Additional Architecturual information: The World Trade Center

architecture.about.com...

The World Trade Center consisted of two 110-story buildings (known as the "Twin Towers") and five smaller buildings. The buildings were light, economical structures designed to keep the wind bracing on the outside surfaces. Architect Minoru Yamasaki studied over a hundred models before adopting the twin tower plan. Plans for a single tower were rejected because the size was cumbersome and impractical. Plans for several towers "looked too much like a housing project," Yamasaki said. The World Trade Center Towers were among the tallest buildings in the world, and contained nine million square feet of office space.

Construction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers
Tower One was 1,368 feet (414 meters) tall
Tower Two was 1,362 feet (412 meters) tall
Each tower was 64 m square
Each tower stood 411 m above street level
The Towers rested on solid bedrock and the foundations extended 21 m below grade
The Towers had a height-to-width ratio of 6.8.
The Tower facades were constructed of aluminum and steel lattice
Each tower used a lightweight tube construction with 244 closely spaced columns on the outer walls
A 80 cm tall web joist connected the core to the perimeter at each floor
Concrete slabs were poured over the web joists to form the floors
There were no interior columns in the Tower office spaces
Each tower contained 104 passenger elevators
Each tower had 21,800 windows
Each tower weighed about 500,000 tons
About 50,000 people worked in the World Trade Center complex

Came across this by accident..........discusses the architecture of the Twin Towers...............



[edit on 22-5-2007 by ferretman2]

Any information about what was on the 81st floor? What were all those unused lead batteries for?

I seem to be missing the point of this.

Originally posted by Pootie
I seem to be missing the point of this.

Based on information provided by a former Japanese bank employee, who said that the 81st floor of the South Tower was filled with server-size Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) batteries, Bollyn has suggested
www.bollyn.com...
www.iamthewitness.com...
that the cells were filled with thermate. This was the floor that Flight 175 (or its surrogate) hit, so the fires could easily have melted the lead and released the thermate, which then reacted with surrounding steel, causing it to melt. But how could this be effective in severely weakening many girders far from the impact zone if all the thermate had been contained on one floor? To facilitate the near free-fall collapse of many floors (and remember: destruction of floors started well above the plane impact point in the South Tower), thermate had to be distributed on many other floors as well, if, indeed it was ever used at all (see my thread here for my rebuttal of Jones' claim that it was). But the thermate powder could never have reached many other floors if it was all sitting on the 81st floor, even allowing for some scattering by the impact of the plane and resulting fires. So what was the point of it being kept on one floor?! Bollyn's suggestion makes sense of molten iron pouring out of the 81st floor - the floor where the batteries were housed. But why the plotters would load only one floor with thermate does not make sense, as it would not have helped very much in weakening other floors and thus the complete collapse of the tower! On the other hand, if we suppose that thermate was planted in many parts of the skyscraper in order to help destruction of the whole tower, what was the point of having so much of it on one floor, hidden in batteries?! Bollyn's theory does not add up.

Bollyn's suggestion that there was thermate loaded in the North Tower that accounts for the white smoke (aluminium oxide, so Jones speculates) coming from the explosion out of the east side equally does not make sense. Why bother to have so much thermate on one floor (the 95th), much of which was scattered outside the building after the explosion if Bollyn's and Jones' interpretation of the white smoke as the aluminium oxide in thermate is to be believed, when it would have been more sensible to have thermate distributed over many floors, so that it could melt steel girders in them and facilitate near free-fall of all the floors? Indeed, the tower could never have collapsed completely if all the thermate had been loaded on just one floor. How could what was left inside the tower after the impact get distributed to all the dozens of floors below the impact point?! Anyway, there is really not all that much difference in lightness of color between the smoke from the north face of the North Tower and that issuing from the east side - see photo at
www.iamthewitness.com...
The claim that the white smoke had to be the aluminium oxide in thermate is weak. Even if the difference of colour be accepted as real and not merely due to the differences in density of the smoke or how sunlight was being scattered, it could merely reflect the difference between oxygen-starved, weak fire, which generates black smoke, and a much hotter fire in a different area of the tower, which was creating white smoke. It does not necessarily indicate that thermate was burning! Anyway, if it had been, why did no molten metal pour out of the North Tower at the plane impact level, as it did in the South Tower?

The same applies to the South Tower. Bollyn notices that the smoke issuing from the south side (impact face) is white, whereas the fireball issuing from the south-east face is much darker. He fails to understand that comparatively little jet fuel exploded outside the impact area (most was carried inside), so the smoke and concrete dust issuing from the hole was not darkened by the soot which the kerosene vapour fireball turned into as it burnt and exited from the side of the tower. The difference between the colours of the smoke is not necessarily evidence for thermate.

I believe Bollyn made his suggestion to give support to Professor Steven Jones' identification of the molten metal pouring out of the South Tower as iron. They have worked together on this problem. But his idea is wrong, because it would have made no sense to load just one floor with thermate. Even with damage from fire and the plane's collision, the powder could not have been distributed to any more than a few of the 110 floors. How Bollyn thinks this would lead to steel girders many floors further down being weakened because parts of them melted is beyond me! It makes no sense of the very purpose that Professor Jones has claimed for the thermate he believes he has detected, namely, to ensure complete destruction of the tower. I think the lead batteries on the 81st floor were real batteries that melted in the fire, so that it was molten lead (melting point = 327.5 degrees Centigrade - below the temperatures of the fires) that poured out of the 81st floor - the very floor that the batteries were located! Not coincidental, I suggest. Bollyn makes much of the fact that he was told by the Japanese bank employee that the batteries were never turned on, suggesting they were not real ones. But, if they were only meant to provide backup electric current to computers during a power failure, what is suspicious about that?

I have no doubt that Bollyn is being targetted because of his writings about 9/11. But it is because he is a journalist who is raising awkward questions about 9/11 and - more seriously - publicising the research of scientists whose findings seem to contradict the official story. Don't, however, conclude that it necessarily means that he is getting at the actual truth.