Since 911 keeps popping up in other threads...

Tom,

They are not dumb people but when you have really smart people talk about things that are outside the realm of their expertise, they sure can sound either dumb or uneducated. I only had to read the first few to know that many of these people have very little background in metallurgy. Here is an example from Edmond (Monty) John Forbes, In 1981 joined MITRE Corp, Bedford MA as Lead Sys Engineer for airborne Wide Body Presidential assets. This extended to Special Service classified systems in both fixed wing & rotary wing platforms until retirement in 2004.

Steel melts at approximately 2500 degrees Fahrenheit depending upon the alloy composition yet this man seems to think that you would need temperatures well above the melting point to have an affect. His metallurgical ignorance is evident.

 

I hate to break it to ya Lehigh, but there is LOT MORE to 911 than metallurgy. Why don't you list some of his other credentials, rather than picking your favorite "he's not a metal expert" line. They collectively talk about much more than your limited metallurgy visions. Thngs like explosives, physics, acrhitecture, and on and on. I'm no metal expert either (as you have so generously pointed out), but I DON'T NEED TO BE A METAL EXPERT to see, for instance, that WTC7 had to have been imploded, and many, if not all, of these 60 some folks seem to agree.
It you read other "excerpts", buildings don't topple over 60 degrees and then straighten themselves back up, as with one of the other WTC's.
Sad thing is..I know you know that. What I fail to understand is why you continually defend this nonsense.

 

I am not claiming that the entire 9/11 issue rests solely on metallurgy, but you can't ignore it either, it plays a major role in debunking what you refer to as the "official story". When I was in college, I had a professor named Dr. Richard Hertzberg. He was at the time one of the leading experts in the country with regards to fracture mechanics and industrial metal failure. If you can get him to join one of those lists, I will declare you the winner of the debate. My guess is that he is retired by now.

BTW, I already stated that I agree that WTC7 deserves further investigation. Curious thought though, if the original plans called for the destruction of the North and South towers along with WTC7, what happened to the third plane? Surely the masterminds of the event would have known that they couldn't explain why a building just fell down on it's own. It seems unlikely that they would make such a major mistake.

 

Well...that I do not know. I can speculate that perhaps the third plane was the one that was shot...I mean crashed in Pennsylvania?
Since you seem to be up on metallurgy though, perhaps you could answer a few quick questions for me?
How did metallurgy account for the 47 vertical steel columns starting at the base of the towers and going all the way to the top (that's in addition to the horizontally steel framed structure) being pulverized? Shouldn't some of them be either sticking up or laying down somewhere? Wouldn't those vertical columns offer some sort of resistance, thus lowering the speed in which the towers came down, or do vertical steel columns INCREASE collapse? What happened to them? They disintegrate in 10 seconds too? The top of one of the towers started to fall over and then disappeared into the smoke. That disintegrate too? Have you ever seen vertical and horizontal steel beams pulverize before?
WTC7, which wasn't hit by a plane, pulverized too? Were the same factors at work for it as were 1 and 2?
Thank you ahead of time for your kind responses.

 

The sheer weight of the falling structures would be enough to destroy the steel below but I don't have the requisite physics knowledge to determine how far down the tower and what effect it would have on slowing down the collapse. The vertical columns would be sheared and fall over and I don't believe that all they found in the rubble was dust. There had to be many twisted and broken remnant of steel beams in the rubble.

I don't know about the top of the tower leaning over and disappearing. Are you claiming that it was detonated during the collapse?

I have no explanations for WTC7 other than to say why was it detonated at all if the plane slated to hit it never showed up? If the people who masterminded this conspiracy had the power to pull this off, they could have easily left the building standing and then claimed structural damage that would necessitate the controlled demolition of the building. Then just wait an appropriate amount of time before pressing the button. Why did they leave Gomer Pyle in charge of the detonation button that day?

 

IMHO, (and many others), WTC7 had to go down that day because it housed the communications/control center for the operation that day. The secret service, IRS, The SEC, The NYC "Office of Emergency Management" (you know the one Guilanni was supposed to use in case of a tradegic event...like maybe 911?). Except he elected NOT to hang out in the state of the art facility that day before it fell down. I can't conclusively answer why it too didn't go down around the same time the others did, but again, I can speculate as to what the 3rd plane the crashed in PA could have been meant for.

I know I'll never get you to admit much Lehigh about 911 that isn't pre-fab or not completely obvious and difficult to defend (like WTC7), but I appreciate the response just the same.

 

Responding to the red text.

How did they forge a quarter mile beam Tom? There was no beam in the WTC that was longer than a truck length. That is how big they were when they were fabricated and that is how big they were when they were found in the rubble. The beams were welded together. The welds represent the structural weak point and when you have millions of pounds of steel falling from above, the welds are going to fail and the beams fracture. Your best chance at winning this aspect of the debate is to focus on the physics of the event and how long it took the North and South Towers to fall.

I understand that you are saying the top of the North tower started to fall over. What I don't understand is how detonating nano-thermite would stop that process once it has begun.

Once the towers were destroyed, the entire site was under government control. It would have been very easy to secure the site of WTC7, stop anybody from entering the building, wait an appropriate amount of time, and drop the building later. There was no need to detonate the explosives at that time and expose the conspiracy. What happened with WTC7 is devoid of logic with the scope of the conspiracy. It had to be a monumental mistake within the group of people masterminding the event. Would you not agree?

 

I would agree the master minders made a monumental mistake...yes. The need to demolish the building if it were the actual command center is obvious (not to mention they had what?? 7 or 8 hours to think about it before pulling the plug??) It would have also had to be "pre" wired well in advance.. Either case points to something more than "whoops...fire knocked it down" to me.
Also consider this...if a building falls at a free fall speeds or even CLOSE to free fall, then very little energy is taken away from the collapse to tear the building apart. Agree?
Then if the building is torn apart, then that energy need to be accounted for. The gravity collapse of the building MIGHT possibly supply enough energy to tear itself apart, but then in doing so, then the rate of collapse would HAVE TO slow down. That not make even a little bit of sense?
It is NOT possible to have a huge steel and concrete structure fall down at free fall speed and also tear itself apart at the same time. Can't happen. If the falling debris reaches the ground at free fall speed, then none of its' associated energy was used to tear the building apart. So if the free falling structure did indeed fall at free fall speed, (which even now NIST now admits it did), then energy/force that DID rip the structure apart, HAD TO have come from somewhere ELSE. If you wanna claim the building was ripped apart by its' own falling debris, then the speed in which it fell would have HAD TO have been MUCH SLOWER. Can't be both brother.
I have a good friend that's a welder for a living. He tells me that often, (and usually), the welded /joined pieces are even greater in strength at the weld, than were the original pieces joined.

My best chance of winning this argument are to stick with what I know to be the facts and NOT spin.

 

Ask your welder friend if he is referring to the actual weld or the heat affected zone?

 

You're really splitting hairs dude, focusing on this particular point. Trying to prove the 12 mile steel comment wrong..I understand the angle.
Fine..the beams all broke apart at the welds..

You have any thoughts on the energy/free fall speed explanation?

 

I don't know why you would call it splitting hairs, it is a factual part of the debate and one which is used by conspiracy theorists constantly. The problem is that neither the conspiracy theorists nor most of the rest of the world has the requisite knowledge of metallurgy to prove or disprove the claims of the conspiracy. BTW Tom, the heat affected zone caused by welding is essentially the same affect as annealing but on a much smaller and localized scale.

I have stated before that I don't have the requisite knowledge of physics to debunk the falling issue. However, I don't automatically recognize that the North & South Towers fell at free fall speed. I saw the buildings come down and it certainly didn't look like a controlled demolition with free fall drop to me. WTC7 is an entirely different story which looked exactly like a controlled drop.

 

You're kidding me? Sheesh...find a video, watch it and use a watch. Then determine what free fall speed might be. Plenty of information to determine what that speed would be. Compare the difference. There ISN'T any.
Regardless of annealing...it can't account for the collapse times. Don't know why you're stuck on it.
Annealing couldn't occur throughout the entire structure...certainly not in under an hour. C'mon man.

 

Tom,

With all due respect, you can't rely on science and have that cavalier attitude. The time difference would be very small and you would need very precise measurements involving computers, not a video and a stop watch.

I never said annealling explains the collapse times, only that it could explain how the structure would fail at the impact point of the planes without the need for explosives. Once the structrual integrity of the building failed, the weight of the top of the towers crashing down on the rest of the building would be enough to cause the floors below to collapse. How long it would take for each floor to collapse the the overall time added to the entire collapse is a physics problem that I am not educated enough to solve.

Why are you accusing me of being stuck on annealing? The "official story" uses the explanation that heat from the fires affected the structural integrity of the building in less than an hour which led to the collapse of the buildings. The conspiracy theory is that fires don't burn hot enough to cause this to happen to steel and that explosives must have been used. Annealing explains how the fires could cause the weakening of the steel. It is one of the major sticking points of the entire debate Tom. IMO, it deserves the attention that I am giving it.

 

How bout 10th GRADE SCIENCE LEHIGH??

Good little piece with some illustration can be had here...SINCE ABOUT 2005!!!!

http://physics911.net/closerlook


You "exit" the argument Lehigh, by claiming you are not educated enough to answer SOME of the points I raise, but then apparently claim you're knowledgeable enough to conclude the time difference would be very small. Use the link to view information from folks that DO know, from a standpoint of physics.

Answer this.
You can admit basically that something's fishy about WTC7. That building is part of the entire equation though. Are you trying to somehow separate 1 and 2's "story" from 7? You can't!
Why would they need to lie about 7 if there wasn't something fishy pertaining to 1 and 2???
I know you'll make no specific comments on the link and its specific conclusions. I know that it's too dangerous to your argument for you to comment "too specifically" on anything substantive, but please give the annealing thing a rest. I know most on the forum aren't too "aware" of the specific problems with the grand fable (not counting Jack), but further misleading them is just wrong.

As I've said before..it isn't very difficult for reasonably intelligent (or even less), to conclude what happened if they will just look. But maybe that's the rub...nobody REALLY wants to know. Much safer world watching Fox and Friends I guess...

 

You can accuse me of intellectual sand bagging all you want, but my admission that I do not understand every aspect of this incredibly complex topic shows that I am viewing it objectively. You seem to think that it is common sense that the conspiracy is true and that any disagreement with that point of view is simply evidence of intentional blindness. Just because you have devoted your life to this subject does not make you right. Furthermore, our disagreement over this issue has nothing to do with facts, it revolves around beliefs. There is so much we don't know about what happened that the holes are filled in by our personal beliefs. You believe the absolute worst in on our government and have projected that belief onto 9/11 and found a way to make them responsible. You do so by consistently ignoring the credibility of the sources from which you get your information. This is the reason I have refused to engage in further debate with you over this issue.

To demonstrate what I am talking about, look at the link you provided. You refer to this source as if it was correct or as you put it "from folks that DO know." Here is an excerpt from that link.

The author of this material uses the melting point of steel to fool the "lay person" into believing that the fires of 1500 degrees were insufficient in temperature to affect the structural integrity of the metal. What he does not say is that 1500 degrees is well above the annealing temperature of steel. You accuse me of harping on the issue and then post a link that again provides false information regarding the issue. Here is another quote:

I must admit that I agree with the author on one point. I do believe that the science use in this article did not go beyond the 10th grade level. If the author had employed advanced science to analyze what happened that day, he would realize that he is wrong.

 

That's the thing. You want to make it very complex because most folks reading these posts are not going to dig very deep (due to a number of reasons), so by suggesting that some very simple, easy to understand concepts, are actually very complicated, hoping to chase the lazy/scared readers to away, thinking that they could never understand the rather obvious scenario....that the government's fable is completely absent of honesty, and a lot of plain common sense, and the 911 was conducted, assisted, or were otherwise complicit in the event.

Here the difference. The execution of those events that involved the preplanning, such as the actual wiring of the buildings for demolition ahead of time, the methods, the personnel involved, the coordination required, the reasoning.......or the actual details as to how the event was perpetrated, ARE all rather complex...but the results, the net results, are extremely obvious and extremely simple to understand. THAT is where you, and others of with your agenda, try their best to "blur" those two concepts, attempting to invalidate the whole thing. I guess that's the reason you keep picking at the annealing issue. Just complex enough to do keep the lazy person from digging too deep. Too much of a mental effort for the American Idol audience.

The government put forth story after story that was either outright false, modified repeatedly over time (and still wrong), but you don't expand on any of those areas when it drifts into them, but you'll pick a point (that you think) is safe territory, and hammer away.

A tree falls in the forest, and rather than saying the tree obviously fell, you focus on the molecular breakdown of the tree's ring's, and their relationship with water.

A very simple concept to understand...too simple maybe.

Freefall speed is not that complex a subject. A stopwatch, any number of online videos, and a very minimal piece of a brain is all that is needed. But you want to make the very simple, very complex..
I hope some people on this forum, besides Jack, can have some intellectual honesty, and look at the facts, AND VERY SIMPLY CONCLUDE.......that they DON'T ADD UP.

Thank you for your response Lehigh.

 

Tom,

I speak most about the annealing issue because it is the one I am most qualified to speak about. I don't believe you think that anything related to 9/11 is simple. If it was, you wouldn't have such a hard time getting others to believe what you do.

I would be very interested in a poll about the issue that asked questions about individual personal beliefs. My guess is that an overwhelming majority of truthers don't trust the government and an overwhelming majority of the debunkers think the government is incompetent.

I will say that I hope your efforts and the efforts of the truther movement in general result in a new investigation of the entire event. There are definitely things that we don't know about that horrific day that need to be revealed. I would have more respect for the truther movement if that is the position they would adopt rather than trying to convince everyone that the government perpetrated the act using nano-thermite charges. Only an extreme distrust of the government even makes that leap of faith possible in someone's mind.

 

Hoax! Conspiracy theory! The sky is falling! They're out to get me! Enemies are hiding around the corner!
Where are Willie Nelson, Ryan Seacrest and Cheech & Chong when you need them??

 

The leap of faith to nano-thermite isn't so tough to make when nano-thermite is very quantitatively found in the dust that was all over everything, everywhere in lower Manhattan on 911. The dust was analyzed and verifed to contain nano-thermite. But you know that, so you jump back to annealing. The bigger leap of faith is actually believing the garbage spewed about Akman, Abdul and boxcutters, and buildings falling down by themselves.