you know what's astonishing?

[yesme]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

I continue to see conspiracy theorists as quick to try to discredit the mainstream story but not very willing or capable to present a credible alternative scenario.

why would i offer a credible alt scenario?

did you see me at ground zero doing an independent investigation?

do you think i have some evidence in my back pocket?

only the government has the data and evidence(whats left after they destroryed much of it).

the only thing i can do is discredit the offical story so people realize how half assed it was, and how we failed our fellow brothers and sisters by allowing that P>O>S> report to be filed as the anwsers to what happened.

[floridaorange]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

^yesme, so what really occurred on 9/11? WTC, Pentagon, building 7, etc...what do you honestly think went down from your information gathering, etc..

The reason I ask is so many of the videos that were put together by counter-theorists insinuate in one or more ways that it was "an inside job" but inside by who precisely and why.

Miro and myself have agreed on occasions that there could be something more to the highjacking specifically, having lived in San Diego for nearly 10 years (during 9/11) I wasn't shocked in the least to hear that the 2 highjackers lived there and trained there (also where many gov't contractors are hq'd)...But a controlled demolition? Why?

Very good Article / Q&A session : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spyfactory/hill.html
^^^
A year after the September 11th attacks, Eleanor Hill coordinated the congressional hearings that examined what, if anything, the intelligence community might have done to stop the plot.

[Miroslav]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

what i or anyone has yet to see(because we clearly realize the 10th floor is going to weigh ALOT more then the 109th floor) is how much each floor weighed.

110=
109=
108=
107=

so now that we both agree that a complete and truthful investigation can only be done with the proper data, why not find out what those numbers are for us, unless you just want to admit right now you stuck your foot so far in your mouth that your shoelace is hanging out your butt.

Ok. I may be able to find the weights. I don't think it is such a secret; you can probably search for it yourself on the net. Most any physicist could estimate it pretty well with some knowledge of the building specs and the characteristics of the key materials used. I believe I have seem some studies that have this data... I'll look and see.

Also, please show some info about the bottom floors being "heavier" than the top floors - I've seen no such information.

because it was not supposed to look like a cd in the first place.

i also bet you think if it was a cd, that the government put out a public bid for the job as well.

i know thinking outside the box has never sat well with you, but for a minute try to imagine what a cd might look like if it was not supposed to look like a cd and they did not have to worry where stuff fell or who died.

wow, so they reversed the order from bottom up to top down, and this is such a leap of imagination that you believe it could never be done eh?

It's rather hard to believe (without additional evidence) mainly because it's so stupid of an idea.

Why go to all that elaborate waste to blow the building up from the top down - after having planes crash into it? If your goal is to blow up the buildings, then why not just blow them up in a straightforward fashion and cook up a story of how terrorists succeeded in bombing the thing?

wtf??

so something was wrong with the tower before one side was chisled out?

or did you just throw out some mind numbing dumb stuff?

No, these guys did. Read it - even if you're not a calculus expert (which maybe you are), you can still follow along with the key parts. This is the technical version of what I was trying to explain to you.

See Appendix 2 on Page 5.

http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/405.pdf

Could the combined plastic shear resistance Fp of the columns of one floor @Fig. 3~f!# sustain this horizontal reaction? For plastic shear, there would be yield hinges on top and bottom of each resisting column; Fig. 3~e! ~again, aiming only at an optimistic upper bound on resistance, we neglect fracture!. The moment equilibrium condition for the column as a free body shows that each column can at most sustain the shear force F152Mp /h1 where h1'2.5m5effective height of column, and Mp'0.3MN m5estimated yield bending moment of one column, if cold. Assuming that the resisting columns are only those at the sides of the framed tube normal to the axis of rotation, which number about 130, we get Fp'130F1'31 MN. So, the maximum horizontal reaction to pivoting would cause the overload ratio

Fmax /Fp'10.3

if the resisting columns were cold. Since they are hot, the horizontal reaction to pivoting would exceed the shear capacity of the heated floor still much more ~and even more if fracture were considered.
...

The pivoting of the upper part must have started by an asymmetric failure of the columns on one side of building, but already at this very small angle the dynamic horizontal reaction at the base of the upper part must have reduced the vertical load capacity of the remaining columns of the critical floor ~even if those were not heated!. That must have started the downward motion of the top part of the South Tower, and afterwards its motion must have become predominantly vertical ~Fig. 4!. Hence, a vertical impact of the upper part onto the lower part must have been the dominant mechanism.

Also, be sure to check out the graphic on Page 5 - Figure 4. It's the visual representation of the story.

This illustrates my point that - even though I'm no physicist - the subject matter is much more complex than a layperson might think who sees something at an angle and assumes it must tip over. And this is only an estimate - there are many other things about WTC that these guys got wrong, and it doesn't take everything into account... but I think it does a decent job of showing that the tipping of the top and the mainly vertical fall are not so impossible and don't require explosives. And other physics Doctorates I've spoken with have also confirmed this viewpoint - that the tipping it is quite possible and explainable, and it is not a violation of any law of physics.

Overall... no offense, but for all of their shortcomings, I still trust these guys' physics knowledge a hell of a lot more than yours.

[yesme]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

^yesme, so what really occurred on 9/11? WTC, Pentagon, building 7, etc...what do you honestly think went down from your information gathering, etc..

The reason I ask is so many of the videos that were put together by counter-theorists insinuate in one or more ways that it was "an inside job" but inside by who precisely and why.

should i spend an hour typing up what and why and maybe who? i dont think so, you will not believe anything i say, cause i dont 50 degrees in anything i talk about, not to mention the nature of the human species to reject that which it finds uncomfortable, and just a fyi, it is an unconscious trigger, something you would not even understand, the mind protects itself from what it considers to be damaging information.

you have to come to the understanding yourself.

a good starting point is to realize that it is also human nature to rule it all, the alpha male thing.

then you have to realize that for 1700 years man has tried to rule it all by force(we can all agree that never really worked)

so either

a. man has fought human nature and now no person/group/country wants to run anything.

b. man has found a way to rule it all subversively.

then think of all the ways this could happen and who is in a position to pull this off.


after years of research it is amazing how many people all tie in together.

take for example the fed reserve bill and the income tax act, and col house. also the senator who helped pass both acts(even though 2 years before he was against an income tax)

who helped president wilson with an old fling from college and what did he give his old friend once he was president(hint first "religious" person of this kind to be appointed to supreme court).

why is the balfour declaration made out to one person and not the jewish community as a whole?

everyone knows we intake 100% of our information thru our eyes and ears, we also know that governments have been doing psyops for 50-75 years, but we somehow imagine that these would not be used against us(even though controlling the mass population has been going on since the roman times(youu think they built the colliseium for shits and giggles? it was to appease the roman population, keep them happy and not thinking what the roman leaders were doing)

most history professors will be glad to tell you as much.

it's almost funny that people believe old john d wreck a feller was such a nice guy that he set up a trust and that trust invests in school textbooks, out of caring for the lesser mans education.

Miro and myself have agreed on occasions that there could be something more to the highjacking specifically, having lived in San Diego for nearly 10 years (during 9/11) I wasn't shocked in the least to hear that the 2 highjackers lived there and trained there (also where many gov't contractors are hq'd)...But a controlled demolition? Why?

because the towers had to come down, the asbestos fireproofing had to be removed, the towers were losing money every year, and the insurance company already told the port authority they would not pay for the removel, it would have to come out of pocket.

maybe thats why no one believes old lary would sign a 99 year contract for a building that needed a billion dollars out of pocket repairs.

i dont know, maybe that seems like a good business move to you.

you ever looked into the 93 wtc bombing at all? know who the lead gov witness is for that case? ever heard of the tapes he made of his fbi handlers?

Ok. I may be able to find the weights. I don't think it is such a secret; you can probably search for it yourself on the net.

right, cause in 8 years i might not have looked for them, gotcha

Most any physicist could estimate it pretty well with some knowledge of the building specs and the characteristics of the key materials used. I believe I have seem some studies that have this data... I'll look and see.

here i'll help you since i have seen all the data put out.

they take the weight of the building(500k which is way to much to begin with anyway) and divide it by the number of floors.

again to assume that the first floor(with the added supports to hold up the whole building, weighed as much as the top floor, which had no added support since it did not support any floors above it)weighs as much as the top floor is beyond stupid.

Also, please show some info about the bottom floors being "heavier" than the top floors - I've seen no such information.

are you kidding dude? how about common sense?

Fighting Gravity

The main obstacle in building upward is the downward pull of gravity. Imagine carrying a friend on your shoulders. If the person is fairly light, you can support them pretty well by yourself. But if you were to put another person on your friend's shoulders (build your tower higher), the weight would probably be too much for you to carry alone. To make a tower that is "multiple-people high," you need more people on the bottom to support the weight of everybody above.

This is how "cheerleader pyramids" work, and it's also how real pyramids and other stone buildings work. There has to be more material at the bottom to support the combined weight of all the material above.

or to put it in a simply physics term you might understand

center of gravity

How is this possible? It's pretty simple, and requires just one little physics concept: center of gravity. In a human being, your center of gravity is somewhere in your abdomen. The higher your center of gravity is above the floor, the tougher it is to balance.

you need the supports and the majority of the weight on the lower floors and in the ground.

but really i want to know why you think that the 110th floor with no other floor to support would weigh as much as the 10th floor with 10 floors to support?(common sense would lead me to believe the 10th floor would need more steel and concrete in order to support the 100 floors above it, the extra supports would seem to add more weight.

but this somehow escapes you?

If you search for published values of the mass of WTC 1 or 2, the number quoted is invariably close to 500,000,000 kg or 500,000 tonnes. But where does this number come from?

I have certainly never seen a detailed calculation of the mass of WTC 1 or 2; but there are plenty of references on the web for the weight of the materials used in the construction of the WTC Towers. For example, the weight of structural steel used in each Tower is generally reported to be 96,000,000 kg and the weight of concrete is said to be 48,000,000 kg per Tower. I have also seen the weight of aluminum cladding reported to be 2,000,000 kg, and the weight of wallboard quoted at 8,000,000 kg per Tower, giving a total weight of structural materials of 154,000,000 kg per Tower.

Now let’s add in reasonable “guesstimates” for plumbing fixtures (5,000,000, kg), air conditioning (5,000,000 kg), electrical and telecommunication wiring (5,000,000 kg) and we have an additional 15,000,000 kg of structural mass that civil engineers always include as part of the “dead load” of a building. Thus combining all these contributions, we arrive at a weight, or dead load, of 169,000,000 kg for one WTC Tower. Surprisingly this accounts for only about 1/3rd of the oft-quoted 500,000,000 kg, so where is the missing mass?

The answer would appear to be in what civil engineers call the “live load” of the building, which in the case of one WTC Tower would have to be (500,000,000 - 169,000,000) kg or 331,000,000 kg, i.e., twice the dead load! We will show that this result leads to major problems …..

But first, let’s convert our load data in to more familiar engineering units based on floor areas. Building codes usually express loads in pounds per square foot (psf) or kilograms per square meter (kg/m^2). For example, the specification for a high live-load capacity floor is typically about 150 psf or 750 kg/m^2.

From the dimensions of a WTC Tower we estimate the available floor area per Tower was about 320,000 square meters. Hence, the live load was 331,000,000 kg divided by 320,000 m^2 which is equal to 1034 kg/m^2 or 212 psf. We see from the live load example given in the previous paragraph that 212 psf represents a very high live loading. But let’s look at just how high this load is…..

If the live loading within one WTC Tower really was 331,000,000 kg (more or less), that equals 3,009,091 kg per floor or about 3000 tonnes per floor!! I believe each WTC Tower employed about 15,000 people so we have an average of 136 people per floor. This means that each person working in the Twin Towers contributed about 22 tonnes of live load!!! That's an awful lot of office furniture, computers, printers, telephones..... or am I missing something?

http://lofi.forum.physorg.com/What-was-the-weight-of-a-WTC-Tower_4299.html

It's rather hard to believe (without additional evidence) mainly because it's so stupid of an idea.

Why go to all that elaborate waste to blow the building up from the top down - after having planes crash into it? If your goal is to blow up the buildings, then why not just blow them up in a straightforward fashion and cook up a story of how terrorists succeeded in bombing the thing?

it can not be any more stupid then paying a company millions of dollars to do a cd of your building when you jst got to cut 1/100th of the support columns and then knock over some drums of jet fuel and light a fire.


to the bolded question....they tried that in 1993 and it did not go over so well, even though we have audio tapes of the fbi knowing about the bombing before it happened, i'm guessing you think we had no inside job on that either correct?

No, these guys did. Read it - even if you're not a calculus expert (which maybe you are), you can still follow along with the key parts. This is the technical version of what I was trying to explain to you.

See Appendix 2 on Page 5.

http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/pe...Papers/405.pdf

i have yet to look at the part you mention but from the first page, i can see the report is flawed.

they begin talking about how prolonged heating(56 mins?) lead to creep.

i wonder why the longer hotter fire that covered more floors in 1975 did not also experence this?

imagine standing in an oven for 3 hours and not getting burnt.

then stand in a oven that has half the heat for 56 mins and being totally burnt to nothing.

sound feasible to you?

but i'll go look at your part now.

be sure to sometime in the next 30 pages to provide SOME kind of evidence that the fires in the wtc were hotter and covered more area and burned longer then the 1975 fires and you might have a case.

ok, having now viewed your part i can say without a doubt these guys are crackpots.

can you tell me whats wrong with figure 4 on page 5?

notice how none of the coloumns are missing on their diagram of the south tower?

notice how the undamaged columns are not pulled by the tipping of the tower(because they left the columns that were destroyed still in the diagram, otherwise the diagram would not make any sense)

in the diagram, part c starts to pull, but then in d it seems to snap back inward????

oh wait, is this the bazant paper?

lol

yeah, that has been debunked time and time again, are you kidding me?

DR. BAZANT - NIST's 911 FALL GUY

by Gordon Ross, ME, June 4, 2007*

When NIST encountered the sticky problem of how to explain the various facets of the collapse of the WTC Towers which did not fit their pre-ordained conclusion they must have been overjoyed to come across a hastily written paper by Dr. Bazant which purported to show, in a theoretical manner, that once started, the tower collapse would inevitably progress to ground level.

Dressed up a little to remove the obvious shortcoming that it talked of the columns reaching temps of 800 C

800c?

ANY evidence for those temps AT ALL?

so in the very basic respect, his theory is flawed.

but here is one of the debunkings of bazant, done by yes, an engineer.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/9154

when you find something that supports your view, do me a favor, look for a debunking of the paper, read it and see if it makes sense to you.

surely you know that no one, not even nist is claiming temps as high as 800c.

if this is the level of research you do, it is no wonder why you believe the offical theory.

i mean in 5 mins i pointed out major flaws in his theory, and i dont have a phd.

but again, i already understand that you are not going to change your mind, i mean it would not matter to you if bazant said 800c or 2800c, cause to you it's all good, who cares if there is no evidence to support either temp, at least it goes with the mainstream thinking right?

[toasty]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

Quote:
I'm sorry, but this is just preposterous. Considered an expert by whom?
Quote:
"Earl Nightingale said many years ago that one hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years, you'll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do.

If you read one hour per day in your field, that will translate into about one book per week. One book per week translates into about 50 books per year, and 50 books per year will translate into about 500 books over the next 10 years.

If you read only one book per month, that will put you into the top 1 percent of income earners in our society. But if you read one book per week — 50 books per year — that will make you one of the best educated, smartest, most capable and highest-paid people in your field. Regular reading will transform your life completely."

i easily spend an hour a day for the last 8 years researching 9-11, including physics,fire study's,etc,etc.

I have to confess that I had no idea who Earl Nightingale was until I saw this and, out of a sense of morbid curiosity, decided to look him up. I kinda wish I hadn't now, because it just makes me want to cry. Let me see if I've got this straight -- the basis for your claim to expertise from regularly reading on the topic is the pro-reading pep talk from an inspirational speaker? At least he kept you out of a van down by the river, so I guess there's that.

Here's my take: you've spent 8 years reading what other people with actual physics and engineering expertise have said about 9-11, so that makes you an expert on knowing what other people with actual physics and engineering expertise have said about 9-11. That's it. I'll give this to you, though, because you can regurgitate what others are saying like a mo' fo'. It does not mean, however, that you could show up on the premises of a collapsed building and determine the point of failure and why. When people start calling you and asking for your opinion, let us know.

Quote:
The same is not true of a field that includes a lot of applied reasoning. It does not follow that because you understand a few scientific concepts, you know how to think like a scientist
ah, so a smart person can only think like a scientist if he spends 40k on his degree?

yeah, that makes sense.

it seems that some of the smartest people ever in this world, did not have a degree.

what is your excuse for that?

There is no question that there are some truly brilliant people in this world without a degree. It does not follow from that fact, however, that you are necessarily one of them.

I actually see it all the time in my profession. I'm an attorney, and the most glaring example of the fallacy of your reasoning comes with prisoner litigation. I used to have to defend cases filed by prisoners when I did municipal defense work, and I was appointed to represent a prisoner who was attempting to represent himself on his civil rights claim. These guys have nothing but time on their hands and many of them take advantage of that time by reading up on the law non-stop. They then craft these briefs that are complete and utter nonsense. The point is, they know "The Law" (if such a thing even exists), and they use some of the right terminology, but because they don't know how to apply it, it just makes no sense.

Prisoners are the easiest examples, but I also get calls from potential clients all the time who have read up on "The Law," and think they understand the elements of their claim, but it is most often a wild oversimplification and I have to spend a portion of my time talking them back down to earth. It is the difference between reading up on something and doing it. The very first lesson that you learn as a lawyer on your very first day at your very first job is that law school didn't teach you shit about how to practice law, and that doesn't change until you actually start practicing.

This is not unique to the law, either, and it's probably true of most professions. I don't know what you do for a living, but I guarantee you that no matter how many books I read about it, you're probably better at it than I am. I have cases that involve issues of a medical nature and I will learn a lot about specific medical conditions through reading over medical records and talking with experts, and I'll get to a point where I can speak intelligently enough about that condition to understand the medical issues in the case and get by. Even though I understand what is going on, though, I certainly don't know how to open someone up and do anything about it, nor do I believe that I know as much about it as the experts with whom I'm speaking. It's absurd.

As a matter of fact, I had a case years ago regarding the collapse of a steel building, and one of the primary issues in the case was determining how, where and why the structure failed. I spent literally days going over this with our expert, and got to a point where I could explain in enormous detail what made that building fall. Wanna know why I haven't extrapolated that understanding to this situation? Because despite all of that I learned from the experience about what made that building collapse, I still don't know shit about what made the WTC collapse, and lack the skill set to figure it out myself or even apply what I learned from my situation to this one.

Neither do any of us.

[yesme]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

I have to confess that I had no idea who Earl Nightingale was until I saw this and, out of a sense of morbid curiosity, decided to look him up. I kinda wish I hadn't now, because it just makes me want to cry. Let me see if I've got this straight -- the basis for your claim to expertise from regularly reading on the topic is the pro-reading pep talk from an inspirational speaker? At least he kept you out of a van down by the river, so I guess there's that.

common ploy to attack the messenger when you cant attack the message, but good ploy lawyer dude, i wont be assuming that your a good lawyer if these are your tactics.

Here's my take: you've spent 8 years reading what other people with actual physics and engineering expertise have said about 9-11, so that makes you an expert on knowing what other people with actual physics and engineering expertise have said about 9-11. That's it.

wow assume much there partner?

so from your understanding i have only read other peoples views of physics?

in no way could i have cracked open any physics textbooks or online resources to try and learn physics myself right?

http://www.free-ed.net/free%2Ded/Navigation/Level01/Level02/02_Science/02_Physics.asp

here is one of my starting points of learning physics.

you will notice that it has nothing to do with 9-11 or others opinion of 9-11.

here is another good site for you to learn the basics of physics from

http://www.motionmountain.net/

i of course could go on all day, but you already have me figured out right?

it would be impossible to learn anything about physics unless i read the same information in a classroom instead of my home.

i see your reasoning and it's sound.........lol

That's it. I'll give this to you, though, because you can regurgitate what others are saying like a mo' fo'. It does not mean, however, that you could show up on the premises of a collapsed building and determine the point of failure and why. When people start calling you and asking for your opinion, let us know.

when i get a degree in physics and put myself out there to give opinion on physics related questions, then i'll forward the calls to you.

untill then my opinion is still valid, no matter how much you wish it was not.

There is no question that there are some truly brilliant people in this world without a degree. It does not follow from that fact, however, that you are necessarily one of them.

it also does not follow that you need a 60k education to understand the basics of physics.

sleeping under an apple tree mean anything to you?

For years, I have heard and seen where people associate the lack of a college degree with a lack of intelligence. Ironically, this is usually used by small minded individuals who apparently can't win an argument using facts, so they try to discredit others with childish attacks and accusations. In any event, while education is important, intelligence has little to do with paper framed on the wall.

http://www.rateitall.com/t-20542-suc...ge-degree.aspx#

actually see it all the time in my profession. I'm an attorney, and the most glaring example of the fallacy of your reasoning comes with prisoner litigation. I used to have to defend cases filed by prisoners when I did municipal defense work, and I was appointed to represent a prisoner who was attempting to represent himself on his civil rights claim. These guys have nothing but time on their hands and many of them take advantage of that time by reading up on the law non-stop. They then craft these briefs that are complete and utter nonsense. The point is, they know "The Law" (if such a thing even exists), and they use some of the right terminology, but because they don't know how to apply it, it just makes no sense.

Prisoners are the easiest examples, but I also get calls from potential clients all the time who have read up on "The Law," and think they understand the elements of their claim, but it is most often a wild oversimplification and I have to spend a portion of my time talking them back down to earth. It is the difference between reading up on something and doing it. The very first lesson that you learn as a lawyer on your very first day at your very first job is that law school didn't teach you shit about how to practice law, and that doesn't change until you actually start practicing.

that was a great story, and for the most part i believe you.

now, when my mother was getting a divorce, she also decided to look up the law, and lucky for her she did, cause her(smart like you lawyer) had no idea about co mingling of marital funds and got an extra 200k out of the deal.

what your prisioners story fails to cite is the fact that none of them knew about past case historys and verdicts that might have an effect on their case.

they might of read that cops can not search them in this situation, but yet failed to look up cox vs. jones where it stated that under duress, the police can perform a sarch,etc,etc.

while this is not a real case, and i was just shooting out words, the basis is exactly what your talking about.

yeah, sadly my unkle is the biggest lawyer in town here(ft. wayne) lebamoff law offices.

s i kind of understand what your saying and do agree with it to a certain point.

This is not unique to the law, either, and it's probably true of most professions. I don't know what you do for a living, but I guarantee you that no matter how many books I read about it, you're probably better at it than I am. I have cases that involve issues of a medical nature and I will learn a lot about specific medical conditions through reading over medical records and talking with experts, and I'll get to a point where I can speak intelligently enough about that condition to understand the medical issues in the case and get by. Even though I understand what is going on, though, I certainly don't know how to open someone up and do anything about it, nor do I believe that I know as much about it as the experts with whom I'm speaking. It's absurd.

and i totally agree that in some professions(if not most) experence is needed to obtain the expert title, however personal experence is not needed to understand the basic concepts, nor do i need to jump off a tall building to understand the principals of the law of gravity.

prehaps you can share with me some personal thoughts on what types of physics activity i need to do to bring my physics understanding up to par with you?

As a matter of fact, I had a case years ago regarding the collapse of a steel building, and one of the primary issues in the case was determining how, where and why the structure failed. I spent literally days going over this with our expert, and got to a point where I could explain in enormous detail what made that building fall. Wanna know why I haven't extrapolated that understanding to this situation? Because despite all of that I learned from the experience about what made that building collapse, I still don't know shit about what made the WTC collapse, and lack the skill set to figure it out myself or even apply what I learned from my situation to this one.

i understand completely, sadly though, unlike the laws of man, the laws of physics NO MATTER WHAT BUILDING IT IS, remains the same and never changing. the law of gravity works on your case as well as the wtc towers.

the conservation of momentum works the same,etc,etc.

no matter if you know about it or not, the laws of physics dont care.

shit jump off a tall building and say, i had no idea about the laws of gravity, and see if you float safely down to earth because of your ignorence on the matter.

and while i can agrre to your point to a certain degree, what do you say to people like the lead fire researcher in the world who also thought the nist report was crap?

are you going to somehow suggest he has no idea how a fire acts?

what about all the S.E./M.E./C.E. on ae911 site?

surely they have the proper education and experence, or did only the people who work for the government have those titles of expert?

and when the government experts put out reports like the one above done by bazant, while using false heat temps that has no evidence to back up the claim of 800c, is that how experts do things?

we just throw out whatever number we want, with no proof, and because i dont have a degree i cant say something is wrong with his theory?

[toasty]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

common ploy to attack the messenger when you cant attack the message, but good ploy lawyer dude, i wont be assuming that your a good lawyer if these are your tactics.

I'm not really attacking the messenger, I'm attacking the conclusion that his statement sets up some sort of talismanic procedure by which you can call yourself an expert because you've read X-number of books on a topic. I read it as an endorsement of reading more regularly generally, and taking the time to enhance your knowledge base, not setting forth a benchmark by which we can claim expert status. It's a touchy-feely, you-can-do-it kind of speech, not a checklist of requirements.

untill then my opinion is still valid, no matter how much you wish it was not.

I love when people say stuff like this. When you tell me that in your opinion, 2 + 2 = 5, then no, I do not have to respect your opinion, and no it is not valid. Likewise, when you tell me that I have to put you on the same plane as someone with years of hands-on, in-the-field experience because you read a bunch of physics textbooks, I can say, "sorry, no sale."

There is such a thing as street smarts, in my opinion, and no, you need not necessarily sit in a classroom to learn things. It does help, though, and what helps even more is real world, or at least real laboratory experience.

sleeping under an apple tree mean anything to you?

It seems silly to have to point this out, but since you brought it up, it isn't as if Newton was just some guy who had an epiphany and became a master physicist upon seeing an apple fall from a tree one day. He had already had extensive formal education on such matters at the time. You've been watching too much Schoolhouse Rock.

that was a great story, and for the most part i believe you.

now, when my mother was getting a divorce, she also decided to look up the law, and lucky for her she did, cause her(smart like you lawyer) had no idea about co mingling of marital funds and got an extra 200k out of the deal.

well, I certainly don't mean to suggest that all lawyers are great at what they do. Quite the contrary, in fact. Sounds like your mom picked a bad one. It happens.

what your prisioners story fails to cite is the fact that none of them knew about past case historys and verdicts that might have an effect on their case.

they might of read that cops can not search them in this situation, but yet failed to look up cox vs. jones where it stated that under duress, the police can perform a sarch,etc,etc.

while this is not a real case, and i was just shooting out words, the basis is exactly what your talking about.

Well, that's actually not accurate -- prisoners have access to full law libraries as far as I'm aware, and in the cases to which I was referring, they were, in fact, citing actual cases that they hold out as similar. The problem is that they just flat out get them wrong in terms of understanding the holding or they misapply them to the facts of their case because expertise in this context, as in most circumstances, is more than just reading and memorizing.

and i totally agree that in some professions(if not most) experence is needed to obtain the expert title, however personal experence is not needed to understand the basic concepts, nor do i need to jump off a tall building to understand the principals of the law of gravity.

prehaps you can share with me some personal thoughts on what types of physics activity i need to do to bring my physics understanding up to par with you?

Well, you don't have to do anything to bring yourself up to par with me because, again, I don't know shit about engineering, physics, etc.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. You do not just go down a checklist and once everything is completed, you get a gold star and get to call yourself an expert. I don't know what you would have to do to qualify yourself as an expert, but I do know that reading some pretty high level physics texts on the internet isn't going to carry the day. Things I might consider, though, would include the following:

-have you published any books or articles on the topic?
-do other experts consider you an authority?
-what sort of real-world experience do you have?

i understand completely, sadly though, unlike the laws of man, the laws of physics NO MATTER WHAT BUILDING IT IS, remains the same and never changing. the law of gravity works on your case as well as the wtc towers.

OK, but that hardly ends the inquiry. I've just pulled down Newton's three laws of motion from the internet. Here they are:

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

II. The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

OK, with that out of the way, I guess we're all experts on Newton's laws of motion now, right?

These laws do not exist in a vacuum, and understanding how they function in the real world, with all of the variables and whatnot that exist, is the work of real scientists, not people that surf the internet and pontificate on message boards.

and while i can agrre to your point to a certain degree, what do you say to people like the lead fire researcher in the world who also thought the nist report was crap?

are you going to somehow suggest he has no idea how a fire acts?

what about all the S.E./M.E./C.E. on ae911 site?

surely they have the proper education and experence, or did only the people who work for the government have those titles of expert?

and when the government experts put out reports like the one above done by bazant, while using false heat temps that has no evidence to back up the claim of 800c, is that how experts do things?

we just throw out whatever number we want, with no proof, and because i dont have a degree i cant say something is wrong with his theory?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are clearly well-qualified people offering their opinions on both sides of this issue. As far as I'm aware, none of us fall into that category, which makes the fact that this is the largest thread in the politics forum brain-bending to me.

[runningman]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

what is astonishing is that we are still talking about this thread...

[Jenks]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

^see page 32 of thread for same comment.

[runningman]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

I stopped reading at page 27

[Kamal]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

it also does not follow that you need a 60k education to understand the basics of physics.

sleeping under an apple tree mean anything to you?

I have been, and to this point, I continue to be a neutral observer regarding the comments being debated, but that statement absolutely cracked me up. I agree with Toasty, Newton's revelation due to the falling apple occurred well into his career when he returned home to take a break from his tedious hours of research at Cambridge where he had already spent a number years up to that point.

In fact (and if I remember this correctly), it remains a common misconception that he realized what Gravity is from the falling apple when in fact, the falling apple gave him the insight into calculating and determining the escape velocity from earth's gravitational force i.e. 17,000 mph.

[yesme]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

i by no means meant to imply newton was some kind of bum sleeping under a tree, maybe i should have been more specific, it should have worded as this.....

even a apple faling from a tree helped explain physics.

from newton himself.....

Newton himself often told that story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.

[chunky]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

Maybe you should of used Heston Blumenthal as an example.

[yesme]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

good call

[Miroslav]

Re: you know what's astonishing?

again to assume that the first floor(with the added supports to hold up the whole building, weighed as much as the top floor, which had no added support since it did not support any floors above it)weighs as much as the top floor is beyond stupid.

are you kidding dude? how about common sense?

but really i want to know why you think that the 110th floor with no other floor to support would weigh as much as the 10th floor with 10 floors to support?(common sense would lead me to believe the 10th floor would need more steel and concrete in order to support the 100 floors above it, the extra supports would seem to add more weight.

but this somehow escapes you?

I think we're getting two things mixed up here:

1. The (primarily) concrete floors themselves

and

2. The support structures around the floors

Now, the support structures I will certainly concede will have variances by height within the building in order to support the weight. I never stated that each part of the building has to support an equal amount of weight. But I thought you were saying that the foundational concrete floors in the WTC themselves (not any support structures around them) the floors themselves were, say, x times thicker on the 10th floor than on the 20th floor (all assuming no change in tower shape/volume with height). This I have not heard, but I freely confess that I'm no structural engineer. So please show me the data and correct me if I'm wrong.

Oh, and I also looked up that link where you got that quote about "cheerleader" skyscrapers. Turns out that they were talking a bit more about earlier buildings, where the base was much larger than the middle section, which was much larger than the top part...

http://science.howstuffworks.com/skyscraper.htm/printable

...but then the article goes on to say that with modern steel framework technology, skyscrapers can be toweringly tall without requiring this "pyramid / cheerleader" setup. The article also seems to suggest (as I believe, without much expertise) that the primary driver of a modern skyscraper being able to stand is the steel lattice framework, and not that the lower floors are somehow "thicker" than the higher floors.

In normal buildings made of bricks and mortar, you have to keep thickening the lower walls as you build new upper floors. After you reach a certain height, this is highly impractical. If there's almost no room on the lower floors, what's the point in making a tall building?

Using this technology, people didn't construct many buildings more than 10 stories -- it just wasn't feasible. But in the late 1800s, a number of advancements and circumstances converged, and engineers were able to break the upper limit -- and then some. The social circumstances that led to skyscrapers were the growing metropolitan American centers, most notably Chicago. Businesses all wanted their offices near the center of town, but there wasn't enough space. In these cities, architects needed a way to expand the metropolis upward, rather than outward.

The main technological advancement that made skyscrapers possible was the development of mass iron and steel production (see How Iron and Steel Work for details). New manufacturing processes made it possible to produce long beams of solid iron. Essentially, this gave architects a whole new set of building blocks to work with. Narrow, relatively lightweight metal beams could support much more weight than the solid brick walls in older buildings, while taking up a fraction of the space. With the advent of the Bessemer process, the first efficient method for mass steel production, architects moved away from iron. Steel, which is even lighter and stronger than iron, made it possible to build even taller buildings.

Again, show me the data and correct me if I'm wrong... but right now it seems like you took that quote out of context?...

i have yet to look at the part you mention but from the first page, i can see the report is flawed.

they begin talking about how prolonged heating(56 mins?) lead to creep.

i wonder why the longer hotter fire that covered more floors in 1975 did not also experence this?

imagine standing in an oven for 3 hours and not getting burnt.

then stand in a oven that has half the heat for 56 mins and being totally burnt to nothing.

sound feasible to you?

be sure to sometime in the next 30 pages to provide SOME kind of evidence that the fires in the wtc were hotter and covered more area and burned longer then the 1975 fires and you might have a case.

Ummmm...maybe that's because the asbestos fireproofing remained intact in the 1975 fire and contained the fires primarily to the elevator and utility shafts? Maybe this is also a consequence of the fact that the 1975 fire did not feature a large jet crashing full speed into the building. The temperature and duration of the fire are important variables, but perhaps it would also be important to consider the locations of the fire and the status of the fireproofing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,244698,00.html

ok, having now viewed your part i can say without a doubt these guys are crackpots.

These guys are not crackpots, and they know a lot more about applied physics than you or I do. When it comes to real physics knowledge, they own you like a little bitch. Bazant happens to be one of the world's foremost experts in mechanical and structural engineering, and his resume of technical experience and education probably has more words than your vocabulary. I'm not suggesting that everything Bazant says must always be right, but maybe - just maybe - he knows a thing or two on this topic that you don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdeněk_Bažant

And you haven't debunked anything. The only thing you just debunked is your ability to understand that section of the paper.

can you tell me whats wrong with figure 4 on page 5?

notice how none of the coloumns are missing on their diagram of the south tower?

notice how the undamaged columns are not pulled by the tipping of the tower(because they left the columns that were destroyed still in the diagram, otherwise the diagram would not make any sense)

in the diagram, part c starts to pull, but then in d it seems to snap back inward????

This is exactly why you should stop calling yourself an expert.

Figure 4 doesn't have the columns missing because it is a generic model demonstrating the dynamics of any rectangular block that tips from a base that involves plastic horizontal shearing - which is definitely the case with metal. Of course some columns were damaged - this is what enabled the initial destabilization of the top section of the building - but the primary conclusions are actually driven by the dynamics of what happens whenever the upper portion of a tower pivots around a base conducive to horizontal plastic shearing, not the damaged columns themselves. Bazant doesn't need fractured columns or even heat to reach the conclusions of what happens to the upper block whenever there is this tipping - and fracture of columns and heat only reinforces his conclusions even more easily.

Let me elaborate a bit:

Your model is that the building simply tips over from a fulcrum point towards whatever side sustained the brunt of the damage - like a tree that is chopped down. Your model could have been the correct one for a structure made of a different material or for a much greater force that nearly split the building immediately, but it's absolutely the wrong model for a steel building that suffers progressive failure after a destabilizing impact.

The figure four model incorporates a characteristic notorious in steel that you missed: horizontal shearing. What the figure is telling you is that as the upper block starts to tip forward on whichever damaged side, there is a backward horizontal reaction on the bottom of the block. This horizontal reaction is not some sort of a fantasy made up by Bazant; it is an elementary, established phenomenon of physical dynamics that you cannot just sneer or wish away.

So again, when the plane hits the building and severs some columns, it results in a redistribution of the load of the upper block over all of the columns - whether initially impacted or not. Then, as the top tips slowly over over, there is always this reaction of the top moving one direction and the bottom moving in the other.

What Bazant's math shows you is that there is a ratio point between the pivoting of the top block and the horizontal shearing reaction to that pivoting that will result in the horizontal force quickly winning out. Why? In simple terms, because that horizontal reaction pushes on all of the metal columns, which causes them all to quickly destabilize to the point where they can no longer sustain the vertical load capacity of the upper block. At that point, gravity and the momentum of the upper block takes over and crashes down into the bottom structure.

And guess what? It gets even better because [B]Bazant's math indicates that the conclusions easily hold even when the steel is cold[/B]. To the degree it is hot or that columns are fractures, the ratio ends up being even more favorable for horizontal shear.

So look, Bazant may be wrong about other things, particularly relating to temperatures of the fires. But guess what? That doesn't change his conclusions with respect to the tipping of the top block of the building. So I don't even need to defend his conclusions on the tipping of the upper block to all of the stuff you raised about temperatures that you thought would "debunk" everything. In actuality, his model is much more realistic on this aspect of the building collapse. And it's not even something that he cooked up; it's something that most people with a knowledge of advanced dynamics and plastic shearing could tell you. Your model of "it should have fallen over like a chopped tree", frankly, sucks - no matter how much you like to think of yourself as an "expert". Steel doesn't snap or just crack like a brittle piece of china; it is elastic.

My point with all of this is not to say that "I'm a physics prodigy, and I have all the answers" - but rather to point out that perhaps you're not. I am most certainly not an expert, and I required some lessons in elementary dynamics from some in-the-know folks to initially put my thoughts on all of this together. And if I'm wrong on the building floor weights, then I'll happily admit it. And, by the way, most people

But I've watched you tout yourself as a great expert on damn near everything on here (including peoples' lives) and say how everyone else who doesn't agree with your opinions is automatically stupid, brainwashed, etc... I think it would be a therapeutic exercise for you to check your oversized, out-of-control ego at some point and stop thinking that you're the world's biggest know-it-all genius when there are obviously cases like this one where you are just wrong.