The towers did not fall at or below free fall speeds…
In every photo and every video, you can see columns far
outpacing the collapse of the building. Not only are the columns falling faster
than the building but they are also falling faster than the debris cloud which
is ALSO falling faster than the building. This proves the buildings fell well
below free fall speed. That is, unless the beams had a rocket pointed to the
ground.
Just look at
any video you like and watch the perimeter columns.
Deceptive videos stop the timer of the fall at 10:09 when only the
perimeter column hits the ground and not the building itself. If you
notice, the building just finishes disappearing behind the debris
cloud which is still about 40 stories high.
The paper takes the transfer of momentum
into account. Like a billiard ball being hit by another on a pool
table, each floor transferred its momentum to the next as represented
below. The more weight, the less resistance each floor gave.
The time required to strip off a floor,
according to Frank Greening, is a maximum of about 110 milliseconds = 0.110
seconds. It is rather the conservation of momentum that slowed the collapse
together with a small additional time for the destruction of each floor.
Below are calculations from a physics blogger...
When I did the calculations, what I got for a
thousand feet was about nine seconds- let's see, d = 1/2at^2 so t = (2d/a)^1/2 a is 9.8m/s^2 (acceleration of gravity at Earth's surface, according
to Wikipedia), [He gives this reference so you can double check
him.] d is 417m (height of the World Trade Center towers, same source) so
t = (834m/9.8m/s^2)^1/2 = 9.23s OK, so how fast was it going? Easy enough,
v = at v = (9.8m/s^2 x 9.23s) = 90.4m/s So in the
following second, it would have fallen about another hundred meters.
That's almost a quarter of the height it already fell. And we haven't
even made it to eleven seconds yet; it could have fallen more than twice
its height in that additional four seconds.
If the top fell freely, in 13.23 seconds it
would have fallen about two and one-half times as far as it actually did
fall in that time. So the collapse was at much less than free-fall
rates.
Let's see: KE = 1/2mv^2 The mass of the towers was about 450 million kg, according to
this.
Four sources, he has. I think that's pretty definitive. So now we
can take the KE of the top floor, and divide by two- that will be
the average of the top and bottom floors. Then we'll compare that to
the KE of a floor in the middle, and if they're comparable, then
we're good to go- take the KE of the top floor and divide by two and
multiply by 110 stories. We'll also assume that the mass is evenly
divided among the floors, and that they were loaded to perhaps half
of their load rating of 100lbs/sqft. That would be 208ft x 208ft = 43,264sqft 50lbs/sqft * 43264sqft = 2,163,200lbs = 981,211kg additional weight per floor. So the top floor would be
450,000,000 kg / 110 floors = 4,090,909 kg/floor so the total mass would be 4,090,909 kg + 981,211 kg = 5,072,120 kg/floor Now, the velocity at impact we figured above was 90.4m/s so our
KE = (5,072,120kg x (90.4m/s)^2)/2 = 20,725,088,521J So, divide by 2 and we get 10,362,544,260J OK, now let's try a floor halfway up: t = (2d/a)^1/2 = (417/9.8)^1/2 = 6.52s v = at = 9.8*6.52 = 63.93m/s KE = (mv^2)/2 = (5,072,120kg x (63.93m/s)^2)/2 = 10,363,863,011J Hey, look at that! They're almost equal! That means we can just
multiply that 10 billion Joules of energy by 110 floors and get the
total, to a very good approximation. Let's see now, that's 110 floors * 10,362,544,260J (see, I'm being conservative, took the
lower value) = 1,139,879,868,600J OK, now how much is 1.1 trillion joules in tons of TNT-equivalent?
Let's see, now, a ton of TNT is 4,184,000,000J. So how many tons of
TNT is 1,139,879,868,600J? 1,139,879,868,600J / 4,184,000,000J/t = 272t
Now, that's 272 tons of TNT, more or less; five hundred forty
one-thousand-pound blockbuster bombs, more or less. That's over a
quarter kiloton. We're talking about as much energy as a small
nuclear weapon- and we've only calculated the kinetic energy of the
falling building. We haven't added in the burning fuel, or the
burning paper and cloth and wood and plastic, or the kinetic energy
of impact of the plane (which, by the way, would have substantially
turned to heat, and been put into the tower by the plane debris,
that's another small nuclear weapon-equivalent) and we've got enough
heat to melt the entire whole thing.
Remember, we haven't added the energy of four floors of burning
wood, plastic, cloth and paper, at- let's be conservative, say half
the weight is stuff like that and half is metal, so 25lbs/sqft? And
then how about as much energy as the total collapse again, from the
plane impact? And what about the energy from the burning fuel? You
know, I'm betting we have a kiloton to play with here. I bet we have
a twentieth of the energy that turned the entire city of Nagasaki
into a flat burning plain with a hundred-foot hole surrounded by a
mile of firestorm to work with. -
Schneibster edited by Debunking 911
Let me make this clear, I don't assume to
know what the ACTUAL fall time was. Anyone telling you they know is
lying. The above calculation doesn't say that's the fall time. That was
not its purpose. It's only a quick calculation which serves its
purpose. To show that the buildings could have fallen within the time it
did. It's absurd to suggest one can make simple calculations and know
the exact fall time. You need a super computer with weeks of calculation
to take into account the office debris, plumbing, ceiling tile etc..
etc... Was it 14 or was it 16? It doesn't matter to the point I'm making,
which is the fall times are well within the possibility for normal
collapse. Also, the collapse wasn't at free fall as conspiracy theorists
suggest.
For more analysis of the building fall times,
go to 911myths
free fall page.
Please
refer to Dr Frank Greening's paper for detailed calculations.
Italian debunker shows us more than 16
seconds to collapse. That's almost twice free fall speed from the
110th floor.
One of the more absurd arguments is the
idea that there was a "Pyroclastic flow" during the collapse. This
is easily debunked. You will note not one person was poached at ground
zero. Pyroclastic flows are a minimum of 100C, or 212F.
The
gas is usually at a temperature of 100-800 degrees Celsius. The
flows normally hug the ground and travel downhill under gravity,
their speed depending upon the gradient of the slope and the size of
the flow.
Not ONE person, even the ones trapped
INSIDE the towers, complained of dusty air burning their skin. Trees
were left green next to the towers. Paper floated around ground zero
without being burned.
When I brought this up to one conspiracy
theorist, he produced some photos showing burning cars and such.
Yet I easily found photos which show their photo was being taken out
of context.
Are the cars, papers and trees in this
photo made of asbestos except for the ones on fire? If you think there was a
pyroclastic flow and photos of fires at ground zero is your proof then that's exactly what you must think.
It's obvious that the collapse rained
paper on fire and even hot steel which could easily explain the spotty
fires. Unless the pyroclastic flow hopped from one place to another.
Critical thinking skills will tell the
average person there was NO pyroclastic flow but since this was
brought up by a "scholar," thinking seems to be optional.
What really makes this argument absurd
is the amount of explosives needed to turn that much concrete into
dust. (We are only talking about 10% of the total concrete in the
building anyway. There was a massive amount of gypsum as well, which
conspiracy theorists would like you to forget.) The argument is the pyroclastic flow (which there is no
evidence of) was created by explosives. (Some
have suggested an absurd amount of thermite) If the
incredible amount of
POTENTIAL ENERGY (Energy the building had just
standing there due to the stored energy of lifting the steel into
place.) which converted to
Kinetic energy
(as it collapsed) is not enough to create the dust cloud, then the
assumption is explosives must have created it. How much? And
why would they overload the building with powerful explosives? Why
put more than would be needed to cut the steel? Why put enough to
cut the steel AND create a pyro show? As you can see above, the
collapse released enough energy to equal 272 TONS of TNT. Why
wouldn't this amount of energy be enough to cut the steel
connections AND create some dust as the floors impacted each other
110 times per building?
Another absurd straw man
is that they say Greening is saying the collapse weakened the steel. Nowhere
in Greening's paper does it say the collapse "weakened" the steel. The
massive potential energy converted to kinetic energy in the collapse
and was MORE than enough to destroy the connections.
No "weakening" of steel needed. The only weakening was on
the fire floors which had its fireproofing blown off. This has
NOTHING to do with Greening's paper.
Reader contribution:
Just a few numbers that
make 9/11 conspiracies nearly impossible:
So, on 9/11, three
buildings were razed with perfect precision. One was 131 ft. taller
than the record tower and the other two (minus cell phone antennas) were
929 ft. taller than the record holder.
Even according to the
Loose Change guys, the heightened security and bomb-sniffing dogs had
only been lifted for 5 days.
Of course, the construction is different and
the towers would need less explosives if they were the same height.
However, the towers were much taller and had more columns to cut as a
result. Even if they did have the same amount of columns it would still
take over 72 days with 12 people doing nothing but loading explosives.
That's just one building. Add the second tower and WTC7 and you see
where this is going. It quickly becomes absurd. As if this absurdly
complex plan was the ONLY way to scare Americans.
I'd like
to thank Slugman from Political Myths blog for his contribution.
