How does debris fall through the air slower than through a building?

reply to post by Swampfox46_1999


I was given the impression you meant after the buildings were gone the core was was still standing for a few seconds at ground level. If that is not what you meant, what did you mean? I did not see anything, in the videos, showing any core supports still standing once the rest of buildings were gone.

reply to post by Swampfox46_1999


Ok, so the core is standing there intact, and then you want us to believe a piece of it just breaks off and goes flying out horizontally when almost the entire building is already below it? How exactly do you think this could happen?

Originally posted by Griff

Originally posted by OzWeatherman
Throw a rock and a piece of paper in the air. See which one falls first.

But, throw a piece of paper and another piece of paper in the air and which one falls faster?

Gottago made a good point that it has been thrown through the air in an arc too.

That's my contention also. How does a gravity driven collapse actually throw things up into the air?

Now take one piece of paper and crumble it and leave the other flat...Throw them both in the air and see which falls faster. Surface area plays a huge roll in the speed at which an object falls that weighs the same. If you take a stone and a parachute that weigh the same and drop them from a point, what happens. The stone falls straight down with little resistance while the parachute opens and slowly glides to the ground. Now the fact that the building tore apart into tiny pieces indicates why it fell at a faster rate than objects like a facade that had more surface area. Also the arc projection will slow the rate of descent as it is traveling in 2 directions, dealing with 2 different forces. I am not a scientist and tried to explain that as simply as possible. Hope it works for everyone. Case is closed!

It looks like a section of the aluminium facade being driven by the turbulent air movements displaced by the falling mass, the same activity that's driving the plumes of dust and smoke upward with considerable force.

Just my opinion as always

Originally posted by traderonwallst
Now the fact that the building tore apart into tiny pieces indicates why it fell at a faster rate than objects like a facade that had more surface area.

This really makes no sense.

The "pieces" that the building broke into are the exact same as the "piece" that is falling behind all the other pieces.

Also, a damned lot of energy necessarily HAS TO BE LOST to destroy the building, and this REQUIRES a loss of kinetic energy AND therefore a loss of velocity. There is no way the pieces can break apart and free-fall through themselves at the same time.

Also the arc projection will slow the rate of descent as it is traveling in 2 directions

This is also completely incorrect, and anyone that's had physics 101 here and remembers it will back me up.

If it was traveling fast enough then the air resistance on the bottom might hold it up a little longer, but it would do this for every other piece of debris, and in a vacuum a bullet fired from a gun will hit the ground at the exact same time as a bullet simply dropped from the same height. The horizontal component of the motion is completely unrelated and comes from something else.

[edit on 12-2-2008 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by traderonwallst
I am not a scientist and tried to explain that as simply as possible. Hope it works for everyone. Case is closed!

And it's a good job you're not lol. Sry doesn't work for me, and no case has been closed.

Those pieces of facade are way too heavy to be effected by air resistance.

But that's beside the point, you can see those pieces are being ejected with force. Way too much force to be explained away by gravity, or air pressure.

The following is what NASA has to say concerning free fall outside a vacuum:

www.grc.nasa.gov...

The remarkable observation that all free falling objects fall at the same rate was first proposed by Galileo, nearly 400 years ago. Galileo conducted experiments using a ball on an inclined plane to determine the relationship between the time and distance traveled. He found that the distance depended on the square of the time and that the velocity increased as the ball moved down the incline. The relationship was the same regardless of the mass of the ball used in the experiment. The story that Galileo demonstrated his findings by dropping two cannon balls off the Leaning Tower of Pisa is just a legend. However, if the experiment had been attempted, he would have observed that one ball hit before the other! Falling cannon balls are not actually free falling - they are subject to air resistance and would fall at different terminal velocities.

reply to post by OrionStars


There will be some air resistance but the difference in speed would be hardly noticeable, especially from such low heights.

I don't know if I can explain this right, but I'll give it a shot. There was most likely some backlash of energy in some parts of the structure, particulalry the metalwork of the facade. Take a plastic fork, the real brittle kind. When you break it, pieces fly in all sorts of directions, even up sometimes. I think this is what we are seeing in this picture. As the metal beams were being pulled inward, the pressure became so great, that they would snap off with such concentrated force, that they would fly off in any direction until gravity became the dominant force on the object.

Think of a metal cable on a suspension bridge. If a cable snaps, a portion will fly upward momentarily, before gravity becomes the dominant force.

[edit on 2/13/0808 by jackinthebox]

Originally posted by traderonwallst
Also the arc projection will slow the rate of descent as it is traveling in 2 directions, dealing with 2 different forces.

No. You are wrong. The horizontal force component has ZERO to do with the vertical component. As explained by the example of a bullet being shot vs. a dropped bullet. They fall at the SAME rate....no matter what the horizontal force is.

I am not a scientist and tried to explain that as simply as possible.

You said it right there. You don't understand the physics involved.

Case is closed!

Sorry. No it's not.

Originally posted by Pilgrum
the same activity that's driving the plumes of dust and smoke upward with considerable force.

What is that upward force in a gravity driven collapse?

Please explain.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
Think of a metal cable on a suspension bridge. If a cable snaps, a portion will fly upward momentarily, before gravity becomes the dominant force.

This is only because of the tensile force ALREADY in the cable when it snaps. The columns and facade were under compression.

Sorry. Nope. Try again.

Let's put it this way:

The debris falling through the building has to go through building resistance PLUS air resistance.

How does a piece of facade fall slower JUST through air resistance?

Again. Explain in physics. Thanks.

reply to post by Griff
It looks like a section of aluminium facade like all the others fluttering around in that pic and the plumes of dust and smoke are evidence of energetic air activity above the collapse, maybe enough to suspend such a light piece of material (mass vs surface area) delaying its fall.

Now if it's a 10 ton steel I beam or a cubic metre of concrete I'd need to put out an APB on David Copperfield naturally

Surface area i everything. I will AGAIN go back to my area and you can all try this at home. Go ahead, try it....and then tell me I am wrong. Take 2 exact pieces of paper. Crumble 1 up and stand on a chair. Now, drop BOTH pieces of the paper at the same time. Which one falls first. Now come back and tell me the case is not closed!!!

I will be waiting to hear all of your results.

reply to post by Pilgrum


I was under the impression that the air was being condensed and shot out the facade lower than the collapse wave as what have been called "squibs"?

How can we then have the air also going up out of the building pushing this facade piece?

It's either being condensed and shot out the bottom or it's being expelled from the top.

We can't have both.

Which would it be?

reply to post by traderonwallst


Too bad we are talking about things that have a hell of a lot more weight than paper.

BTW, all those other pieces of facade are falling unlike your paper piece? Why? If surface area is making it "fly", why wouldn't the SAME dimensional pieces of facade be doing the same thing?

Try this. Use your paper analogy but instead of crumpling one, just drop them. Does one fall at a MUCH faster rate than the other? How about if you use 100 pieces? Is there a chance that 1 would fall at a much slower rate than the others?

Again. Case not closed. Mind maybe .....but definately not case.


[edit on 2/13/2008 by Griff]

reply to post by Griff


Griff, do me a favor and don't reply to my posts unless you perform my test. It a simple test and I am sure you can figure out how to do it.

I could not make my post any easier for anyone to understand.

If you don't think the paper test is worth performing, use my other example. Take a rock about 10 pounds and a carry a parachute weighing 10 pounds up to the same point. Drop both, then come back and tell me which one drops faster. Do it again and again. Did you get the same results each and every time???? NOW, how do you argue with science with those results??????



Talk about a closed mind..........l

reply to post by traderonwallst



Do this. Take a 10 lb. rock and another 10 lb. rock and drop them. Do it however many times you want. Do they fall at different rates?

Why do you want to give surface area to one thing and not the other?

ALL those facade pieces are the same dimensions. Meaning that the air resistance caused by surface area would affect them ALL the same.

Originally posted by Griff
Let's put it this way:

The debris falling through the building has to go through building resistance PLUS air resistance.

How does a piece of facade fall slower JUST through air resistance?

Again. Explain in physics. Thanks.

Since the post was not specifically addressed to anyone, I will give it try.

For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Which means, the heavier and object, the more resistance pushing it back against it, be it air, which has matter we cannot physically see, invisible barometric pressure, invisible wind or breeze blowing under it, dust, pollen, kinetic energy of heat (which rises), or anything else in the atmosphere, particularly when it arcs first then starts to drop. That is all resistance to whatever gravity is attempting to pull downward. It is also the same principle on which planes are capable of flying.

Atmospheric conditions run horizontally, in layers, not vertically, unless releasing precipitation being pulled toward the earth by gravity.

There was a tremendous vacuum humanly created inside the buildings, pulling all the congregated heavy granulation and anything else downward, from the inside, which did not exist on the outside of the twin towers.

It is also only one of the solid, validated science reasons, why Boeing 767s and 757s could not possibly have done what the Bush adminstration claims them to have done in the "official" reports.