Kuttler's paper: Estimates for time to collapse of WTC1

[Mick West]

As it happens I tend to agree with you.

But sometimes a person's own beliefs are held to be strange by others too, and they would also reject anything that is said on those grounds. See how that works. I happen to believe that in circumstances where a persons skill, knowledge and expertise is accepted, then they wouldn't find it possible to deviate from that when faced with a professional problem, simply because they also happened to be a member of a weird religious sect for example. I believe that they would still be capable of compartmentalising their brain.

I can agree with that when it comes to some aspects of religion - but but's a different thing to be entirely wrong in one region of science, and yet accepted as an expert in another. People need to be aware of their own limitation.

 

[Hitstirrer]

But there's the rub. If you can't understand the math, what actually would qualify as "more substantial"? What would it take?

Understanding the math is not the problem. Seems to me that its all in the assumptions used to transpose into the maths that are important. Its the old GIGO conundrum. Kuttler admits up front that he uses totally unrealistic input skewed to assist a rapid fall time. Some in here then claimed that his conclusions should be discarded because his input was unrealistic. Hmmm.

Way back in here my post #62 was pertinent. Still is.

 

[Mick West]

Understanding the math is not the problem. Seems to me that its all in the assumptions used to transpose into the maths that are important. Its the old GIGO conundrum. Kuttler admits up front that he uses totally unrealistic input skewed to assist a rapid fall time. Some in here then claimed that his conclusions should be discarded because his input was unrealistic. Hmmm.

Way back in here my post #62 was pertinent. Still is.

His input and his models are unrealistic.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

I'm on the road and not in the best position to concoct a big wordy post. Home late tonight. What I find interesting is there's really no attempt to address any of the points made in prior wordy posts. Practically speaking, it's no different from composing a big wordy post, proofreading it, then deleting it.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

What I really meant to say was that an opinion in a forum really needs some kind of outside support from peers before it can be accepted to overturn an eminent maths professors work.

All it takes is correctness.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

The import of Kuttlers message is perfectly understandable by any layman. He tried to bend over backwards in every direction to make the collapse times fit in with known physical laws, and failed.

Forgive me for taking this course, but the keyword in this statement is "failed". A layman ought to be able to understand the primary complaint to this point, namely that he forced more energy to be dissipated by decree than is permitted from valid equations of motion for the problem. You may not understand the basis on which the claim is made, but you surely understand the nature of the claim itself. Yet, no rebuttal; indeed, no comment on it all. Instead you continue to cling to what his intent was without regard to whether it was accomplished or not.

And you cling to this:

Eventually @OneWhiteEye began to submit information that was seized upon by the early posters and chanted at me as manna from heaven to them. Pity that they jumped too early though.

It's isn't that big of a deal. You want to make it such, but it isn't. And it's been corrected, long time now. Kuttler's paper stands unchanged since (what is it) 2006. It took me one day to see my error. I only had to issue one retraction to a small group of participants here, and I did. You can choose to focus exclusively on that til the cows come home if you wish, but I'd ask you spare a moment to consider what should happen if I (and others here) are correct about his paper being fatally flawed. How does Kuttler go about retracting his position after all this time and all the viewings of his paper? Withdraw it? Quietly, or with big fanfare? If big fanfare, what would that be? Front page announcement on AE911Truth website? I can see it now: Kuttler paper invalid, has been withdrawn. Hope everyone who read it sees this....

The only proper course is to withdraw it. It can't be fixed. If he fixes the problems, it will basically say the same thing as Greening's energy transfer paper. And it certainly won't be the desired message in terms of that organization's agenda. Quite the opposite.

Now OWE may well hold higher qualifications than Kuttler ...

I don't.

...and/or is better placed from his own speciality to comment.

Yes. Being a mathematician doesn't mean you can do physics, and this paper demonstrates it. Physics requires strong skills in math, but not the other way around. Some of the best physicists the world has seen have been mathematicians by trade, sure, but it's not a given that a math degree means you can properly frame a problem in mechanics. Solve the equations, yes. Set up the problem, not necessarily.

Again, Kuttler believes he is skewing his result towards faster collapse times by ignoring conservation of momentum. He says so explicitly. It is not true. Very much the opposite of that. And the reason is this: the MAXIMUM possible kinetic energy dissipated in inelastic collision is given by following the conservation law. If a set of equations calculate a greater energy loss, then they are wrong, period. Now get this: they are wrong because they violate the laws of physics! Isn't that the very charge you leveled against Bazant here in this thread, and thought it could be proven/justified just by mentioning his name???

The fact is, Bazant assumed a free drop. It is not correct for the actual collapses in that it's not realistic. You can say that, by choosing deliberately to ignore the resistance afforded by the first failed story, he violates physics. I don't think you'll find many physicists who'll agree with that assessment. Setting up a mechanics problem typically involves all kinds of simplifying assumptions; massless springs, frictionless surfaces, perfectly rigid bodies, infinite surfaces, dimensionless point masses, and so on. ALL of these things would be construed as violations of physics according to the criteria you've placed on Bazant, yet in fact NONE of them are. Rather, these things ARE physics. That's how it's done. There is an art to it, despite it being science, and being a good physicist means knowing how and when it's appropriate to introduce patently unrealistic conditions to best solve the problem. The key is, does it matter to the solution?

As I told you, your (one and only so far) complaint against Bazant is nullified by the fact that it doesn't affect his result in any significant way. A 0.5m free drop results in global collapse, and that's far less impact velocity than if he'd accounted for the resistance afforded by the first failed story. Your complaint would have validity if his assumption were key to getting the result he claimed, but it isn't. Doesn't even change the total collapse time much.

On the other hand, Kuttler's assumption leads him to a grossly invalid result. Instead of getting results in the 11-12 second range like every one else who's done this correctly, he gets wildy overinflated collapse times. See the difference? And I explained to you exactly why this is so. I'd appreciate it if you at least addressed this instead of totally ignoring it.

How am I supposed to arbitrate between two opposing opinions?

Start by addressing the very basic points made. Do you believe it is okay to do mechanics by ignoring conservation laws? Conservation laws are the bedrock of physics. Does it sound like a good idea to cast them aside?

One has published his work for worldwide criticism.

Let me ratchet that line of thinking up a notch. If it works for you, it should work for me in spades. Unlike Kuttler, Bazant published in a respected professional journal. Stop overinflating the importance of Kuttler publishing on his associates' private, agenda driven website, and giving it more credence than the conventional means of publishing with true peer review and follow up discussion. They are nowhere close to the same league in credibility.

You've claimed you can't assess the particulars of Kuttler, but have already come to a firm conclusion concerning Bazant. How is that? How come you think you understand Bazant well enough to proclaim him in violation of conservation laws but can't bring the same critical eye to bear on Kuttler? How about I use the very same tactic you used to dismiss Bazant back at you?

One word should suffice. Kuttler.

Is that flying with you?

 

[OneWhiteEye]

Based on what's gone down here with you, hitstirrer, I'm going to make it a goal to get that paper withdrawn. Even Tony Szamboti (now, after getting some education on real mechanics (from me, mostly)) could pick this paper apart. He won't, of course, as he even refuses to take people like Judy Wood to task. The errors are egregious, and they're immediately evident to anyone with the skills.

The ONLY stumbling block is doing this anonymously, as not one bit of this nonsense is worth untold numbers of frothing people seeking vengeance on an infidel. Cracking that nut is going to be MUCH harder than critically dissecting the paper's errors. Funny, too, considering the context. David Benson told me it was no problem submitting to the Journal of Engineering Mechanics under a pseudonym (reminding me of the Student T-test case), but I'll bet AE911Truth will demand known identity.

Yes, if I ever get around to doing what Benson requests (aka the impossible), then his paper on vertical avalanche will almost certainly be published. It has already undergone review and has only this one outstanding item to clear. You act like it's a big deal to submit a PDF to one's buddies to post on a website. I don't even care enough to get published in a real journal, and my senior author doesn't care enough to bother me about it. If published, it would represent a third major and distinct formulation of the progressive collapse problem, an alternative one to Bazant. But, if I ever do go to the trouble, I'm not going to be using my real name, oh no no no. So I can get trashed in forums like this?

I'd rather the people I'm talking to directly and informally address the arguments that I've made.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

I think one of the major fallacies permeating this discussion is that publishing (anywhere but a forum) is some sacred rite that magically clears up every issue.

Bazant published multiple times in a respected journal. Did that settle anything? Seffen published in the same journal, and his model is different. The only time I see his name is when I type it. Let's stop playing the game that publishing changes a damn thing when it comes to arguing in places like this. hitstirrer rejects Bazant out of hand without full understanding. Another paper is going change that?

Everything I've written here is subject to the same public scrutiny as Kuttler, what's the difference? Exposure? Like that ever mattered to the correctness of an argument, or even how it's received. Kuttler may indeed have been reviewed by his peers, I wouldn't be the least surprised. What's that worth? Tony Szamboti didn't know how to calculate velocity from discrete position data until he met me, and that was AFTER the publication of The Missing Jolt. It was released with great fanfare, "Prof" Jones talking about it being "arduously peer reviewed", yet it was fatally flawed right out of the gate. The error was caught by me (and two others) on first perusal and it was brought to his attention on a forum (a medium you don't seem to respect too much, hitstirrer).

After a period of denial and condescending remarks by Tony, he recognized the error and revised the paper. That was its very first revision, and it occurred within days of the initial release. Arduous peer review? Most high school physics students could've caught the error, and I'm not exaggerating in the least. Kuttler's case is essentially the same.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

OneWhiteEye found a nit in the Missing Jolt where we were at first averaging the acceleration. That was not right and it was corrected. However, it did not affect the premise of the paper, as there is no deceleration of the North Tower. That has been verified by others. The only person who claims to find any deceleration is OWE's friend, FEMR2, whose alleged jolt occurs between stories. OWE never bothers trying to explain that, but after finding a nit in my paper he wants to act like I wouldn't be an engineer without him.

OWE also forgets to mention a couple of significant issues I introduced him to such as Sudden Loading and St. Venant's Principle.

It seems one thing OWE doesn't need to learn is how to toot his own horn and drown out those of others.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

OneWhiteEye found a nit in the Missing Jolt where we were at first averaging the acceleration.

To say you were "averaging the acceleration" gives the impression that the quantity you were calculating was simply an average as opposed to an instantaneous value. It was far more convoluted than that.

The quantity you calculated (and called 'velocity') was meaningless, pure nonsense. The graph of this quantity had the characteristic of being monotonically increasing for all real velocity values zero and above, even for negative velocities up to a point. Therefore - as I demonstrated at the time - the upper block could've come to a dead stop for the better part of a second and your curve would've just shown a slight bend to a lower rate of increase of velocity.

You call that a "nit"? Shall we review? Your paper's entire premise was that the motion history of the North Tower showed no velocity decrease, and you used a made-up formula to calculate velocity which was incapable of showing a velocity decrease even if the block fell for any period of time and then came to a dead stop forever after.

Call it a nit if you want, it only diminishes your credibility further.

That was not right and it was corrected.

My point to hitstirrer above was that it was not caught during the "arduous peer review", rather found by anonymous people on a forum. And you fought it for a while, too.

However, it did not affect the premise of the paper, as there is no deceleration of the North Tower.

Two things: 1) you're just lucky. You didn't even recognize the unphysical nature of your "velocity" curve. Like I say, had there been a massive jolt bringing the block to a stop, you would've missed it. It's exactly like closing your eyes while driving through a busy crosswalk and, after the fact, saying it's okay because you didn't hit any pedestrians. 2) Others disagree with you about the presence of deceleration.

That has been verified by others.

Other than Bazant et al who, despite their prowess in engineering mechanics, don't know jack about extracting motion history from video, who has verified this and what method did they use? It's my understanding that Bazant put a bloody ruler up to the screen; at least that's what Greening did. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the displacement data used for BLGB was done by Greening - using a ruler. Now, Greening has said numerous times that my motion extraction methods were far superior to his. And you know whose methods are superior to mine?

The only person who claims to find any deceleration is OWE's friend, FEMR2,...

That's right, femr2's methods are superior to mine. But, whatever femr2 claims to have found, it's also in achimspok's data, too. They use the same methods, and their traces agree. While you reject femr2's work out of hand because he's anonymous, you embrace achimspok's work and even referenced him in this forum. achimspok is anonymous to everyone here but you.

...whose alleged jolt occurs between stories.

I'll remind you that only one degree of tilt staggers impact south to north by 1.1m, something you've never taken into account. This alone would foul your expectation of perfect intervals of 0, 3.7, 7.4, etc. In all, your expectations are not shared by me for reasons given to you by many people at many forums, all of which you've ignored or waved away. Don't hold me to YOUR expectations.

OWE never bothers trying to explain that, but after finding a nit in my paper he wants to act like I wouldn't be an engineer without him.

Actually, I've explained it successfully many times. Shall I link? As far as your engineering skills, here is a comment I made behind your back:

I've said it before and I'll say it again, he can run circles around me in structural and mechanical engineering.

But let's not lose sight of the prize... this is the very next sentence:

Too bad progressive collapse is a problem in physics, and even the "first jolt" (based on a purely fictional notion of discrete first impact) is more a physics thing than an engineering thing.

...and...

OWE also forgets to mention a couple of significant issues I introduced him to such as Sudden Loading and St. Venant's Principle.

Do you expect me to mention that every time I mention your name? Here is where you told me about sudden loading. Here, a year later, I give you credit. A year after that, again. Here I am giving credit to you for explaining St. Venant's principle. I haven't forgotten. I'll put it in my sig line if it makes you happier.

If you look at the last link, though, the student has become the teacher. I completely deconstruct your claims about St. Venant's principle as it pertains to this scenario. After this point, you shifted to a dynamic version of St. Venant's, and in rebuttal I sent you a couple of emails explaining why it's still not valid to invoke in this scenario. You did not respond.

What you don't seem to get is, there's nothing at all difficult about either of these concepts. Both dirt simple. I just hadn't heard of them, being engineering things. St. Venant's principle is pretty cool, but sudden loading is just jargon to describe one specific case of interaction between deformable bodies. In physics, that's a blip, but I can understand why it's a big deal to mechanical engineers. In the links above, I also describe how YOU apparently misinterpret sudden loading as being equivalent to all dynamic loading.

It seems one thing OWE doesn't need to learn is how to toot his own horn and drown out those of others.

Truth and nothing but truth, as uncomfortable as that may be for some. I have a laundry list of other "nits" you've declined to address.

I've defended you on several occasions. Here's one you likely didn't know about, and yet another but you DO know about others. Remember the argument with Lord of Planar concerning thermal signatures of the debris pile on DebatePolitics? Want a link to jog your memory?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

Clearly OneWhiteEye = "the man who doth protest too much"

If you have defended me it has evaded my radar. I have a very nasty e-mail from you on my computer which can't be presented in polite circles.

You have admitted that Bazant has been shown to be in error and now you are defending him. It is hard to understand what you are doing. It sort of seems like you are either confused or trying to cause it.

Both Bazant and someone at the NIST have been fraudulent in their work on the WTC collapses and that is becoming known.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

If you have defended me it has evaded my radar.

I just put it on your radar, didn't I?

I have a very nasty e-mail from you on my computer which can't be presented in polite circles.

Things got nasty after you insisted on misrepresenting our interactions, and took to deliberate falsehoods to simultaneously elevate your position while denigrating mine. I can dig up those links, too. This is something you persist in to this day. On DebatePolitics, (until I showed up) you were denying that ANY error was found in the TMJ by posters at the 911 forum, now it's been upgraded to "nit"; well, I'm going to go into the nature of that nit a little more and we'll see if others agree with your assessment.

You have admitted that Bazant has been shown to be in error...

Yes, I have.

...and now you are defending him. It is hard to understand what you are doing. It sort of seems like you are either confused or trying to cause it.

I am not confused. He's not wrong about everything, for god's sakes. What he is correct about I defend against ill-founded criticism, what he is wrong about I admit. What's confusing about that?

Both Bazant and someone at the NIST have been fraudulent in their work on the WTC collapses and that is becoming known.

There you go again with accusations of malfeasance when error suffices to describe the situation. Were you being fraudulent when you claimed "no velocity reduction is seen in the North Tower" when your original TMJ data had two velocity decreases in it? Was it fraudulent to make up a bogus formula for "velocity" which was INCAPABLE of showing a velocity decrease, then claim no jolts were present?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

I just put it on your radar, didn't I?


Things got nasty after you insisted on misrepresenting our interactions, and took to deliberate falsehoods to simultaneously elevate your position while denigrating mine. I can dig up those links, too. This is something you persist in to this day. On DebatePolitics, (until I showed up) you were denying that ANY error was found in the TMJ by posters at the 911 forum, now it's been upgraded to "nit"; well, I'm going to go into the nature of that nit a little more and we'll see if others agree with your assessment.


Yes, I have.


I am not confused. He's not wrong about everything, for god's sakes. What he is correct about I defend against ill-founded criticism, what he is wrong about I admit. What's confusing about that?


There you go again with accusations of malfeasance when error suffices to describe the situation. Were you being fraudulent when you claimed "no velocity reduction is seen in the North Tower" when your original TMJ data had two velocity decreases in it? Was it fraudulent to make up a bogus formula for "velocity" which was INCAPABLE of showing a velocity decrease, then claim no jolts were present?

Bazant's entire collapse hypothesis is wrong. The kinetic energy he claims is provably not there. We do know the actual mass and upper section velocity and he does not use them. He uses embellished values.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

Bazant's entire collapse hypothesis is wrong. The kinetic energy he claims is provably not there. We do know the actual mass and upper section velocity and he does not use them. He uses embellished values.

Okay. Can you address criticisms which have been directed towards you? Could you bother to have a look at Kuttler's paper and see that he doesn't do the mechanics the way you do (which is now the right way)? I agree Bazant did not establish the bounding case he claimed. By your definition, that's a nit.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

Let's examine the "nit" more closely, since it goes to the topic of "peer review" in the cloistered CD community. An explanation of the meaningless calculation they originally used is here.

Summary:

The graph above shows four lines.

1) Green Dots - the actual velocity as calculated from the discrete position data taken from TMJ
2) Green Line - linear fit to the actual velocity
3) Blue Dots - TMJ calculation of "velocity" from the TMJ data
4) Red Dots - test of TMJ calculation using test data which includes a 0.67 second interval of ZERO actual velocity

Notice how the line with red dots continue to show an ever-increasing velocity even over the 0.67s interval where it should show zero.

This is a nit???

This is a paper where the entire thrust, including title, is the alleged absence of a velocity decrease. Yet the "formula" used to calculate velocity couldn't show it if it was there. In fact, it could tolerate a modest bounce UPWARDS without showing a velocity decrease. This is no small error, it is an embarrassing schoolboy error which renders the entire paper invalid.

Yes, the error was corrected, and it turns out that it did not affect the result (against the backdrop of the author's expectations and methodology). But how long would it have taken for this catastrophic mistake to be caught if it were not for users Dave Rogers, unhyphenated and myself? It had already undergone peer review! I'm not exaggerating when I say that it could've been caught by a high school physics student, because they either learn how to calculate velocity from position versus time or they don't pass the class. Yet, somehow the peers of Szamboti and MacQueen did not catch it.

The Missing Jolt was released to great fanfare at places like 911 Blogger:

This fine paper underwent several months of rather arduous peer-review preceding its publication in the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

Seriously?? In all that time, this boner could not be found? Took me all of four hours from the time I started reading it to spot the error, and only a fraction of that time was spent on the problem. That's the total elapsed time from exposure to the paper to exposing your error.

The whole history of this nit can be found here.

 

[Tony Szamboti]

A nit would be something where the error does not change the results to the point where it invalidates the claim.

In Bazant's case, correction of his errors cause diametrically opposed results from what was claimed. That is not a nit.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

A nit would be something where the error does not change the results to the point where it invalidates the claim.

I don't agree. Major errors central to the conclusion are not nits. You had the "right"* conclusion but based on nothing at all. You hadn't once noticed - during the writing or months of review - that the curve you were looking at to judge presence/absence of decreased velocity could not show a decrease.

In Bazant's case, correction of his errors cause diametrically opposed results from what was claimed. That is not a nit.

I'll concede that point. It's not a nit. But neither was your original error in TMJ.



* scare quotes because there are two decelerations in your original TMJ data. I could cover your two standard objections (noise, differencing methods) to this in advance, but I'll let you bring them up if you care to.

 

[OneWhiteEye]

Something I've always found obnoxious is your propensity to quote the entirety of a post and then respond to only one particular point of many - or worse, ignore them all - with a brief retort, often completely unsupported. It's obnoxious because a detailed post takes time and effort, and I see no parity in the level of counterargument.

You call a completely bone-headed error which prevented arriving at the conclusion in a valid manner a "nit". You refuse to acknowledge that months of peer review didn't catch a high school level error, and what ramifications that has for other papers which have gone through the same process. You ignore repeated postings of outstanding issues with your work and claims on another thread (didn't know your co-author's cited FEA was not for three-hinge buckling, made proven inaccurate statements concerning fracture, etc.).

There's a lot you choose to leave unaddressed. If you don't want to engage, just say so. Otherwise, quoting an entire post and responding to less than 20% of the content does not constitute a complete counterargument.

At this stage, it's necessary to conclude those things you choose to ignore are issues for which you have no counterargument.

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

I think OWE makes a very good point about the characterization of a "mistake". How can we know the person's intent? Why should we assume that they were or weren't intended to deceive?
The entire claim by AE911t and most "truthers" is that NIST INTENTIONALLY lied and deceived the public and the reason is that were concealing the "truth" which is that there was a CD in each of the collapses of the 1,2 and 7 wtc.

This is a pretty amazing leap. For even if they WERE "covering something up" how can anyone know what they were covering up? Maybe it's something as simple as their own "incompetence" / inability to come up with a bullet proof step by step explanation of how the towers can apart, realizing this and that they had to produce "something" came up with "models" which seemed plausible, but were never intended to be THE complete forensic analysis of what happened.

I don't normally find myself defending NIST and have in the past ascribed some possible reasons to account for them missing what I believe might have been better explanations. But who knows why they did what they did and don't want to be backed into a corner to defend what appears clearly to be a pretty crude model????

 

[OneWhiteEye]

... they had to produce "something" came up with "models" which seemed plausible...

This bit right here I think is of crucial importance. Does anyone believe that throwing up their hands and saying "We don't know" was an option for NIST? This is a very difficult problem. Sure, people of all stripes say it's a no brainer - impact, fires, unfought fires all day - bam, bam, bam. But when you're tasked with coming up with a precise timeline and catalog of events leading to global collapse, backed by a strong technical basis, that's a tall order if the problem is in fact insoluble with a high degree of confidence.

(I hear faint sounds of "but why wasn't the steel saved?" etc)

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

How could they say... We can't tell you what happened... and no one else can either... and don't ask for your money back. So they made stuff up knowing it would be discovered or understood it was just a conceptual model. And they are getting grilled for their model. I know I get the same

 

[Mick West]

Perhaps the conversation could be steered back towards Kuttler's paper? @Tony Szamboti, have you given your opinion or analysis of this paper?

 

[OneWhiteEye]

I guess that's that. Shall we call it debunked? There are no defenders.