Collapsing model

Hi again... There wasn't any good topic to post this video, so I made a new one

koti.mbnet.fi... 3,60 mb

So, I used normal card deck to make 10 cm x 10 cm x 50 cm tower, and watched how it would collapse. There were 4 cards on every floor as walls and 2 sheets of toilet paper and one cd as floors (toiletpapers made the tower more stable). Each floor was 5 cm high, so there were 10 floors.

Every floor were similiar to each other, so every floor can support atleast 9 times the tower's weight (1rd floor does..). I started the collapse from 8rd floor.

BUT HEY WTF!! If each floor can support 8 times that tower's mass, how it can collapse from top to bottom so fast? There must be some kind of hidden explosives then.

Because each floor has 4 cards, I'm able to make a tower wich has 13 floors when using only 1 deck of cards. I think I'll do it... And I have to test how much it can withstand wind, atleast it's almost wind proof.

5 cm/floor * 13 floors / 10 cm (width) = 6.5 (that's what you wanted)

Another excellent point! Or so I see it.

If each floor is idential, and the ones at the bottom have to hold so much mass, then a few of the top floors falling wouldn't have created the required inertia to break the floors benieth them.

Playing cards, toilet paper and a pencil does not model the behaviour of steel, concrete and an airplane.

Try rebuilding your model with a reinforced steel core.

Originally posted by shanti23
Playing cards, toilet paper and a pencil does not model the behaviour of steel, concrete and an airplane.

Try rebuilding your model with a reinforced steel core.

I won't... atleast yet. Instead I built that tower with 13 floors. Now it's 6.5 times as high as wide. I noticed that those 13 cds made some good mass to the tower, it's total weight was slightly over 300 grams.

And the video is here: koti.mbnet.fi... 4.3 mb

This time I packed it more.. This time there was something wrong at 6th floor, but I'm sure it would have collapsed even if that floor wouldn't have collapsed so early.

Ofcourse reinforced steel would be impressive, but I don't have recourses to do that.

I quess i could use chicken fence like this:

It shouldn't be too strong, because if the structure is strong, the whole model would have to be scaled up, and it would cause other problems.

One problem is how to fasten those "columns" to each other.. I could use tape, but it doesn't behave same way as steel bolts. One way to do this could be to use stearine to fasten the columns, but it would be kinda laborious job to do. I could also solder them, but they are too light to break soldered joints.

Columns should be also able to fall through floors, and floor should be something like congrete. Paper wouldn't be good, because it can bend so much. Could I use for example sugar or salt and re-crystallize it to floor sheets? Also thin clay or plaster sheets could work.

The biggest problem is, that I don't have those good metal columns, wich would be easy to solder to each other. Plastic and wood are too sparse.

Originally posted by shanti23
Try rebuilding your model with a reinforced steel core.

Memo

From: The Bureau of the Redundancy Department.
RE: “Reinforced steel”
Message:



Nice.

That experement sure does make you think!

I would love to have the time and space to experement like this.

What about polystyrene for the floor of model 3 would be less effort than salt or suger crystalisation. For the 'beams' what abotu soem sort of metal rod you could use welding rods . i will keep thining

What about polystyrene for the floor of model 3 would be less effort than salt or suger crystalisation

Oh that could be good.. I could use like 30 cm x 30 cm x 2 cm pieces as floors, and just stick outer metal columns through it. Wouldn't be too hard to do.

Steel columns should just be massive enough to break the polystyrene floor if column gets from vertical position to horizontal.

There should be also some mass at each floor. At my vision there is a metal disk at every floor.. Although some smaller metal pieces could work better.

So, after all, tower could look like this:




That could work, but it isn't wind proof yet. I think it's unnecessary to build core in it. Because polystyrene melts and burns, fire can be used to bring these towers down

Who believes these models are adequate representations of the towers? Honestly?

What we have here is a house of cards, literally. It's always on the brink of collapse, one could say it's actually designed to collapse. As there is no solid connection between the card-walls and cd-floors, little disturbances eliminate its entire stability already. If you threw something at it, representing the aircraft, it would collapse upon impact - in fact, taking out one perimeter-card-column is somewhat akin to the aircraft damage, and yet...

There's only very little energy expense in this collapse: some friction between the cards and toilet paper/cd floors, little deformation of the cards and a bit of lateral KE towards the cards. Nothing gets shattered, nothing gets pulverized, nothing massive gets catapulted outwards. So, where's the analogy?

What do you think would happen if you actually glued the cards to the floors?

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Memo

From: The Bureau of the Redundancy Department.
RE: “Reinforced steel”
Message:

Nice.

Yes. Excellent example of using semantics for the sake of argument.
It is preceded with the word: 'reinforced', because of the design; it 'reinforces' the overall structure.
Hence, a 'reinforced' steel core.

Originally by Lumos
What do you think would happen if you actually glued the cards to the floors?

Exactly.
Try gluing the whole structure together, card to card; then poke it with your pencil and see what happens.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by shanti23]

Well there have been challenges around to make a building that will collapse from top to bottom..

CHALLENGE #1:

Build an upright structure that will undergo progressive collapse.

CHALLENGE #2:

Build an upright structure with a square footprint and an aspect ratio of at least 6.5 (6.5 times as high as it is wide) that will undergo progressive collapse.

CHALLENGE #3:

Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which, in the collapse process, will throw pieces outward in all directions such that at least 80% of the weight of the materials ends up lying outside of the footprint, but their center of mass lies inside the footprint.

CHALLENGE #4:

Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which is also capable of withstanding a 100 MPH wind without collapsing. The structure has to be closed in the sense that it cannot allow air to pass through it.

CHALLENGE #5:

Build a structure that meets the requirements of both CHALLENGES #3 and #4.

At the moment we are thinking about challenge #4...

Ofcourse we can't use models to prove that there weren't explosives at WTC 1 or 2... If it's scaled down, it doesn't correspond to real world. I know that..

some friction between the cards and toilet paper/cd floors, little deformation of the cards and a bit of lateral KE towards the cards. Nothing gets shattered, nothing gets pulverized, nothing massive gets catapulted outwards

That's why I'd like to floors from polystyrene.

Nothing got "catapulted" out from WTC 1 or 2 either (while it collapsed), only some outer walls falled outwars.

About that deformation... If we take a 6 meters long steel beam and drop it from 10 meters to solid ground, it will likely bend somehow. Beam could be for example 15 cm x 15 cm and enclosed (not hollow). If we scale things down to 1/100, we get 6 cm long steel object at 10 cm height. What do you think will happen if we drop it from 10 cm height? I guess that nothing.. Sides would be originally 1,5 mm x 1,5 mm.

In genereal, smaller objects would be much stronger when compared to it's mass. You can put 1 m long metal bar to horizontal position, and it won't bend much. If you try to do the same thing to 100 m long bar, it will bend very much even if it's width is scaled up.

What do you think would happen if you actually glued the cards to the floors?

I quess that it wouldn't collapse... But what would happen if we used 5 m x 10 m sheets of cardboard and tried to build 100 m height building? Would it be possible? You may use glue if you want to Oh btw, tower should weight atleast 300 kg.

Originally posted by Lumos
Who believes these models are adequate representations of the towers? Honestly?

Well apparently these people do.

911research.wtc7.net...

The challenge is in 5 parts, from the easiest to the most difficult.

All five require building a structure that will undergo top-down progressive total collapse -- i.e.: when disturbed near the top, it will collapse from the top down to the bottom, leaving no part standing. The disturbance can include mechanical force, such as projectile impacts, and fires, augmented with hydrocarbon fuels. Explosives and electromagnetic energy beams are not permitted.

Your structure can be made out of anything: straws, toothpicks, cards, dominoes, mud, vegetables, pancakes, etc.

This challenge has been discussed here.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

CHALLENGE #3:

Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which, in the collapse process, will throw pieces outward in all directions such that at least 80% of the weight of the materials ends up lying outside of the footprint, but their center of mass lies inside the footprint.

CHALLENGE #4:

Build a structure as required by CHALLENGE #2 which is also capable of withstanding a 100 MPH wind without collapsing. The structure has to be closed in the sense that it cannot allow air to pass through it.

CHALLENGE #5:

Build a structure that meets the requirements of both CHALLENGES #3 and #4.

Selective quoting...

msdos64, there was quite some expulsion of mass:





[edit on 27-2-2006 by Lumos]

msdos64, there was quite some expulsion of mass

Yes, but it wasn't ejected at high speed... That can clearly seen from multiple videos. If you got a 400 m height tree, it's top can easily end up 200 meters away from tree's bottom if it falls.

Ofcourse WTC's outer walls didn't stay straight while falling, but you'll get the idea.

I trhink you've done an excellent job, especially in fulfilling the 911 site's requirements as posted by leftbehind:

911research.wtc7.net...

The challenge is in 5 parts, from the easiest to the most difficult.

All five require building a structure that will undergo top-down progressive total collapse -- i.e.: when disturbed near the top, it will collapse from the top down to the bottom, leaving no part standing. The disturbance can include mechanical force, such as projectile impacts, and fires, augmented with hydrocarbon fuels. Explosives and electromagnetic energy beams are not permitted.

Your structure can be made out of anything: straws, toothpicks, cards, dominoes, mud, vegetables, pancakes, etc.

People won't like it though. But even people like bsbray say:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The top 13 floors were the lightest, and had the smallest support columns, because they had to support less weight near the top of the building, as opposed to thicker columns in lower regions of the building, holding more weight.

The lower 97 floors not only had much thicker columns, and were just heavier floors in general, but, obviously greatly outnumbered the upper floors.

Now, skyscrapers are built very strong, and legally, must hold multiples of their own design weight loads. That is to say, if a building is expected to carry a maximum load of 10 pounds while in use, that building would legally have to carry loads of 20 or 25 pounds for extended periods of time, and stand strong without appreciable damage, before it could open. This is in NYC building code.

So the big question is: how far could 13 light floors get unto 97 heavier floors before being stopped dead in their tracks?

Common sense would hold that they wouldn't get very far.

Also keep in mind that there would be no free fall for the upper floors to gain momentum. There is resistance from all the structure steel right from the start, and that steel was designed to hold, on each floor, loads equivalent to multiple floors. So I seriously doubt that those 13 floors would crush every single freaking lower floor, all the way down, into nothing but dust and disjointed steel beams.

I've seen this sort of reasoning before and it appears that some people don't accept 13 'light' floors could crush the ones below, but your model (as expected) shows that this is possible. The fact it is a completely different scale and different materials is irrelevent in this case. It may be a poor example as it is fired using an explosion but a small light bullet can cause a lot of damage to a far greater mass than itself, an object travelling at speed is able to exert forces far greater than through it's mass and gravity alone, which is what the towers were designed to withstand, they were not designed to have such a great mass impact the lower floors at speed and exert a far greater force on the joins than they were designed for.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by AgentSmith]

Yes, good job fulfilling parts of the challenge and good luck succeeding with the others, guess you'll need it.

We have another problem of mechanism here:

In your model, the whole cap is brought down upon initiation. In the WTC, there were 47 core and about 200 still intact perimeter columns working against that, which had to fail simultaneously to bring about the kind of collapse witnessed. How could fire cause this?

Also, in the 13 floor model, the premature failure around the 6th floor is caused by only a slight disturbance propagated through the structure from above. House of cards...


To make myself clear: I commend your experiments, but you can surely agree that besides from illustrating how a house of cards can fail, they don't yield any insights regarding the WTC, due to their inadequate representation of the structure.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by Lumos]

Some simple physics:

F = ma, and a = v/t

Because time is so little at collissions, forces can get very big.

F = mv/t

Some common internet lingo:

WTF

And that explains the simultaneous failure of the columns how? What collided with the first floor to fail? Oh, right...nothing.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by Lumos]

There are various theories are there not? (Bearing in mind there will only ever be theories).
One of them, the offical one I tihnk, is that the internal floors sagging pulled in the columns, of course if that happened then the load would not be applied in the designed manner and they would fail due to this. The top floors would effectively drop a floor and initiate the collapse. Joins will never be as strong as solid metal, and there were plenty of joins, it doesn't matter if they are bolts or welds, they are a weakpoint and can fail. People keep saying that the column was like a long solid piece of metal, but it wasn't, it was welded and bolted together like the rest of it.
It's really charming that so many people have so much faith in human engineering, but it isn't infallible.
The smallest things even can cause the most catastrophic events, I know it has no direct relevence to this subject but I remember one program about air crashes talking about one where chemicals from a toilet had leaked, corroding through some wires and causing a short between a power line and the fuel sender wire. Everything was fine for ages until during one flight the fuel in the tank dropped below the level of the fuel sender exposing it to the fuel rich air, there were sparks and *boom*.
The point is that little things can result in catastrophic failure through a chain reaction, if you squirted a drop of toilet chemicals onto a table with a pipette and said you could blow a plane up in midair with it then people would laugh, bet it wasn't so funny to the people on the plane it did happen on though. Nor did the fact it seems so ridiculous and unlikely stop it from happening either.

What's with your flip-flopping, Smith? Can't make up your mind?

That model does not meet the requirements of the 9/11 Research Site's challenge. Anyone suggesting the challenge has been met needs to learn to read. If you took a leafblower to that thing, it would most certainly not withstand it. That's what blows it out of the water. Most of the material also appears to land within the "footprint," failing to meet challenge #3.

Aside from the challenge not being met, we can make other observations.

The forces holding the cards together are virtually non-existant. Those cards standing is a delicate balancing act. If you believe the WTC Towers were constructed to stand as a delicate balancing act then no wonder some of you guys believe that towers came down naturally. This is why challenge #4 kills this thing.

You can also see hesitation in the collapse when some "floors" are hit. Notice that the WTC Towers did not have their support columns set up in floors, but independently of them, with trusses connecting the floors to the actual support columns. That alone is enough to logically contradict the pancake theory of floor-by-floor collapse when compared to observed phenomena (everything was destroyed at once; not just the trusses), but neither was any hesitation witnessed. Once collapse initiated, it was just one continuously-rolling free energy machine. Also notice that msdos is sexy.


So, yeah. Seriously, Smith and LB, you guys are demonstratably wrong. Check out parts 3 and 4 of the challenge. I would request you reconsider what you have suggested.

Originally posted by msdos464

msdos64, there was quite some expulsion of mass

Yes, but it wasn't ejected at high speed...

A great majority of the mass was ejected at a high enough speed to land it outside of the footprint before hitting the ground. That's what you want to duplicate.

Originally posted by AgentSmith
I've seen this sort of reasoning before and it appears that some people don't accept 13 'light' floors could crush the ones below, but your model (as expected) shows that this is possible.

Why? Were the cards on top thinner or something?

When you have, literally, a "house" of cards, making a comparison to a steel skyscraper, something is wrong. Namely, unless the cards are glued together or etc., or unless the skyscraper's steel is not welded together but simply sat one beam on top of another in a balancing act, then what is wrong is the ability to withstand lateral loads.

Revise the model to additionally meet challenges #3, 4, and 5 and you'll have it, msdos.

[edit on 27-2-2006 by bsbray11]

Agent Smith, Your post is interesting for its, probably unintentional, contrast between the detailed results obtained from an aircraft incident investigation and the various theories postulated regarding the events of 911.
It is true that the aerospace industry has an advantage of heavy regulation requiring uniquely identifiable classification numbers, and maintenance histories and schedules which leave a definite paper trail. There are requirements and regulations in the event of accidents or incidents.
The tower steel members were numbered and each piece could have been examined and the highest temperature it reached in the fire could have been verified. With that information much of the current debate would be irrelevant.
Instead we are left with a Nist report which has as a key part of its initiation sequence, a force, the very presence of which is disputed, [Lamont & Lane] followed by a collapse which they fail to properly investigate, discuss or explain.
Gordon.