were free energy machines, where the result of the falling of the caps produced an energy output that would have necessarily been greater than what they actually had stored as potential energy, something was up with those collapses. And I'm not aware of any evidence supporting any free energy machines to date.

[edit on 27-11-2005 by bsbray11]

I thought that it was generally agreed that the top section collapsing onto the floors below started a progressive collapse? The pieces of steel were bolted on in sections, it's not like they were giant, continuous strips that had to 'snap'. The force of the top section collapsing suddenly will have cause the floors below to start giving way and so on, the whole mass accelerating as it goes. Bolts do sheer off you know, especially under extraordinary stress.
You can hang a heavy weight from wire but if you were to raise it slightly and suddenly let it drop then it will snap it. The building is designed to withstand a dissipated force that doesn't change as drastically as the top section collapsing down on itself as it did.

How come the plane impact didn't set off these so called explosives anyway? I know fire won't detonate them but the shock of being impacted at speed by an airliner would, don't you think? And if thermite was used then why didn't the fire ignite whatever fuse they used prematurely?
Whatever caused it to 'give', regardless of the theory, we can all see that it gave way on the floors level with the impact, so that was some precision crashing to make sure that nothing was disturbed and it happened in the right place.

And what's this crap I've been hearing about someone dropping something from a chopper to set it off, even if it is true that someone did fly over just before - then who the hell would even consider it would have anything to do with explosions? What exactly could it possibly be that could have any effect and why would anyone do something so obivous in from of countless TV cameras?
Why would they even need to do such a thing, if they have the means to wire up a building in no time at all without any disruption and orchestrate such an elaborate plan don't you think it would be a bit sloppy tossing things onto roofs? What was it - a C4 pack? Some grenades?
Did anyone see the man? Did he look like this by any chance?

Originally posted by AgentSmith
I thought that it was generally agreed that the top section collapsing onto the floors below started a progressive collapse? The pieces of steel were bolted on in sections, it's not like they were giant, continuous strips that had to 'snap'. The force of the top section collapsing suddenly will have cause the floors below to start giving way and so on, the whole mass accelerating as it goes. Bolts do sheer off you know, especially under extraordinary stress.

But how? How exactly would the failure of a single floor cause whole buildings to collapse into dust and scraps of steel from bolt failures, etc. that had nothing to do with weight being bore down? Not even the NIST report explains how global collapse was achieved. They simply try to describe the failure of one floor, and leave it to our imaginations as to how the rest followed, and so the process has never really been explained concretely, so that it may be held under scientific scrutiny.

It would be absurd to think that, just because of a few loose beams here and there, an entire floor will give way. It's common knowledge by now that skyscrapers are over-engineered, and that the beams are designed up hold up much more than their own weight. You can knock out as much as 75% of the support of a WTC floor before that floor will collapse [1]. So I would like an in-depth analysis of how the buildings collapsed, if the problem was simply a few bolts and beams knocked out here and there by the floor above falling downwards causing each and every floor to fall in the exact same fashion, so symmetrically, all the way down.

If a bolt sheered, it would have to be from weight. For a floor to collapse, it would have to be from weight. If a single column is to fail, it would have to be from weight, and a hell of a lot of them would have to fail before a single floor could even collapse. Bolts don't sheer in large enough numbers, columns don't severe in large enough numbers, and floors don't collapse simply from pieces of falling debris, especially from falling dust, single shards of steel, and even then only from some 20% that wasn't ejected outwards.

So where did the weight come from that did so much damage to the lower floors? Bolts sheering, what-have-you, why, when there was no weight? Are you saying that the falling shards of 20% of the steel debris and concrete dust severed enough support for each floor that it caused each floor to collapse? Within a split-second time-frame, too, and symmetrically. Is that what you mean?

Or do bolts sheers for no reason, from no weight, simply because they feel like sheering?

So you say, the bolts somehow failed, despite the fact that there was no longer any real weight bearing down on them.

Again, why, if not from weight? Maybe if they were jerked out from their attachments to other beams, but that would be a ridiculous explanation as to why three whole skyscrapers fell. One severed column jerks another out by the bolts, and so it jerks out another by the bolts, and so on and so forth, until whole 110-story steel skyscrapers fall into steel shards and dust from jerking themselves into pieces? That's the only alternative explanation I can imagine up. Either that, or the bolts sheering themselves for the hell of it by some demonic possession or something. This is discounting the weight that would have been required but was not available to cause floor failures, as common sense would dictate weight would cause such failures, but of course since it wasn't available then we must jump to another conclusion that makes less sense than explosives simply because explosives can't possibly be right.

You can hang a heavy weight from wire but if you were to raise it slightly and suddenly let it drop then it will snap it. The building is designed to withstand a dissipated force that doesn't change as drastically as the top section collapsing down on itself as it did.

Here again you show the importance of weight. The weight would snap the wire. But again - where was the weight once the caps dissintegrated? This is a very simple concept. The WTC floors would need weight bearing down on them to collapse, and yet the weight that we are told destroyed the buildings disappeared before the collapses even finished, and all that was left was simple pieces of falling steel and dust.

You say the bolts on each floor failed all the way down, as if that somehow in itself explains how the buildings continued to collapse without a driving mass, and then in your very next paragraph cite how something may snap if a certain amount of weight were applied to it. So what was your point, again?

There are other problems with your example though. Mainly the fact that the caps were not lifted and then dropped upon the lower floors - though I doubt that would cause a global collapse either. And, of course, the buildings were designed to hold much more than their own weight. The whole over-engineered bit again. The lower floors would definitely have been able to support the weight of a few of the very topmost, lightest floors, even if those floors were moved over awkwardly and a few floors directly below them failed from severed support. When this happened, there was no real change in the amount of weight the bottoms floors would have to withstand: it was the same amount of floors, with the same amount of weight. The only difference is that they were tilted and bearing more weight to one side of the building, but that's not something you'd want to argue, seeing as how the buildings fell perfectly symmetrically from columns failing at once on all sides of each floor.

How come the plane impact didn't set off these so called explosives anyway? I know fire won't detonate them but the shock of being impacted at speed by an airliner would, don't you think? And if thermite was used then why didn't the fire ignite whatever fuse they used prematurely?

Is this relevant to the weight disappearing and the collapse continuing regardless? Because, if not, I would love to see an explanation as to how exactly most of the WTC floors failed with no significant weight being applied to them. That to me is more important than why any charges within the building did not go off when the planes impacted.

But either way, common theory is that the thermite was used only in the basement to weaken core strength. It would not be quick enough to bring the floors down around the perimeter columns as fast as they were observed on 9/11. From the videos I've seen of thermite, it's not really "explosive" in the least. More like something that melts through materials from its intense heat than anything that blows up.

I don't know what was actually used to destroy the columns in each floor to cause the top-down collapse, but assuming it was C4, a detonator other than RDX could have been used, or, the shock from the impacting jets simply wasn't enough. I'm sure it was loud and made a lot of noise, but there's no evidence as to how much of the impacts were absorbed or how much of a shock wave the buildings suffered. This is all theoretical anyway. It's also a disinfo tactic to request theoretical information like this, as you can imagine how hard it would be to put together from what little evidence there is. It's a lot easier to look at the physics of the collapses and tell something was up, anyway, and that kind of objective is more in line with what I was originally posting to you.

Whatever caused it to 'give', regardless of the theory, we can all see that it gave way on the floors level with the impact, so that was some precision crashing to make sure that nothing was disturbed and it happened in the right place.

Again, this can't possibly be looked at objectively because there is no way to tell exactly how things were set up. If you want to argue against demolition, there are plenty of more objective and observable issues you can address before resorting to addressing theoretical assumptions as to the how's of the demolition.

And what's this crap I've been hearing about someone dropping something from a chopper to set it off, even if it is true that someone did fly over just before - then who the hell would even consider it would have anything to do with explosions? What exactly could it possibly be that could have any effect and why would anyone do something so obivous in from of countless TV cameras?
Why would they even need to do such a thing, if they have the means to wire up a building in no time at all without any disruption and orchestrate such an elaborate plan don't you think it would be a bit sloppy tossing things onto roofs? What was it - a C4 pack? Some grenades?
Did anyone see the man? Did he look like this by any chance?

I think LaBTop suggested it was a trigger mechanism in his post but I wouldn't know anything about it.

It would be nice if you could go into more detail about how exactly all the bottom floor failed from bolt failures or column failures or what-have-you when there was absolutely no significant weight bearing down. Look back at the first portion of this post if you've lost your train of thought.

The footnote for my last post:

1. Trumpman, Wayne. "WTC 1 COLLAPSE - THE FIRST MOMENTS" 9 September 2005. You can access a cache of the article from the 9/11 Research Site here; I accessed it last shortly before submitting this post (see the date/time of the post).

The part I am specifically referencing:

FLOOR LIVE LOAD RATINGS

Floor - Rating
110 - 75 psf [pounds per square foot]
109 - 150
108 - 75
107 - 100
106 - 100
105 - 75
104 - 75
103 - 75
102 - 75
101 - 75
100 - 75
99 - 75
98 - 75
97 - 75
96 - 75
95 - 75
94 - 75

CALCULATION:
200000 / 110 = 1818 tons = 1818000 kg
CALCULATION:
200 * 200 = 40000
40000 * 82 = 3280000 lbs = 1487783 kg = 1488 tons
CALCULATION:
1818 + 1488 = 3306 tons
CALCULATION:
60 * 2.25 = 135
40 * 5 = 200
135 + 200 = 335
335 / 100 = 3.35

The perimeter columns essentially had enough reserve capacity to carry 200% of the WTC 1 design load. The core columns could carry 135%. For floor 97 to collapse, the equivalent of 55% of the core columns and 80% of the perimeter columns would have to fail. That means on average 26 core columns and 189 perimeter columns would have to fail. 75% of the total columns would have to fail. This indicates that the WTC 1 design had lots of redundancy. This was no house of cards. Could fires burning on only 13% of floor 97 cause 75% of the columns to fail simultaneously? Science says no way. Add the fact that the steel was certified ASTM E119 and at least a majority of the columns still had fireproofing. Add the fact that fires burned at most about 45 minutes. Add the fact that on floor 97 at the time of collapse no fires existed on the north and west faces, that 45 minute fires existed on the east face, and that less than 25 minute fires existed on the south face; and one can see the impossibility of 200+ columns being harmed catastrophically by heat of fire.

The PSF figures are from the 2005 NIST report.