Flight 93 Crash Physics - Fragmented Plane Buried in the Ground

vodking

New Member
Hello all, love the forum! I've signed up here because I absolutely hate 9/11 conspiracy theories.

I am currently arguing with a guy who is absolutely hung up on Flight 93's crash physics. As we know debris was buried in the crater, and also found above ground. This guy simply cannot get over the fact that debris was buried and fragmented. He thinks that either the plane should have fragmented when it hit the ground (but not buried), or I guess should have buried in whole parts?? I'm still not sure on that front, however he simply cannot see how a plane could fragment and still bury itself. If I understand his super-duper 9/11 truth logic, he thinks all the momentum would be gone when the plane hit the ground and parts could not have had any more momentum to carry them (especially aluminum parts) into the ground. Follow?

He also annoyingly keeps citing Newton's 3rd law, but has yet to fully explain how Newton's third law applies. Northwest Airlines Flight 710 has also been pointed out to him repeatedly but he is sort of dancing around that one.

I'm sure this has been explained before. Anyone have a link or explanation for how the plane fragmented and buried?

Thanks!
 
He thinks that either the plane should have fragmented when it hit the ground (but not buried), or I guess should have buried in whole parts?? I'm still not sure on that front, however he simply cannot see how a plane could fragment and still bury itself. If I understand his super-duper 9/11 truth logic, he thinks all the momentum would be gone when the plane hit the ground and parts could not have had any more momentum to carry them (especially aluminum parts) into the ground.

Fragmenting does not mean things immediately stop. Shoot a .50 round at water and it will fragment. That does not mean it stops on the surface of the water.. Here's an example.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSTuLIjRm8
 
As I was reading the OP... Something occurred to me as a possible reason why so few giant sized fragments existed, or would exist.... See if this makes sense to anyone:

Assuming that flight 93 flew into the ground relatively straight (nose) down into the ground at a fairly high rate of speed. Wouldn't the fuselage buckled and compress down like a cigarette being pressed into an ash tray? When you do that, the tobacco inside gets pressed further into the body of the cigarette and the outer paper tends to split and rupture with the increased tobacco being pushed up inside. Wouldn't the air and materials inside the plane do the same? I would think that this would cause the plane skin to rupture and split as the nose and front of the plane was pressed into the ground. Because it happened so fast, it would probably act more like an explosion of air and materials and cause the fuselage to burst into smaller fragments; thus explaining the limited number of big plane parts found. The fact that the ground was very soft meant that it would have been happening at or just below ground level, reducing the amount of plane fragments that were expelled out onto the surrounding landscape.

Just a thought. Does that make sense to any of the more scientific minds here?
 
The impact speed and angle are some of the factors for the percent of parts buried or found above ground. The impact "crash landing", is usually low speed, low energy, with kinetic energy from 100 to 300 pounds of TNT. Flight 93's impact was about 1,400 pounds of TNT. I believe the impact angle was about 40 degree and 93 was partially upside down. The angle and speed are why an engine was buried, and the attitude of the aircraft play a role, as would the roll rate at impact. It was flight 93 that hit; what we see is what we get for the flight parameters of 93 in a high speed dive into the ground.

As for the aircraft being fragmented, it depends on the speed at impact, like car crashes, low speed less damage, high speed more damage. The impact of Flight 93 had 7 to 10 times the kinetic energy of a "normal" aircraft crash people might be use to seeing. This is why Flight 93 was destroyed beyond recognition.

Flight 93 at impact, from 93's FDR buried in the ground.
pitch -41.1 degrees (not near an approach to landing pitch of 2.5 to 3 degrees)
roll angle 142 degrees (rolling about 10 degrees a second)
airspeed 487.5 knots (lots of kinetic energy)
 
The null hypothesis is that Flight 93, a Boeing 757, did crash at Shanksville, fragmented and ended up largely inside the crater. Because that is what photos, radar, FDR, witnesses, the coroner, the NTSB, United Airlines, their insurers, the victims' relatives, etc etc etc etc etc agree on.

If someone claims that "Newton's 3rd" somehow invalidates all that, it's their burden of proof: Have them actually show work and apply Newton's 3rd! List assumptions, state the formulas and terms they are gonna use, plug in specific numbers, compute, show results, and interprete them in context.

Newton's third states that for any two bodies A and B that interact, the forces mutually exerted follow the equation F(A) = −F(B).
In order to show that something is impossible because of Newton's 3rd, they would have to define the two interacting bodies and evaluate the forces they can exert on one another.
Has any Truther actually ever done that? -> Hell no.

Have the person you are debating link to a truther actually applying Newton's 3rd with testable specificity. You will find that they can't and won't. And that removes Newton's 3rd from consideration.
 
As I was reading the OP... Something occurred to me as a possible reason why so few giant sized fragments existed, or would exist.... See if this makes sense to anyone:

Assuming that flight 93 flew into the ground relatively straight (nose) down into the ground at a fairly high rate of speed. Wouldn't the fuselage buckled and compress down like a cigarette being pressed into an ash tray? When you do that, the tobacco inside gets pressed further into the body of the cigarette and the outer paper tends to split and rupture with the increased tobacco being pushed up inside. Wouldn't the air and materials inside the plane do the same? I would think that this would cause the plane skin to rupture and split as the nose and front of the plane was pressed into the ground. Because it happened so fast, it would probably act more like an explosion of air and materials and cause the fuselage to burst into smaller fragments; thus explaining the limited number of big plane parts found. The fact that the ground was very soft meant that it would have been happening at or just below ground level, reducing the amount of plane fragments that were expelled out onto the surrounding landscape.

Just a thought. Does that make sense to any of the more scientific minds here?

This does make a lot of sense.
 
Here is some of the latest from this stubborn truther (redundant, I know)

understand the following: AFTER being severed in a collision the parts have no momentum left. Thus it cannot bury itself after being severed in a crash. That is an easy rule to understand; don´t you think? What CAN happen though; if the ground is very wet at the surface, that the severing does not start or is being completed until a little bit later than if it is dry earth. For that reason there could be some pieces very close to the surface of the wet area. If the earth is dry, as it was in Shanksville, like I told you; the scenario will follow Newtons rule of mutual destruction until the momentum from the plane is exhausted. The mutual destruction will contain two events: 1. the plane will be severed; 2. the earth will be cast aside and form a crater. The bottom of the crater will tell you when and where the mutual destruction stopped. At the bottom you will find the severed parts from the plane that were not cast aside by the explosion or from bouncing when contacting the ground. Are you following me this far? Now we are coming to LOGIC; that is where you fail, evidently. From what I had said above can we draw the conclusion that no parts of the plane can have CONTINUED beyond the point where the mutual destruction stopped. (Of course, this process is not as clean as a from a doctors knife; but basically this is the rule.) I would like you to point out the exact wording concerning the Northwest flight that has made you think differently. Please cite directly from the report.
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Outstanding reply from a fellow debunker on this. Can't wait to see how he'll spin this one.


FYI, you have been arguing prolifically about physics, yet have not taken my advice to get your ideas reviewed by actual scientists. So I decided to do that myself. I found myself on the phone today with a physics professor from my old university. I did this both for the sake of this thread, and also for my own education. We talked some about Newton's 3rd law, and I summarized some of your comments. I emailed him some of your above remarks, and if he has time, he will comment on them. What I learned from him is exactly what I had suspected all along:

1) Newton's Third law BY ITSELF doesn't tell you whether or not an airplane can both become buried and torn to pieces. That depends on how all the energy is expended in an impact. It's arbitrary to assume that this energy is precisely equal to either the force required to bury a plane; or the force required to tear it up.

2) After having been broken down into small fragments due to high speed impact, a previously solid object does not necessarily lose its momentum. This is also a key point in the collapse of the twin towers: the fact the top portion of the towers is being pulverized as it falls doesn't rob it of its mass (most of it, from the videos) and does not prevent it from continuing to exert force on the lower portion. There is nothing in Newton's Third Law that says this. If it does, I challenge you to find it.

3) I asked him if there would be general agreement on these basic points by all the professors in his department and he said yes.

There you have it. The consensus of the Tufts University physics department will support my expert reference in declaring 1) your physics null and void; and 2) that there is no violation of Newton's 3rd law by F93's (alleged) impact.

I don't want to throw around this man's name lightly on a forum like this. But if you would like his name, I will indeed post it if that's what it takes to convince you I had this conversation. And then we could do a conference call, if you'd like, and you will hear for yourself that what you have been writing about Newton's Third law is garbage. Case closed. Let's move on.
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understand the following: AFTER being severed in a collision the parts have no momentum left.
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Well that first line is clearly incorrect, so everything that follows from that misconception is invalid.

Things don't magically lose their momentum just because they have been "severed". Ever seen a clay pigeon being shot? It fragments into pieces when struck by the shotgun pellets, but the individual pieces sill have their momentum. The fragments don't just instantly stop in mid air and drop to the ground!
 
The main fuselage at the crater in Lockerbie also left very little evidence of aircraft components, they calculated what hit the ground by counting rivets, if you look at the main crater picture, there are no disernable aircraft pieces at ground zero, I cannot comment more on my involvement but it's perfectly reasonable to deduce what happened at one location happened at the other, unless of course you wish to deny both events, insulting many people including those who lost life.
 
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