econ41
Senior Member
Maybe. But there are a couple of more subtle problems - possibly further advanced than we need at the stage of the current discussions in this thread.
What "really happened" was not the reason why Bazant & Zhou postulated "one story drop" (which they later reduced also). The "one story" was to provide the energy source for the limit case. It was legitimate for that original purpose. BUT it, in turn, led to two further sources of misunderstanding:
1) The problem which still persists as a misunderstanding by many debunkers. Viz the concept that the Top Block portions of broken columns somehow "fell through a gap" to impact the lower portion of the same broken column. That simply is not how a column fails by buckling assisted by heat weakening and load redistribution. The column "scrunches down", the top end getting closer to the bottom, there is no "gap" to pass through and -- key point -- the ends bypass and overlap. Here an example:
... it is NOT "Twin Towers for obvious reasons - possibly WTC6. But note the top part is "scrunching" past the lower part - clearly a consequence of localised heating. There are a couple of other mechanisms... same net result.
2) Multiple "arse backwards" wrong explanations about "tilt". Even reflected in the NIST comment referenced by @Mick West:
That statement is ambiguous as to causality. But when read with the causal implication that tilting prevented alignment it is a wrong explanation. And a false argument that too many debunkers have relied on. Tilt occurred because some columns had already failed (on the "low" side of the tilting Top Block). The gap previously occupied by each failed column had reduced. That part of Top Block was lower therefore Top Block tilted. And the column had got shorter not as a result of Bazant's imagined "gap" but because the column had buckled or "scrunched". Which meant that the two end parts of the column were already moving past each other - AKA "bypassing". Column failure preceded and caused "tilt". So tilt did NOT prevent column ends bypassing - they already had bypassed by the time tilt came into being.External Quote:
Those two are probably the main causes of continuing misunderstanding. Both are consequences of the false assumption that the top part of columns somehow dropped through an imaginary gap.
The Bazant & Zhou "Limit Case" hypothesis was logically correct BUT caused so much confusion which still persists. I have questioned whether the whole Twin Towers collapse debate may have progressed faster and been better informed if B&Z had never written that paper.
And don't overlook the multiple ironies flowing from the still unresolved issue that Szuladzinski, Szamboti and Johns claim that Bazant and Zhou got the sums wrong. They allegedly over-estimated the falling weight and underestimated the residual strength of failing (folding) columns.
It is well known, and contentious with truthers, that NIST asserted that global collapse was inevitable. To what extent was NIST relying on Bazant & Zhou's "Limit Case"? Maybe B&Z were wrong. We are now assured from later explanations, associated with the controversies over the "ROOSD" acronym, that global collapse was in fact inevitable and unstoppable. Maybe NIST's claim as originally made was "Right for the wrong reasons"?...
We don't need to go down that path in this thread - the topic has been raised on previous occasions.
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