The South Tower

Originally posted by esdad71
AS soon as you will admit that the south tower was tilting prior to collapse. The towers were twisted partially from the impact. I read in 102 minutes where a survivor stated they were actually looking in another direction when they looked out there window after the impact. That is how much it was 'rotated'.

There may have been localized damage that caused people to shift in position immediately around the impacted floors. That would easily explain why people and local structures were knocked up in either building.

The global structure did not move in either case, though. You can watch impact videos, and go frame by frame and trace the outline of the buildings. They won't move. They may have oscillated some in real life, on a small scale, but definitely were not globally twisted or tilting visibly in any direction until they began to collapse.

Slowly, over the course of the next hour it began to tilt toward the corner, and this was the momentum that it needed to initiate the events that would lead to the eventual collapse.

Watch this video of WTC2 collapse, esdad. Please.

video.google.com...

I don't see any tilt before the collapse begins (between 5 and 6 seconds into the video). Can you help me?

And here's a video of WTC1:

video.google.com...

Ignore the animation on the side. We'll just focus on WTC1. Is it tilting even as it collapses vertically? Not for a second or two, huh?

Wheres any tilt before it begins collapsing? Show me!



Here are a host of other video clips:

911research.wtc7.net...

Feel free to take some frames of any of them to show me these pre-collapse global tilts.

The load bearing was actually shared with the core columns and the perimiter columns. The perimeter handling all the lateral loads, the core handing most of the gravity loads.

Yes, but the primary thing I want us to agree on is that the core structures carried the majority of the gravity loads. It seems like you agree with this now, whereas earlier you suggested that if the perimeter columns didn't exist, the core structure would just bottom-out on itself and the building would implode.

Consider this: if the core it holding up the majority of the whole building vertically, then could it hold itself up? If it couldn't hold itself up, then it definitely could not hold up everything else that is was holding up in addition to standing under its own weight in the first place.

Logically, then, the exterior columns were not holding the core structure up, and it wouldn't just implode onto itself if the trusses were severed. Agree?


The perimeter columns also didn't take ALL of the lateral load. The perimeter column/truss arrangement just greatly buffered it, and took the brunt of the wind loads. I think there was rubber inserted between the trusses and perimeter columns, too, to even act as shock-absorbers. But the core columns had lateral bracing as well, with fairly large I-beams.

Originally posted by esdad71
They did not collapse 'exactly' alike. How do you think it happened?

Well from doing several months of research on government and professional sites i have come up with the following reasoning.

Thier were unconventional high explosives (commercial jet fuel), unconventional delivery (aluminum aircraft, associated metals and oxides) to create high explosive blasts, extreme temperatures from thermite reactions that caused the collapse of the towers.

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
I'm still al little vague on this but didn't the towers exhibit like 8 degrees of tilt before collapse above the impact zone according to the NIST report? If I recall they had a grid overlay on some exhibit pictures before collapse.. Bray, please ellaborate on this.

I've never seen that. I saw one in the paper you just linked to, and on that topic, I think Frank Greening is the single biggest idiot I have ever seen both hold a post and write papers like that. I just briefly looked over it, and he's talking about the South Tower falling off rather than falling down?

I can think of three things off the top of my head that contradict this:



The symmetry is not right for a system in which most of the energy is going to be focused in one direction, rather than all of them equally (straight down). This symmetry has more to do with energy being expended pretty much equally in all places at once onto the lower below.



The debris spread was not particularly biased in any one direction, though it looks like the direction of the initial tilt did have slightly more mass attributed to it.



The South Tower's footprint is in the foreground. A large portion didn't just fall off. The building "fell" completely to the ground. Leveled.


Frank Greening also thinks that they never placed a lot of bolts when they erected the towers, and just left the holes empty, and that's how the towers fell apart so easily.

Just saying.


There was one NIST image with a grid over a face of one of the towers to show exterior column deflection, but that's the only thing that comes to my mind for a grid diagram from NIST. Somebody else might know.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
Thier were unconventional high explosives (commercial jet fuel), unconventional delivery (aluminum aircraft, associated metals and oxides) to create high explosive blasts, extreme temperatures from thermite reactions that caused the collapse of the towers.

This intended as a joke? If it is then ignore me, I can't tell, but jet fuel isn't a high explosive. It's a fuel. An FAE is a high explosive, but there was no FAE. There was only a deflagration, a low-velocity fireball. It barely knocked windows out. And this would have created no extraordinary temperatures anyway, and there was nothing that could have ignited and "natural" mixtures of thermite, even if they did miraculously form mixed correctly and distributed in all the right places.

Bray,

I'm really studying the collapse video of building 2..(The one you posted and a couple of others)

I'm trying to make sure I'm clear on which direction the top tilted towards relative to the side that was struck by the planes. I know I'm being dense but help me out.

I'm very interesting in the whole angular momentum thing and I know exactly what angular momentum is.. The top definitely had it and the direction it took was 'set' but by 'something'.. This 'something' I want to break down and analyze.

I really did not pay attention to the direction that the top went in because i assumed that it went in the directino of the 'struck face' of the building.


Ok.. It went in another direction and like I said earlier.. angular momentum has to be SET by some influence.... what was the influence in this case? Please don't tell me is was just the fires...


One thing I am sure about.. the weakest part of the section of floors which emcompassed the impact zone was of course the IMPACT ZONE,,, the imediate area that the plane initially met as it slammed into the building.

The corner/side of the tilting top that started to fall first setting the direction of this angular momentum should have fallen into the weakest part of the area that failed which SHOULD have been the side that was struck by the plane. HOW on eartht did the top tilt in any other direction? You mean to try and tell me that the support structures at the point the collapse started was weakest at a point AWAY from the side that was hit the plane? I don't think so.



[edit on 18-1-2007 by ViewFromTheStars]

Originally posted by bsbray11
This intended as a joke? If it is then ignore me, I can't tell, but jet fuel isn't a high explosive. It's a fuel. An FAE is a high explosive, but there was no FAE. There was only a deflagration, a low-velocity fireball. It barely knocked windows out. And this would have created no extraordinary temperatures anyway, and there was nothing that could have ignited and "natural" mixtures of thermite, even if they did miraculously form mixed correctly and distributed in all the right places.

Jet fuel can be explosive if heated and then ignited in a enclosed area. As proven by the Flight 800 fuel tank testing.

Well correct me if i am wrong but the fire was hot enough to melt aluminum, what do you think would happen when the molten aluminum comes into contact with things like oxygen generators/tanks, magnesium and other hazmat from the aircraft.

Plus there are photos and video of what looks like molten metal and thermite reactions from the tower.

Also we have the reports of molten steel in the basements of the buildings.

[edit on 18-1-2007 by ULTIMA1]

Ultima..

Jet fuel can be explosive if heated and then ignited in a enclosed area. As proven by the Flight 800 fuel tank testing.

Ultima, I don't think it's a good idea to try and compare the inside of the towers to a 'fuel tank'. Also, what you say about melted aluminum is a stretch and I would have to see some testing. I've looked at some and I just don't see it reacting the way you say but I am open minded.

Speaking of melted aluminum.. you know that molten metal spewing out of the tower, south I believe? I'm 100% percent sure that was not melted aluminum.. Aluminum does not glow at it's melting point.. you have to heat it up considerably past it's melting point for it to glow.

I need to look for that thread again where some people insistd that the molten metal pouring out of the towers as aluminum.. I suppose they want us to believe that the molten steel that STAYED melted in the rubble WAY after the towers collapsed was really just melted aluminum.


I believe that was thermite boys and girls. The explosions that were heard and caught on tape/vide before the collapse was I believe the pre-weakening of the core structure before the collapse actually started

I'm still pretty much convinced that mostly thermite was used to do this and the mild booms that were heard were explosive failures of the inner support collumns being cut.

Pre-weakening is very much part of controlled demoltion.

Originally posted by ULTIMA1
Well correct me if i am wrong but the fire was hot enough to melt aluminum, what do you think would happen when the molten aluminum comes into contact with things like oxygen generators/tanks, magnesium and other hazmat from the aircraft.

More relevant to the case, tell me the odds of this happening, and of iron oxide also coming into contact at the same time, and still yet for all of this to be distributed around a floor in all the relevant places (major columns).

I don't doubt that there was thermite or some other nanoenergetic. I just don't think it just happened to form there.

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
I'm trying to make sure I'm clear on which direction the top tilted towards relative to the side that was struck by the planes.

I had to look this up too but here, from FEMA:



WTC2's southern face was struck by an aircraft, but leaned into its eastern face.



True that it wasn't hit on this face, but it's impact was supposed to have went through that part of the building and came out of the other side (pieces, anyway). So there's a possible explanation. If that's the case, then it just goes to show how little it takes to offset a demolition.

Ok.. It went in another direction and like I said earlier.. angular momentum has to be SET by some influence.... what was the influence in this case? Please don't tell me is was just the fires...

No, I agree with Griff's theory that the core was just cut-through in sections of 3rds (at the reinforced floors), one of which was just below the point from which WTC2 rotated. I would imagine it was cut with some nano-energetic like nano-thermite (look these up man; they're AWESOME), and then gravity took over before the 2nd phase began, when the vertical sequence of floor-by-floor or so charges started going off.

Watch the building tilt at its lowest point and you'll see charges come out from right underneath it and start chugging along down the face in constant intervals, before being obscured by debris. This looks like where one phase (the tilting) ending and the next began, and this is even where the tilt arrested.

babray11

WTC2's southern face was struck by an aircraft, but leaned into its eastern face.

True that it wasn't hit on this face, but it's impact was supposed to have went through that part of the building and came out of the other side (pieces, anyway). So there's a possible explanation.

Awesome..

This clarity just reinforces what I already believe. We are definitely on the same page here at least for the most part. So.. I still believe that the imediate area damaged/weakened by the plane strike is what contributed to the 'setting of the angular momentum and direction' of the 'tilting top'.

bsbray11

If that's the case, then it just goes to show how little it takes to offset a demolition.

haha.. yes.. indeed. obviously. absolutely.

The peculiarity of this is further compounded by the fact that building 1 did not exhibit the tilting top syndrome that building 2 did. Very odd indeed.
I mean.. "what" exactly was different at the point of failure in building 2 versus building 1 that caused the top of building 2 to tilt like it did? Why didn't building 1's top tilt too in similar fashion? Did the plane that hit building 1 somehow more evenly damage and weaken the gravity bearing collumns because the fire was very much similar in both buildings no? You see where I'm going with that argument?


I tell you .. the more I dig into this the more I'm set against anything EXCEPT controlled demolition. The final 1 percent of doubt I have is slowly vanishing. It's becoming more and more obvious that the core was taken out in sections just like you said.. starting at the top and going down in the sequence with the weakened part of the building at the strike zones throwing a little bit of a wrench into the "intended" collapse symetry.


The two things I'm still trying to clear up is: #1 how did the building implode and still explode at the same time throwing the percentage of it's mass OUTWARD like it did.. Bray, please go a bit on this will ya'? I believe that the tension created as the 'destroyed core falling within the exterior perimeter' is what contributed to this.. The "exterior buiding" trying to hold up the "interior building" as it fell inside of it. All that stored gravitational energy of the interior core and mass falling and breaking all the trusses and connection points as the perimter collumns resisting the inside stuff falling.. (Cracking and pops that were heard as the building fell anyone?) This 'dueling' would explain much of the explosive force although it is difficult to quantize. The peculiar explosive force exhibited during the 1 and 2 collapses came from one of two places.. either this force came from some type of explosive or it came from the stored gravitatioal energy in the buildings in which case this energy would have needed some 'resistance' in order to be released before it hit the ground. What I just mentinoed priori is just my theory.


#2.. Why did the top part that started to tilt just 'fall apart' as it collapsed? I believe it's because "it's" section of core was part of the first "wave" that was taken out so as it fell the inertial mass of the stuff inside of it going in different directions pulling at the various connection points of its still intact perimeter collumns and walls.. Imagine a box filled with very heavy and rigid objects, some of which attached to the walls of the box set in motion and falling. These heavy objects with nothing rigid at the core holding them in place would rip the walls of the box apart as it fell. The inertial mass of the core/floors and contents of these buildings were astounding so it's a stretch to use this type of analogy but I hope you now what I'm trying to say.


Add: The top part of the building that tilted.. I believe that if the core of this 'top' was not taken out it would have stayed largely intact and would have fallen off to the side as it is OBVIOUS and APPARENT that it had plenty of momentum to do so-in this case it would not have 'fallen apart' until it hit the ground.



edit edit edit.. yea.. I like to post in a hurry. lol



[edit on 18-1-2007 by ViewFromTheStars]

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
Ultima, I don't think it's a good idea to try and compare the inside of the towers to a 'fuel tank'. Also, what you say about melted aluminum is a stretch and I would have to see some testing. I've looked at some and I just don't see it reacting the way you say but I am open minded.

Speaking of melted aluminum.. you know that molten metal spewing out of the tower, south I believe? I'm 100% percent sure that was not melted aluminum.. Aluminum does not glow at it's melting point.. you have to heat it up considerably past it's melting point for it to glow.

I was not comparing the towers to a fuel tank. I was just making a point that jet fuel can be an explosive. Any fuel left after the intail explosion would have been heated and ignited by the fires.

Well if it was molten steel comming from the tower something had to heat it up which was probly a thermite reaction that could have been caused by the aircraft.

Ultima,

Not to put words in your mouth but you are indirectly comparing the towers to a fuel tank. I'm still open to the idea of fuel vapor building up and exploding in certain potential pockets in the building but not really focusing on that for now because the failures exhibited in the collapses of WTC1 and 2 were GLOBAL and fuel vapor explosions, in this particular situation, simply can not provide a necessary 'global cause of damage' to cause the type of again, GLOBAL failure that was witnessed.


Planes causing a thermite reaction? OMG... listen.. this has been discussed somewhere else here on ATS but let me tell you the wrench in that scenario.. The temperature needed to start a thermite reaction is astronomical.. I'm not going to hold your hand on what this temperature is but usually a magnesiu strip/fuse is used to start thermite reactions. Let me most assuredly assure you the melting point of alluminum is not ANYWHERE near the temperature needed to start a thermite reaction. In fact.. the fire in general didn't even get near this temperature. Sorry, but that's a little bit of a huge wrench thrown into your 'the plane caused the thermite reaction theory'.








[edit on 18-1-2007 by ViewFromTheStars]

IMO opinion there is no way a thermite reaction could have happened naturally.

Where did the iron oxide come from? Do you think the columns were so rusty they had rust falling off them?



Do you see loose flaky rust on those columns? No, you just see surface dis-colorization, like you get with all steel open to the elements.

Also aluminum has to be in a fine powdered form to make thermite.

How did this natural thermite manage to stick itself to the right places to cut through the columns?

The temperature to ignite thermite is also a big problem for this theory...

Conventional thermite reactions require very high temperatures for initiation. These cannot be reached with conventional black-powder fuses, nitrocellulose rods, detonators, or other common igniting substances. Even when the thermite is hot enough to glow bright red, it will not ignite as it must be at or near white-hot to initiate the reaction....
...Often, strips of [[magnesium]] metal are used as fuses. Magnesium burns at approximately the temperature at which thermite reacts, around 2500 kelvin (4000 °F).

Source

And then think of this, if I was to throw flower and yeast and stuff in a bowl and shake it up, I'm not gonna get a loaf of bread am I?

To make thermite you have to have the correct ingredients, mixed in the correct quantities. There is no way that can happen in the chaos of an explosive impact.

Sry but the natural thermite theory is a weak attempt to answer the heat question within the bounds of the official story. Who can take this seriously?

Take a chemistry course...

[edit on 18/1/2007 by ANOK]

It take about 2200c if I'm correct to start a thermite reaction, magnesium burns at around this temperature hence the reason they use it to start thermite reactions. What on earth got that hot to start one at WTC 1 and 2? Some magnesium strips attached to shaped thermite cutter charges?

I don't mean to get off base too much here but take a look at the picture of this angle cut collumn.:


I'm still not sure how to post pics here but working on it. Could somone please post a pic of those collumns again that were cut at an angle? (The ones shown during the cleanup phase)


Now go read what I just ran across:

people.bu.edu...

When the reaction product has cooled, we notice that the mixture of red iron oxide rust and gray aluminum powder was converted to a clump of iron and chips of the deep grey mineral corundum -- a form of aluminum oxide. If we test the corundum, we find it hard but brittle. Why is it brittle? That is a result of being quickly cooled from its molten state. Not able to form a strain free crystal, the molecules of aluminum oxide are frozen into a glassy, disordered, and strained arrangement. As a result, it will crack easily.

hmm.. deep grey mineral corundum.. What's hanging off of that angle cut collumn? Just throwing a few things out there.

To post a pic...If it's on a web site right click and choose 'Copy Image Address/Location' or equivalent for your browser. You can check your copied link by putting in the address bar of your browser and clicking go...

Then use the tags (img) (/img) ...But use [ not ( ....couldn't show you using the [] cause it just shows as external image...

or upload www.photobucket.com...

[edit on 18/1/2007 by ANOK]

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
Ultima,
Planes causing a thermite reaction? OMG... listen.. this has been discussed somewhere else here on ATS but let me tell you the wrench in that scenario.. The temperature needed to start a thermite reaction is astronomical.. I'm not going to hold your hand on what this temperature is but usually a magnesiu strip/fuse is used to start thermite reactions. Let me most assuredly assure you the melting point of alluminum is not ANYWHERE near the temperature needed to start a thermite reaction. In fact.. the fire in general didn't even get near this temperature. Sorry, but that's a little bit of a huge wrench thrown into your 'the plane caused the thermite reaction theory'
[edit on 18-1-2007 by ViewFromTheStars]

Well you have some things to help in the thermite reactions, molten aluminum comming into contact with oxygen generators and tanks, Magnesium and other materials that would make for a volitale reaction forming high temps.

Oxygen generators have been kmown to be the cause of at least 1 plane crash.

[edit on 19-1-2007 by ULTIMA1]

I'm gonna use the Mythbusters here.

I saw a recent show where they attempted to give some validity to some theory regarding the dope used on the Hindenberg, causing it to burn as quickly as it did.

They didn't get anything interesting with samples of dope and canvas, that matched what was on the Hindenberg; but they did make a thermite dope that ignited with a pocket lighter. From the show, I understand it takes a few more ingredients than Iron Oxide and Aluminum Oxide to make thermite. As a matter of fact, they blurred out the rest of the ingredients.

Also, I think all those ingredients have to be mixed in appropriate quantities as well. Perhaps it doesn't take an extreme temperature to initiate a thermite reaction, but I'm sure the odds of all those combining coincidently, without contamination from other compounds, in that environment, is very un-likely. Having it happen at all the right spots in two buildings? I can't swallow it.

There is no doubt there was some chemical reactions going on during the impact, but to think it was enough to damage the massive central core of the buildings enough for them to collapse completely to the ground is just unrealistic to say the least.

Originally posted by nextguyinline
From the show, I understand it takes a few more ingredients than Iron Oxide and Aluminum Oxide to make thermite.

You can add a lot of different things to give the thermite different properties, which is what Steven Jones was talking about for a while, but the aluminum and iron oxide are all you really need. Then you have nanoenergetics where the aluminum and iron oxide are set up to make thermite using nanotechnology, and the mixture is a LOT finer, and since more surface area of aluminum is exposed to more surface area of iron oxide, you get energy out of it a lot more efficiently.

Here's another ATS thread on those: Nanoenergetics set to revolutionize Weaponry

Originally posted by ViewFromTheStars
I mean.. "what" exactly was different at the point of failure in building 2 versus building 1 that caused the top of building 2 to tilt like it did?

WTC2 was starting to collapse just above a mech floor, and if the core was being "prepared" there then it seems like it'd be reasonable for the chunk of collapsing building sitting immediately on it to be a little more unstable structurally than WTC1's falling floors. WTC1's cap was a good ways off from the reinforced mech floors below it, and more time elapsed between when it started falling and when that point of the building was reached.

Nothing to prove that, just throwing the idea out there. It would fit with the idea of the core being divided up.

how did the building implode and still explode at the same time throwing the percentage of it's mass OUTWARD like it did..

"Implosion" is another word for a controlled demolition, but controlled demo's aren't always implosions. I think that's more symantics than anything else because only WTC7 really imploded. WTC1 and 2 were exploded, and they generally went everywhere but down as they "fell".

Why did the top part that started to tilt just 'fall apart' as it collapsed?

It was probably just blown apart from the inside just like everything else. The problem with just falling over and falling apart from force in various directions is that this force would be totally relative between the individual pieces of the structure. If the whole thing has momentum, then all its parts have that same momentum in what I would imagine to be a very similar direction.

I'm not a dynamicist or anything, so this is going to come out like somebody studying electrical engineering who's throwing up physics, but what you have is basically a bunch of moving vectors. One truss might have a momentum and direction slightly different than its neighbor, but since they're going in pretty much the same direction at the same speed, instead of tearing apart from one another, they'll be "in phase" (for a lack of a better word ) with each other. So instead of ripping apart from going in conflicting directions, they just represent even MORE total energy going in that particular direction.

And two objects may fly past you at 58 and 60 mph respectively, but to each other, the faster one only looks as though it's going 2 mph. Makes sense, right? Think about the trusses and columns and etc. moving now. They may be falling a decent rate, but to each other, since they're connected, their velocities relative to each other are much smaller, and so it would be very hard for them to break out of their connections with each other in such a state.

[edit on 19-1-2007 by bsbray11]

I have always wondered about the cut beam in this photo;



I know it has been argued that this beam was cut by workers during the clean up, but where did all that slag type material come from? I have one other question though;

Why would someone go through all the effort to cut the beam at an angle when it would be much quicker to just cut it striaght accross? I saw them cut beams like this when I was there. The beams were lassowed with cables to a crane. They obviously didn't just cut them & let them fall wherever becuase of safety reasons. There would be no need to cut at an angle to get the beam to "walk" in a certain direction. As a matter of fact a swinging beam was detirmental if anything becuase the guys cutting the beams were also suspended in metal cages armed with an acetelene torches. They often got hit with the swinging beams after they completed the cut, ergo the need for the cages. We called them "the canaries".

Here's a picture of WTC 7 looking out from the Verizon building facing east. I believe I took it on 09-19-01. Notice in the foreground what a beam looks like that was cut with a torch. I know this because I saw them do it. I know it's not as thick as the previous beam, but-

Where's the slag?



I hope this turns out to be an original thought so that I won't accused again of spouting off about things I just read on the Internet, and not bringing anything new to the investigation. . .

2PacSade-

spelling & bad smiley

[edit on 19-1-2007 by 2PacSade]

Originally posted by ANOK
There is no doubt there was some chemical reactions going on during the impact, but to think it was enough to damage the massive central core of the buildings enough for them to collapse completely to the ground is just unrealistic to say the least.

Remember aluminum and magnesium are used to make fireworks.

Lets look at a small list of material from the planes that would make a reaction if comming into contact with each other and high temps.

Jet fuel
Oxygen
Aluminum
Magnesium
Tungsten
Steel
Concrete