I spent today reading this report actually, and Sam, thanks for teaching me to check every quote, apreciated thanks
The NIST report states that the extreme fires caused bending and flexing in the trusses which then failed and debunked the pancake theory, see the independent report.
However, what still interests me in this theory are both the firemans reports at the time that the fires were contained and under control and the photo's of people standing in the impact areas shortly before the building collapse that according to the report should have been blazing inferno's to account for the collapse.
I've got my views, you've got yours. Lets just agree to disagree
You've also made this claim in several posts on page 13 of this thread. I'd appreciate it if you could point out where in the NIST report it states pancaking was not a contributing factor in it's collapsed. Plus, if you posted this 'independent report' i must have missed it. Can you tell me which post it's in please.
Yeah, that firemans report is well known. However, there's a bit more to the tale than it first appears. The Fireman in question only reached the 78th floor of WTC2 and found only small fires, and this matches the NIST report. But the 78th floor was the lowest floor hit by the plane, and it was only hit by a wingtip. These pages explains it far better than i can
And Yeah, we can agree to disagree if you want. But try to not let yourself get sucked into believing the first thing you read on a conspiracy website. I know how compelling the arguements can be sometimes, and sometimes the desire to believe can outweigh any rational observable facts. In that respect it's very similar to the "Does God Exist Thread" But, i've always thought it prudent to see both sides of the coin before making my call.
It's got to the point where the conspiracy theory has become a conspiracy theory in it's own right. And lets face it, we all love a good detective story.
My foot, which must weight only a few kg, and can only travel at speeds of up to perhaps 50m/s maximum (estimated figures) could quite easily kill a man if I hit him in the temples with it. That's a light thing moving slowly.
Okay, so a building is rather stronger than a head (even ignoring the particularly weak heads that internet forums tend to attract), but lets say the plane weighs 300 tonnes and was travelling at 125m/s at the time of impact (250mph, which is pretty darn slow for a Jumbo size of plane, especially one trying to crash into a building before it gets shot down).
We all know from primary school that kinetic energy is 0.5*M*V^2, so the kinetic energy is 2.3*10^9 Joules. This is [edit]quite[/edit] a lot. I don't really know how to put it into perspective for you, but it is the same as dropping the same plane onto the ground, with no air resistance, from over 1,000 meters. A kilometre. A pepple dropped from the Eiffel Tower will quite easily kill someone. Dropping 300,000 kg from three times the height isn't going to be much nicer.
A repost of the links and page no's debunking the pancake theory as requested. And remember that the buildings were designed to take a 707 crash, including the ensuing fires.
NIST and Underwriters Laboratories In August 2004, Underwriters Laboratories evaluated the Pancake Theory by testing models of the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings. Despite all the previous expert testimony, the floor models did not collapse. NIST reported this in its October 2004 update, in a table of results that clearly showed that the floors did not fail and that, therefore, pancaking was not possible.14 NIST more succinctly stated this again in its June 2005 draft report, saying: "The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11th."15
What I don't like about this study, is that they tested the building's ability to withstand the fires, as designed, with the 3/4" of fireproofing material. They DO state that maybe the fireproofing wasn't as thick as what they tested it with, HOWEVER, they don't seem to state the possibility of the fireproofing being knocked off entirely during the impact. That would have lead to a significantly different outcome.
:rolleyes: Sheesh dude !, Haven't you been following this thread at all ? They used an SR71 Blackbird packed with explosives and made it look like a 757 passenger jet using holographic projectors....
And anyway, lay off our boy Tristan. Don't you realise he's Britain's best hope for Olympic gold this summer. If he can generate a leg speed of 50m/sec then we're expecting a sub 5second 100m dash, and a 10 minute Marathon. If he didn't have such puny little girly arms he'd be in the rowing team too...
All you've done is repost the exact same post i quoted when debunking it.
As said previously, nowhere in either document does it say NIST officially claims pancaking had now been discounted as an explanation for global collapse. I asked you to point out where in the official report it says that. I looked, and believe me i couldn't fined anything of the sort.
I thought there was something wrong, but I couldn't quote work out what it was (whilst trying to design a pulley system).
I took 250mph, and went to m/s in my head. I knew it was a case of doubling one of the numbers, and without thinking I chose the wrong way - 250mph = 125m/s.
This therefore changes my numbers massively (square law). It will remain a lot of energy though!! I'll edit the post with new numbers. Thanks for pointing it out!
Considering 250mph was an arbitrary number, plucked from the ether, I think the 'rule-of-thumb' of halving it is good enough. It' certainly good enough for most calculations.
To be honest the impact speed was probably closer to 350mph (~175m/s), and one of the people in this thread who read all the gumph about 11/9 will probably insist on telling us even though it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I agree. I just thought I'd point it out before everyone called your data "useless" on the grounds that you didn't use the absolutely correct conversion factor.
But who the hell cares. The point is it's a lot of energy.
We could also go a bit further, and say the builder is a catelevered beam (albeit vertical). Applying a load based on the impact of the planes (how you choose to work that out from the impact momentum is up to you) one could plot rough shear and bending stress profiles for the beam (modelled as a single material)...
It would probably tell you something like the floors wouldn't concertina or pancake (funny how the noun pancake is used to describe the verb of floors collapsing on one another...), and that the building was easily capable of taking the impact without falling over (which it must have been able to because it didn't).
But being such a simplistic comparison only RacerX would likely believe the results as hard fact.
Right. So we've established the planes didn't knock them over, which we all saw on TV years ago. Proof if it were needed that spending time working out maths is completely pointless, and a thorough vindication of all the occasions I decided to take LSD instead of going to school.
I am curious to know what is the basis for the allegation about hijackers' passports being found on the street next to the WTC, or whatever it is. What, exactly, is the allegation, and how reliable is it?
Ah, finally an explanation for the seemingly nuclear-like explosion, necessary to bring down the WTC towers. Now, we just need to know what converted the mass to energy. And we need to expose the perpetrators, who did that.
Are you serious? How was that a "nuclear-like" explosion?! Give me ONE PIECE of evidence to support that the impact of that aircraft and the resulting explosion were any sort of nuclear blast. ONE.
[paraphrase=RacerX NZ]There was some stuff on 'Ground Zero' that looked a bit like molten metal, and metal must mean steel, and (assuming it was structural steel which obviously melts at twice the temperature of normal steel) therefore there must have been a full size nuclear bomb plus insulation generally better than mankind has developed on the site to melt the metal, keep it molten (i.e. keep the metal at over 1400°C) for 3 months, and kill everyone in a 50 mile radius with radiation poisoning. Oh dear, I've just realised I haven't got a clue[/paraphrase]
so you think your puny little energy estimate which roughly equals what a modern nuclear power plant will deliver every single second can account for molten steel months after the impact then?
I was joking. Shotglass's representation of energy equal to "27*10^21 J in the mass of the plane" is e=mc^2 for Tristan's plane mass of 300 metric tons.
In fact, I have no reason at all to suppose that there was any nuclear explosion (which is the usual context of e=mc^2) in the WTC, notwithstanding the previous proposition, in this thread, that U.S. gov't nuclear demolition items may have been used to produce the necessary extent of WTC destruction. Nor can I think of any way that the plane's mass could be converted into e=mc^2 energy; I was just playing; sorry.
Ahhh alright. I wasn't actually sure if you were joking or not, but most of the crazy statements in this thread have been serious so far, so I assumed the worst.
Well, let me ask you this then. Do you really believe that it's possible to heat steel to the point of being ABLE to stay molten for months?! I can't even imagine steel being heated by ANYTHING that might have happened on that day to the point of staying molten for months.
What's one to do, y'know?