Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 11:08 AM
The following was written
by J. McMichael
jmcmichael@care2.com and sent to
me under the title "I Tried To Be Patriotic." I have taken the liberty of
re-formatting it in HTML, and pass it on to you with
permission.
====
I tried to be
patriotic.
I tried to believe.
I watched those quarter mile high buildings fall through their jaw-dropping
catastrophes over and over again. I listened to the announcer and the experts
explain what had happened. I worked at my pitiful lack of faith, pounding
my skull with the remote control and staring on the flickering images on
the TV
screen.
But poor mental peasant
that I am, I could not escape the teachings of my forefathers. I fear I am
trapped in my time, walled off from further scientific understanding by my
inability to abandon the Second Millennium
mindset.
But enough of myself.
Let us move on to the Science and Technology of the 21st Century. Those of
you who cannot believe should learn the official truth by rote and perhaps
you will be able to hide your
ignorance.
Here are the bare bones
of the WTC incident: North tower struck 8:45, collapsed 10:29; South tower
struck 9:03, collapsed 9:50; See
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/sept112001.html
Using jet fuel to melt
steel is an amazing discovery, really. It is also amazing that until now,
no one had been able to get it to work, and that proves the terrorists were
not stupid people. Ironworkers fool with acetylene torches, bottled oxygen,
electric arcs from generators, electric furnaces, and other elaborate tricks,
but what did these brilliant terrorists use? Jet fuel, costing maybe 80 cents
a gallon on the open
market.
Let us consider: One
plane full of jet fuel hit the north tower at 8:45 AM, and the fuel fire
burned for a while with bright flames and black smoke. We can see pictures
of the smoke and flames shooting from the
windows.
Then by 9:03 (which
time was marked by the second plane's collision with the south tower), the
flame was mostly gone and only black smoke continued to pour from the building.
To my simple mind, that would indicate that the first fire had died down,
but something was still burning inefficiently, leaving soot (carbon) in the
smoke. A fire with sooty smoke is either low temperature or starved for oxygen
-- or both
But by 10:29 AM, the
fire in north tower had accomplished the feat that I find so amazing: It
melted the steel supports in the building, causing a chain reaction within
the structure that brought the building to the
ground.
And with less fuel
to feed the fire, the south tower collapsed only 47 minutes after the plane
collision, again with complete destruction. This is only half the time it
took to destroy the north
tower.
I try not to think
about that. I try not to think about a petroleum fire burning for 104 minutes,
just getting hotter and hotter until it reached 1538 degrees Celsius (2800
Fahrenheit) and melted the steel (steel is about 99% iron; for melting point
of iron,
see
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Fe/heat.html
I try not to wonder how the fire reached temperatures that only bottled oxygen
or forced air can
produce.
And I try not to think
about all the steel that was in that building -- 200,000 tons of it
(see
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/wtc1.html
for stats. I try to forget that heating steel is like pouring syrup onto
a plate: you can't get it to stack up. The heat just flows out to the colder
parts of the steel, cooling off the part you are trying to warm up. If you
pour it on hard enough and fast enough, you can get the syrup to stack up
a little bit. And with very high heat brought on very fast, you can heat
up the one part of the object, but the heat will quickly spread out and the
part will cool off the moment you
stop.
When the heat source
warms the last cold part of the object, the heat stops escaping and the point
of attention can be warmed. If the north tower collapse was due to heated
steel, why did it take 104 minutes to reach the critical
temperature?
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/sept112001.html
Am I to believe that
the fire burned all that time, getting constantly hotter until it reached
melting temperature? Or did it burn hot and steady throughout until 200,000
tons of steel were heated molten - on one plane load of jet fuel? (Quantity
of steel in
WTC:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/wtc1.html
Thankfully, I found
this note on the BBC web
page
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1540000/1540044.stm
"Fire reaches 800 [degrees]
C - hot enough to melt steel floor supports."
That is one of the
things I warned you about: In the 20th Century, steel melted at 1538 degrees
Celsius (2800 F,
see
http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/fe.html
but in the 21st Century, it melts at 800 degrees C (1472
F).
This might be explained
as a reporter's mistake -- 800 to 900 C is the temperature for forging wrought
iron. As soft as wrought iron is, of course, it would never be used for
structural steel in a landmark skyscraper. (Descriptions of cast iron, wrought
iron, and steel and relevant temperatures discussed
at
http://www.metrum.org/measures/castiron.htm
But then lower down, the BBC page repeats the 800 C number in bold, and the
article emphasizes that the information comes from Chris Wise, "Structural
Engineer." Would this professional individual permit himself to be misquoted
in a global
publication?
I feel it coming on
again -- that horrible cynicism that causes me to doubt the word of the major
anchor-persons. Please just think of this essay as a plea for help, and do
NOT let it interfere with your own righteous faith. The collapse of America's
faith in its leaders must not become another casualty on America's
skyline.
In my diseased mind,
I think of the floors of each tower like a stack of LP (33 1/3 RPM) records,
only they were square instead of circular. They were stacked around a central
spindle that consisted of multiple steel columns stationed in a square around
the 103 elevator
shafts.(See
http://www.skyscraper.org/tallest/t_wtc.htm
and
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm
With this core bearing
the weight of the building, the platters were tied together and stabilized
by another set of steel columns at the outside rim, closely spaced and completely
surrounding the structure. This resulting structure was so stable that the
top of the towers swayed only three feet in a high wind. The architects called
it a "tube-within-a-tube
design."
The TV experts told
us that the joints between the floors and central columns melted (or the
floor trusses, or the central columns, or the exterior columns, depending
on the expert) and this caused the floor to collapse and fall onto the one
below. This overloaded the joints for the lower floor, and the two of them
fell onto the floor below, and so on. Like dominos
(see
http://news-info.wustl.edu/News/nrindex00/harmon.html
Back in the early 1970s
when the World Trade Towers were built, the WTC was the tallest building
that had ever been built in the history of the world. If we consider the
architectural engineers, suppliers, builders, and city inspectors in the
job, we can imagine they would be very careful to over-build every aspect
of the building. If one bolt was calculated to serve, you can bet that three
or four were used. If there was any doubt about the quality of a girder or
steel beam, you can be sure it was rejected. After all, any failures would
attract the attention of half the civilized world, and no corporation wants
a reputation for that kind of stupidity -- particularly if there are
casualties.
I do not know the exact
specifications for the WTC, but I know in many trades (and some I've worked),
a structural member must be physically capable of three times the maximum
load that will ever be required of it (BreakingStrength = 3 x WorkingStrength).
Given that none of those floors was holding a grand piano sale or an elephant
convention that day, it is unlikely that any of them were loaded to the maximum.
Thus, any of the floors should have been capable of supporting more than
its own weight plus the two floors above it. I suspect the WTC was engineered
for safer margins than the average railroad bridge, and the actual load on
each floor was less than 1/6 the BreakingStrength. The platters were constructed
of webs of steel trusses. Radial trusses ran from the perimeter of the floor
to the central columns, and concentric rings of trusses connected the radial
trusses, forming a pattern like a spider web
(see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1540000/images/_1540044_world_trade_structure300.gif
Where the radial trusses
connected with the central columns, I imagine the joints looked like the
big bolted flanges where girders meet on a bridge -- inches thick bolts tying
the beams into the
columns.
The experts tell us
that the heat of the fire melted the steel, causing the joints to fail. In
order to weaken those joints, a fire would have to heat the bolts or the
flanges to the point where the bolts fell apart or tore through the steel.
But here is another thing that gives me problems -- all the joints between
the platter and the central columns would have to be heated at the same rate
in order to collapse at the same time -- and at the same rate as the joints
with the outer rim columns on all sides -- else one side of the platter would
fall, damaging the floor below and making obvious distortions in the skin
of the building, or throwing the top of tower off balance and to one
side.
But there were no
irregularities in the fall of the main structure of those buildings. They
fell almost as perfectly as a deck of cards in the hands of a magician doing
an aerial
shuffle.
This is particularly
worrisome since the first plane struck one side of the north tower, causing
(you would think) a weakening on that side where the exterior columns were
struck, and a more intense fire on that side than on the other side. And
the second plane struck near the corner of the south tower at an angle that
caused much of the fuel to spew out the windows on the adjacent side
(see
http://www.eionews.addr.com/images/wtc/southtowerpath.jpg
Yet the south tower
also collapsed in perfect symmetry, spewing dust in all directions like a
Fourth of July sparkler burning to the ground. Oh, wait. Here is a picture
showing the top 25 floors of one tower (probably south) toppling over sideways
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1535000/images/_1538563_thecollapseap150.jpg
Why are there no reports
of this cube of concrete and steel (measuring 200 ft. wide, 200 ft. deep,
and 200 ft high), falling from a 1000 feet into the street
below?
But implosion expert
Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc. in Phoenix, MD is
of the opinion that it
happened:
Observing the collapses
on television news, Loizeaux says the 1,362-ft-tall south tower, which was
hit at about the 60th floor, failed much as one would like (sic) fell a tree
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc_enr.htm
I have seen a videotaped
rerun of the south tower falling. In that take, the upper floors descend
as a complete unit. All the way, the upper-floor unit was canted over as
shown on the BBC page, sliding down behind the intervening buildings like
a piece of stage
scenery.
That scene is the most
puzzling of all. Since the upper floors were not collapsed (the connection
between the center columns and the platters were intact), this assembly would
present itself to the lower floors as a platter WITHOUT a central hole. How
then would a platter without a hole, slide down the spindle with the other
platters? Where would the central columns go if they could not penetrate
the upper floors as they
fell?
The only model I can
find for the situation would be this: If the fire melted the floor joints
so that the collapse began from the 60th floor downward, the upper floors
would be left hanging in the air, supported only by the central columns.
This situation would soon become unstable and the top 40 floors would topple
over (to use Loizeaux's image) much like felling the top 600 ft. from a 1300
ft.
tree.
This model would hold
also hold for the north tower. According to Chris Wise's "domino" doctrine,
the collapse began only at the floor with the fire, not at the penthouse.
How was it that the upper floor simply disappeared instead of crashing to
the earth as a block of thousands of tons of concrete and
steel?
The amazing thing is
that no one (but Loizeaux) even mentions this phenomenon, much less describing
the seismic event it must have
caused.
Where is the ruin where
the 200ft x 200ft x 50 story- object struck? Forty floors should have caused
a ray of devastation 500 ft. into the surrounding
cityscape.
In trying to reconstruct
and understand this event, we have to know whether the scenes we are watching
are edited or simply shown raw as they were
recorded.
But let us return to
the fire. Liquid fuel does not burn hot for long. Liquid fuel evaporates
(or boils) as it burns, and the vapor burns as it boils off. If the ambient
temperature passes the flash point of the fuel and oxygen is plentiful, the
process builds to an explosion that consumes the
fuel.
Jet fuel boils at
temperatures above 176 degrees Celsius (350 F) and the vapor flashes into
flame at 250 degrees Celsius (482 F). In an environment of 1500 degrees,
jet fuel spread thinly on walls, floor, and ceiling would boil off very quickly.
And then it would either burn, or run out of oxygen and smother itself. Or
it would simply disperse out the open windows (some New Yorkers claimed they
could smelled the spilled
fuel).
In no case would an
office building full of spilled jet fuel sustain a fire at 815 degrees C
(1500 F) for 104 minutes -- unless it was fed bottled oxygen, forced air,
or something else atypical of a fire in a high-rise office building. Certainly,
the carpets, wallpaper, occasional desks -- nothing else in that office would
produce that temperature. What was
burning?
OK, since it was mentioned,
I am also upset with the quantity of concrete dust
see
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm#why
No concrete that I
have ever known pulverizes like that. It is unnerving. My experience with
concrete has shown that it will crumble under stress, but rarely does it
just give up the ghost and turn to powder. But look at the pictures -- it
is truly a fine dust in great billowing clouds spewing a hundred feet from
the collapsing tower. And the people on the ground see little more than an
opaque wall of dust -- with inches of dust filling the streets and the lungs
afterward.
http://eionews.addr.com/images/wtc/thirdexplosion.jpg
What has happened
here?
I need a faith booster
shot here. I would like to find a pictures of all those platters piled up
on each other on the ground, just as they fell -- has anyone seen a picture
like that? I am told it was cumulative weight of those platters falling on
each other that caused the collapse, but I don't see the platters pilled
up liked flapjacks on the ground
floor.
Instead, the satellite
pictures show the WTC ruins like an ash
pit:
http://eionews.addr.com/images/wtc/numbersixafter_closeup.jpg
http://eionews.addr.com/images/wtc/wtcaerial.jpg
I am told by a friend
that a Dr. Robert Schuller was on television telling about his trip to the
ruins. He announced in the interview that there was not a single block of
concrete in that rubble. From the original 425,000 cubic yards of concrete
that went into the building, all was dust. How did that
happen?
I have just one other
point I need help with -- the steel columns in the center. When the platters
fell, those quarter-mile high central steel columns (at least from the ground
to the fire) should have been left standing naked and unsupported in the
air, and then they should have fallen intact or in sections to the ground
below, clobbering buildings hundreds of feet from the WTC site like giant
trees falling in the forest. But I haven't seen any pictures showing those
columns standing, falling, or lying on the ground. Nor have I heard of damage
caused by
them.
Now I know those terrorist
must have been much better at these things than I am. I would take one look
at their kamikaze plans with commercial jets and I would reject it as --
spectacular maybe, but not significantly damaging. The WTC was not even a
strategic military
target.
But if I were a kamikaze
terrorist, I would try to hit the towers low in the supports to knock the
towers down, maybe trapping the workers with the fire and burning the towers
from the ground up, just as the people in last 20 stories were trapped. Even
the Japanese kamikaze pilots aimed for the water
line.
But you see, those
terrorists were so sure the building would magically collapse that way, the
pilot who hit the north tower chose a spot just 20 floors from the
top.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/worldtrade010911.html
And the kamikaze for
south tower was only slightly lower -- despite a relatively open skyline
down to 25 or 30
stories.
The terrorists apparently
predicted the whole scenario -- the fuel fire, the slow weakening of the
structure, and the horrific collapse of the building - phenomena that the
architects and the NY civil engineering approval committees never dreamed
of.
Even as you righteously
hate those men, you have to admire them for their
genius.
Few officials or engineers
have been surprised by this turn of events -- apparently everyone certified
it for airplane collisions, but almost no one was surprised when both collisions
caused utter catastrophes in both towers. In fact, their stutters and mumbles
and circumlocutions would make a politician
blush:
"Eventually,
the loss of strength and stiffness of the materials resulting from the fire,
combined with the initial impact damage, would have caused a failure of the
truss system supporting a floor, or the remaining perimeter columns, or even
the internal core, or some
combination."
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.htm#why
In a hundred years
of tall city buildings, this kind of collapse has never happened before.
Never. It was not predicted by any of the experts involved when the WTC towers
were built. But now that it has happened, everybody understands it perfectly
and nobody is
surprised.
Is this civil engineering
in the Third Millennium -- a galloping case of perfect
hindsight?
Only one I have found
candidly admitted his
surprise:
Observing
the collapses on television news, Loizeaux says the 1,362-ft-tall south tower,
which was hit at about the 60th floor, failed much as one would like (sic)
fell a tree. That is what was expected, says Loizeaux. But the 1,368-ft-tall
north tower, similarly hit but at about the 90th floor, "telescoped," says
Loizeaux. It failed vertically, he adds, rather than falling over. "I don't
have a clue," says Loizeaux, regarding the cause of the telescoping.
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc_enr.htm
There was one highly
qualified engineer in New Mexico who thought the collapse could only happen
with the help of demolition explosives, and he was foolish enough to make
the statement publicly. But then he recanted ten days later and admitted
the whole thing was perfectly natural and unsurprising. I wonder what happened
in those ten days to make him so smart on the subject so
quickly.
Both articles at the
Albuquerque
Journal:
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/aqvan09-11-01.htm
And then, as though
demonstrating how normal this "building collapsing" phenomenon is, WTC buildings
Six and Seven "collapsed,"
too:
"Other
buildings - including the 47-story Salomon Brothers building [WTC 7] - caved
in later, weakened by the earlier collapses, and more nearby buildings may
still fall, say engineers."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1540000/1540044.stm
and
http://www.eionews.addr.com/images/wtc/numbersixafter.jpg
It seems no building
in the area, regardless of design, is immune to galloping WTC collapse-itis.
It never happened in the 20th Century, but welcome to the physical universe
laws of the Third
Millennium.
Pardon me, but this
recitation has not given me the relief I hoped for. I must get back to
work.
I believe in the president,
the flag, and the Statue of Liberty. I believe in the honesty of the FBI
and the humility of military men. I believe in the network news anchor-persons,
who strive to learn the truth, to know the truth, and to tell the truth to
the
audience.
And I believe all of
America is so well educated in the basic physics discussed above, they would
rise up in fury if anyone tried to pull a cheap Hollywood trick on
them.
Hand me that remote,
will you? I believe <clonk>. I believe <clonk>. I believe
...
--- J.
McMichael
Celsius/Fahrenheit
conversion tool at
http://www.vaxxine.com/mgdsite/celcon.htm
-- Carol A. Valentine
President, Public Action, Inc. Copyright, October, 2001. May be reproduced
for non-commercial
purposes.
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