We previously saw a Fox News pie chart that had a couple extra slices (here). Now, fair and balanced math adds up to 120 percent of voters indicating that they view the science on global warming to be rigged.
This is an interesting Rasmussen poll when you add up the number and discover that you are in a parallel universe.
The question is: “In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?” According to the poll, 35 percent thought it very likely, 24 percent somewhat likely, 21 percent not very likely, and 5 percent not likely at all (15 percent weren’t sure).
This rather dubious poll is offered to show that people are dubious about the science and math of global warming experts.
For the full story, click here
I hear that the Accountants that worked for Enron found work. They now compile statistics for Fox.
Chances FoxNews makes up what they report?
1000%
Fiction. It’s not just for entertainment anymore.
Had I not devoted my entire career of over half-a-century to the study and forecasting of meteorological and climate events I would have likely been concerned over the possibility of humans causing serious global climate degradation.
There has been an unrelenting quarter century of one-sided indoctrination of the western world by the media and by various scientists and governments concerning a coming carbon dioxide (CO_2 ) induced global warming disaster. These warming scenarios have been orchestrated by a combination of environmentalists, vested interest scientists wanting larger federal grants and publicity, the media which profits from doomsday scenario reporting, governmental bureaucrats who want more power over our lives, and socialists who want to level-out global living standards. These many alarmist groups appear to have little concern over whether their global warming prognostications are accurate, however. And they most certainly are not. The alarmists believe they will be able to scare enough of our citizens into believing their propaganda that the public will be willing to follow their advice on future energy usage and agree to a lowering of their standard of living in the name of climate salvation.
Rising levels of CO_2 are not near the threat these alarmists have portrayed them to be. There has yet to be a honest and broad scientific debate on the basic science of CO_2 ‘s influence on global temperature. The global climate models predicting large amounts of global warming for a doubling of CO_2 are badly flawed. They should never have been used to establish government climate policy.
The last century’s global warming of about 1 degree F is not a consequence of human activities. This warming is primarily the result of a multi-century changes in the globe’s deep ocean circulation. These ocean current changes have lead to a small and gradual increase in the globe’s temperature. We are coming out of the Little Ice Age and into a generally warmer climate state. This is akin to the warmer global climate of the Medieval Period. We can do nothing but adapt to such long period natural temperature changes.
The recent ‘ClimateGate’ revelations coming out of the UK University of East Anglia are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the e-mails of the publically funded climate research groups of the US and of foreign governments were ever made public.
The disastrous economic consequences of restricting CO_2 emissions from the present by as much as 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050 (as being proposed in Copenhagen) have yet to be digested by the general public. Such CO_2 output decreases would cause very large increases in our energy costs, a lowering of our standard of living, and do nothing of significance to improve our climate.
The Cap-and-Trade bill presently before Congress, the likely climate agreements coming out of the Copenhagen Conference, and the EPA’s just announced decision to treat CO_2 as a pollutant represents a grave threat to the industrial world’s continued economic development. We should not allow these proposals to restrict our economic growth. Any United Nations climate bill our country might sign would act as an infringement on our country’s sovereignty.
Dr. William M Gray Colorado State University
http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/
We seem to have a climate troll on this thread.
Buddha, your estimate may be low!
Too bad the EPA doesn’t agree with you. Or most other meteorological professionals.
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.pdf
Nice try, troll. You’re no more a weather man than I’m a superhero. And if you are, you’re a bad one.
Here you go, climate trolls. James Brown wrote a theme song for you.
Most Americans (52%) believe that there continues to be significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming.
While many advocates of aggressive policy responses to global warming say a consensus exists, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% of adults think most scientists agree on the topic. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure.
But just in the last few days, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seemed to reject any such disagreement in a response to a question about global warming, “I don’t think … [global warming] is quite, frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore.”
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.
This skepticism does not appear to be the result of the recent disclosure of e-mails confirming such data falsification as part of the so-called “Climategate” scandal. Just 20% of Americans say they’ve followed news reports about those e-mails Very Closely, while another 29% have followed them Somewhat Closely.
That’s a lower level of interest than has been shown about the White House party crashers and suggests that Americans have had their doubts about the science of global warming for some time.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/americans_skeptical_of_science_behind_global_warming
And for the record, you should leave out terms like socialists when talking about SCIENCE.
It tips your hand, troll. Just like your other PNAC/Neocon code words.
Like “family values”.
Oh, a poll.
About what semi-educated people think instead of the professional scientists.
Is that some of that “common sense” your lot are so big on?
Another appeal to ignorance.
Volume of material doesn’t make your propaganda true either. You can say what you are saying in a lot less words. More bullshit is . . . just more bullshit.
Climate change is real and the scientists aren’t the ones arguing about it being real. They argue how bad it’s going to be, but unless they are a congenital moron, they agree it’s happening. The only people insisting it isn’t real are 1) the brainwashed and 2) the fascists who have a profit interest in Big Oil.
You can disbelieve gravity all you want. It’ll still kill you.
I should also point out that gate crashing and climate change have squat to do with each other. Much like the neurons in climate deniers heads.
Come on. Let’s see some more “scientists” defend an irrational number like those “statistics” FAUX provided. Everyone knows they make shit up.
these guys aren’t even trolls, they’re spammers, an even lower life form
here is a link to a website that has CRU temperature data and you can graph different plots.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1999/to:2010
Three cheers for the ignorant attack dog who continues his effort to eliminate intelligent debate on the Turley Blog!!
Sorry folks. It may be early but I’m getting pretty sick of the non-stop attacks by the resident chihuahua directed at ANYONE who presents an adverse opinion.
William Gray is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He served as a weather forecaster for the United States Air Force, and as a research assistant in the University of Chicago Department of Meteorology. He joined Colorado State University in 1961. He has been advisor of over 70 Ph.D. and M.S. students.
Gray is noted for his forecasts of Atlantic hurricane season activity. Gray pioneered the concept of “seasonal” hurricane forecasting—predicting months in advance the severity of the coming hurricane season. Gray and his team (including Christopher W. Landsea, Paul W. Mielke Jr., and Kenneth J. Berry, among others) has been issuing seasonal hurricane forecasts since 1984.
I doubt the barking beast has the credentials to stand with him.
The remark “Oh, a poll” continues to demonstrate the same. The Professor wrote this article about THAT VERY SAME POLL, dog brain.
Three cheers for the ignorant troll who counldn’t resist the bait!
I’m better at this than you. Too bad you just can’t keep your facades together, troll.
As many of you know, we have relied on Dr. William M. Gray from Colorado State University for many many years.
He has studied the Atmosphere and Hurricanes for over FIFTY YEARS.
Dr. Gray’s tropical season forecast has been accepted by the Associated Press and others as the Official Forecast for our hurricane seasons.
The National Hurricane Center incorporates all of Dr. Grays analysis.
For someone to put a government employee against a man such as Dr. Gray is not some what ludicrous, it’s just flat out.
“Final remarks
Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations andinterpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surfaceare warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, onecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21 st century and beyond. Focusing on the next 30 years,
convergence among emission scenarios and model results suggest strongly that increasing airtemperatures will reduce snowpack, shift snowmelt timing, reduce crop production andrangeland fertility, and cause continued melting of the ice caps and sea level rise. Important
goals for future work include the need to understand the relation of climate at the state and regional level to the patterns of global climate and to reverse the decline in observational networks that are so critical to accurate climate monitoring and prediction. Policy choices in the near future will determine the extent of the impacts of climate change. Policy decisions are seldom made in a context of absolute certainty. Some continued climate
change is inevitable, and the policy debate should also consider the best ways to adapt to climate change. Prudence dictates extreme care in managing our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life.
[This statement is considered in force until February 2012 unless superseded by a new statement issued by the AMS Council before this date.]
© American Meteorological Society, 45 Beacon Street, Boston, MA”
Better a dog brain than a no brain troll.
Come on. Tell us all again how the leading professional association for meteorological scientists are wrong.
I plotted some different graphs based on their data and they all look like at best over a 10 year period possibly, maybe a 0.1 degree increase if you did a regression analysis. It could also just as well be looked at as a decline or no movement at all.
I think there needs to be a total evaluation of the data by reputable scientists for and against global warming and a vigorous public debate.
The original warmers like Michael Mann and Phil Jones and the United Nations climate people need to stay out of it. This needs to be an objective study by objective scientists and let the chips fall where they may.
If we are going to spend billions of dollars I want to know with a reasonable degree of certainty that this not just pie in the sky BS cooked up by academics who were trying to get grant money.
Dr. Gray, uh. One scientist does not a fact make. I think I’ll go with the GROUP OF HUNDREDS OF PROFESSIONALS over one guy.
At one time people thought phrenology was science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
They also thought the world was flat and the moon was made of cheese.
Doctors are wrong every day too. That’s why the scientific method uses peer review and seeks consensus based on verifiable data.
“there is adequate evidence from observations andinterpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surfaceare warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change”
Not according to Dr. Gray. This is a man who has dedicated his life to the study of ATMOSPHERIC science. Over FIFTY years.
One wonders why a half-century of science can’t free a mind to see the possibility that the effects of 6+ billion MORE people cannot be considered to ADD to whatever underlying, non-human processes (repeat of Medieval warming) being used to try to counteract the “well organized international climate warming conspiracy.”
This fallacious logic is rampant in the anti-environment camp: there be shown a non-human cause therefore there cannot be a human cause. The bitter irony arrives when these same folks begin the personal responsibility rap, not to mention family values (as in, the existence of future families.)
As to what most Americans believe about global warning:
While only 36% of Americans think humans contribute to global warming and 39% accept the theory of evolution, 55% believe in angels.
http://rawstory.com/2009/12/americans-angels-humancaused-global-warming/
(Just reporting here, not proselytizing.)
@ Dr. William Gray:
I started reading your rambling rant-please, allow me this redundancy–till I hit the adjective “socialist” which convinced me you were talking, not from any objective perspective, but from the height of a huge pile of B.S. that purports to be science… You sadly remind me of those “doctors” who question evolution…
BTW, don’t you think you’re trying to chew more than you could possibly bite? I mean, meteorology, which deals with short-term events, is already too much for one single human brain. And to add to that climatology, which tackles long-term phenomena, is, in my view, flirting with shamanism and charlatanism. C’mon, Doctor, are you trying to tell us you’re some kind of a Renaissance brainiac able to dabble in all the arts and sciences of your day? I mean, Doctor, even in literary studies, there are limits to what a single human being could muster… That’s why, in literature, you got for example, literary history (with circumscribed periods), critical theory, and so forth. And, believe me, Doctor, there are also doctors in literature… Professor Jonathan Turley, whom I often see commenting on TV, specializes in just one area of law of the vast corpus of American law: constitutional law!… And last but not least, what’s this “doctor” thing you feel the need to cover yourself with on a blog? You are positively out of your mind and at your wits’ end!
This is how one man can change the world with a consensus of the scientific community. Al Gore comes to mind. A man who never received a grade higher than a “D” in science.
The Piltdown hoax is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax in history. It has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its full exposure as a forgery.
Oh those English are tricky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
Buddha:
Copernicus was one guy, so was Newton, so was Darwin, so was Aristotle, so was Galileo, so was Lister, so was Salk, so was Einstein, so was . . . well you get my point.
Sometimes the Royal Societies don’t see the forest for the trees as they did when Darwin published his tome. He was alone in the wilderness. The rest of science had to catch up with him. Some people are standing on the mountain and see the far pillars long before the rest of us reach the summit.
It is the individual mind that has moved human society along the road of knowledge, not committees of learned sheep.
CORRECTION:
“… BITE more than you can CHEW…” (mutatis mutandis)…
Come on. Appeal to Dr. Gray’s supposed authority again.
It’s funny.
How long he studied isn’t salient. His being wrong in his analysis by the estimate of just about every other scientist is salient.
You’re a troll. And you’re going to get mauled here today judging by your performance so far. Enjoy.
We sure will.
Byron,
And you are missing the point. All of those “individuals” were checked by their peers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Method
John Puma, Thanks for the link. The poll was performed in September thru early October 2009. Wasn’t that before the email controversy?
And even Einstein was wrong on occasion. He was wrong about quantum mechanics in his life time and Hawking has proved him wrong about the cosmological constant. None of which would have been discovered without peer review.
and their peers thought they were wrong, you miss my point.
Byron, Well said.
Oh I should have included Dr. Hawking in that pantheon of discoverers. Thanks for pointing out that oversight.
Byron:
just pie in the sky BS cooked up by academics who were trying to get grant money
I’m always curious about this
seems to me the real money would be in disproving GCC. The oil companines have deep pockets. I would think that if money is the only motivating factor for these scientists this would be a no brainer and we would have a plethora of William Grays.
In discussions about climate change/global warming, people bring up temperature charts, graphs, CO2 levels, etc. Numbers is numbers.
Let’s get down to basics. What if we look at evidence we can actually see–not numbers and studies? The ice caps are shrinking. Wouldn’t there have to be some increase in planetary warming for this to happen? I’m not talking causes here–just the fact of shrinking ice caps.
again it was the individual mind that prevailed. There is too much stock put in group think.
Not a bit. You’re assuming Gray is right just because the individual assessment is somehow more important than the review. It’s not the theorem that makes a scientific law. It’s the verification of a theorem that makes it law. You can posit all kind of insane crap. The trolls prove that every day. It’s easy to do without proof and verification. They are appealing to authority here. The authority of an individual disproved by the majority on valid grounds his analysis is superficial and wrong. By your own admission it needs better review of the data set.
According to another the Rasmussen poll, 150% of the American people think FOX gives us fair and balanced news.
Group think isn’t the issue, Mr. Afraid Of Socialism.
It’s the review process itself.
Are you so insecure in your individuality that consensus has no value? That’s just insane. And anti-democratic when it comes right down to it. You claim to love democracy yet you disparage the value of consensus in the endeavor of science. That’s a contradiction, Byron.
It’s also bad science.
“The ice caps are shrinking. Wouldn’t there have to be some increase in planetary warming for this to happen?”
Yes. Is the warming directly attributable to humans? Perhaps. How much of it? That’s the debate.
When the oceans rise, more surface is exposed for evaporation. Warmer temperatures increase the amount of evaporation. More evaporation causes more rain clouds. More rain clouds causes less sunshine to penetrate. Less sunshine causes the earth to cool.
Byron,
Perhaps the words of my grandfather will help you. “You can have too many chiefs and not enough braves, but you can never have too many eyes or ears.”
“Is the warming directly attributable to humans? Perhaps. How much of it? That’s the debate.”
It’s only a debate for those with a profit motive. Your being wrong also does not constitute debate. It constitutes you being scientifically ignorant about chemistry, complexity and thermodynamics.
Come on, you still haven’t shown why the AMS is wrong about global warming and you are right. Just like CO2, you’re just retaining hot air, troll.
Razmataz–
“Is the warming directly attributable to humans? Perhaps. How much of it? That’s the debate.”
That isn’t the only debate. Some people–Sen. James Inhofe and others–are deniers of global warming. That was the point of my comment.
Rising temperatures and rising levels of a gas made by man that retains heat that didn’t exist before the industrial revolution aren’t related.
Uh huh. And rain isn’t wet either.
Cause and effect. You just admitted it yourself.
That you find the cause inconvenient is your problem Doesn’t change the reality of the problem. Degree isn’t an issue either. Mitigation of damage is. Degree is the argument of equivocation. Losing a finger or losing an arm. It’s still losing.
Elaine M.,
The earth has warmed and cooled throughout its existence. Most of the time humans could not have had anything to do with it.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the “ice age”. Did humans cause the earth to come out of the ice?
Natural variations in climate do not preclude manufactured variations in climate.
Leading, misleading and irrelevant question.
Razmataz–
You said:
The earth has warmed and cooled throughout its existence. Most of the time humans could not have had anything to do with it.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the “ice age”. Did humans cause the earth to come out of the ice?
***************
You’re missing my point. There are people like Inhofe who are denying that the planet is getting warmer. I didn’t say anything about the causes. There is no need to talk down to me. I am fully aware that Earth has experienced periods of cooling and heating throughout its existence. There have been mass extinctions, too, that were not caused by humans. That doesn’t rule out the fact that humans are most likely partly responsible for the current condition of our planet.
We’re going to have a difficult time addressing the issue of global warming in the US–no matter what the causes of it are–if we have people in Congress who deny the existence of it.
To Razmataz:
You asked: “The poll was performed in September thru early October 2009. Wasn’t that before the email controversy?”
The article at that link seems to suggest that it is referring to three different polls.
As I implied, polling Americans will likely NOT glean any scientific truth.
I think the big picture is being missed with all the arguement over one professor. If a handful of scientists believe global warming is a hoax and twelve hundred scientists (who won a nobel prize for their work) believe that global warming is real; it seems to me that we should develop environmental and industrial policies that are supported by the vast majority of peer reviewed science. This is especially true if the consequences are even close to what is expected.
Just out of curiousity, if the ice sheets do melt, can we beat the snot out of the all the global warming deniers?
For the record, if any of you have doubts allow me to point out a few things about this recent revelation from the Guardian, a VERY LIBERAL publication. As the song goes,
“And no one knows what goes on behind close doors”
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment”
The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions;
The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as “a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations.
“It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process,” said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.
It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed.”
“It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.”
Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force was secret. (Actual Crimes Committed, by the same people the deniers side with BTW)
So was the Manhattan Project. (A valid national security secret at the time.)
So were Brittney’s comeback plans. (Who cares?)
So is the recipe for Coke. (Yummy Empty Calories!)
Paranoia is not proof.
Not all secrets are created equal either.
Elaine M.,
My intent was not to talk down to you.
For the last twelve years, the climate has actually seen a cooling trend.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTlhOTNiOWFlMmMzNmJkOWM3ZTk5NWJkNTU2Nzk5NWI=
What has caused this cooling?
I’ve used Wizard of Oz clips before. Don’t make me do it again. But then again, you flying denier monkeys probably root for the Wicked Witch.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He’s burning a Big Oil lamp.
Cooling isn’t the issue either. It’s called “micro-climates”. Look into it.
Global warming is instability in patterns and aggregate warming causing sea levels to rise.
You know. Instability. Unstable weather. Like your arguments.
“It’s called “micro-climates”. Look into it.”
Maybe you meant microclimates. Although any discussion of microclimates as the relate to global temperature trends would cancel each other out. The heat retained by the city microclimate and the cooler temperatures that exist in a valley are irrelevant to a “global” climate discussion.
Razmataz: Has the Earth been cooling or warming in the past decade?
Following are excerpts from an AP article I read on the Internet:
Decade of 2000s was warmest ever, scientists say
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent – Mon Dec 7, 7:08 am ET
It dawned with the warmest winter on record in the United States. And when the sun sets this New Year’s Eve, the decade of the 2000s will end as the warmest ever on global temperature charts.
Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead.
Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world humanity has created for itself over millennia.
**********
The warming seas were growing more acid, too, from absorbing carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas in an overloaded atmosphere. Together, warmer waters and acidity will kill coral reefs and imperil other marine life — from plankton at the bottom of the food chain, to starfish and crabs, mussels and sea urchins.
Over the decade’s first nine years, global temperatures averaged 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees F) higher than the 1951-1980 average, NASA reported. And temperatures rose faster in the far north than anyplace else on Earth.
The decade’s final three summers melted Arctic sea ice more than ever before in modern times. Greenland’s gargantuan ice cap was pouring 3 percent more meltwater into the sea each year. Every summer’s thaw reached deeper into the Arctic permafrost, threatening to unlock vast amounts of methane, a global-warming gas.
Less ice meant less sunlight reflected, more heat absorbed by the Earth. More methane escaping the tundra meant more warming, more thawing, more methane released.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/decade_s_end_climate
Global Warming, I mean Climate Change is for real.
Strongest winter storm in 30 years in Iowa and Illinois – 8 Dec 09
Record snowfall in Arizona – More than 4 times previous record!
- 8 Dec 09
Flights in Chicago canceled as snow moves in; worst still to come
– 8 Dec 09
Large areas of USA under winter & blizzard warnings – 7 Dec 09
Blizzard warning for Minnesota – 7 Dec 09
Urgent – Blizzard warning – Snowfall in excess of 4 feet
expected in Colorado tonight – 7 Dec 09
Ice and snow shut down I-5 shut in California – 7 Dec 09
Expecting two feet of snow in Flagstaff, Arizona -7 Dec 09
Snow and record cold in Sacramento – 6 Dec 09
Potential blizzards in CA, UT, CO, AZ, KS, NE, SD, IA, MN, IL,
WI and MI – 6 Dec 09
Record low obliterated in Virginia – 6 Dec 09
Earliest snowfall ever in Southwest Louisiana
More than a foot of snow was expected in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, where the National Weather Service warned of “extremely dangerous blizzard conditions” and near whiteout driving conditions. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph could build snow drifts between 8 and 15 feet tall.
Parts of New England also girded themselves for bone-chilling wind gusts and snow accumulations of up to a foot by the end of the day.
In the West, pounded by the storm’s rain and snow earlier this week, bitter wind chills as low as 40 below were sweeping across portions of southern Montana. The biting winds also were moving across Wyoming and South Dakota, according to the National Weather Service.
Horseshit on the canceling effect.
What they do is prove that varied terrains react differently to global warming. It’s the very change in these local states that change how they relate to the global system. Unstable. Some will cool and some will warm, but they WILL change unpredictably.
And please, criticize spelling when you have nothing else of substance. I dare say what you’ve pointed to is a style preference.
It makes you look really really credible. No. That’s not the word. Petty. Yeah, that’s the word. Or flailing.
Elaine M.,
Charles Hanley is a “reporter”. That’s all. Did you notice all the scientific studies that he cited? Did you notice how he based his report on data collected by reliable sources?
NEWS FLASH: In the Northeast, people buy wool socks, scarves, and gloves. They put on down coats. They have heating oil delivered to their homes and turn up their thermostats.
Baby, it’s gettin’ cold outside. Ain’t no such a thing as global warming…I tells ya!
It’s the Sun we are in a Deep Solar Minimum.
The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
“We’re experiencing a very deep solar minimum,” says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
50-year low in solar wind pressure
30-year low in solar “irradiance
A 55-year low in solar radio emissions
Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high,” notes Hathaway. “Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We’re just not used to this kind of deep calm.”
For the first time in history, we’re getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like.” A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, Hinode, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected.
Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply
No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle except the last time this happened the world froze.
To Razmataz:
Sorry, the National Review is hardly a peer-reviewed science publication.
To non-Razmatazes: Note the NR section called “Planet Gore.”
No bias here !!
Buddha:
“Not a bit. You’re assuming Gray is right just because the individual assessment is somehow more important than the review”
I am not assuming Gray is right, I don’t even know who Gray is. I am merely pointing out that just because 100 people say something is so does not make it true.
Gray may indeed be wrong and mad as a hatter to boot. But just because he is one individual does not make him wrong anymore than the entire Royal Society of Science thinking Charles Darwin was wrong about evolution.
Great presentations if you have time.
http://www.nothingtodowithco2.com/pdf/AGW_presentation_ILMCD.pdf
Razmataz–
Reporters are the people who report the news–albeit some much better than others.
Ditto on what John P. said about The National Review.
I love deniers like the good Dr.William M Gray. A whole lot of hot air (like this planet needs more) and yet in his posted credentials he conveniently omits that he is a long time member of the Heartland Institute. A conservative think tank that advocates against gov’t spending, taxation, healthcare reform, global warming, information technology and free market environmentalism. As a 501(c)(3) group they do not have to disclose their financial supporters however it is an established fact that EXXON is one of their main benefactors. Seems to me that a corporate funded think tank member and advocate whose primary disclaimer of scientific facts supporting human responsibility is that all those independent scientists are lying in order to keep their funding is a simple charlatan projecting his own financial interests over honest science. The good doctor is no more than a corporate backed snake oil salesman like every other lobbyist and conservative think tank talking head. If the good doctor did not hold this position he would be kicked out of the old boys club. Is that about right Dr. Gray? Why should anyone believe a man whose “scientific” bonafides are funded by Big Oil?
Byron, come on, you expect me to believe you don’t know who Dr. Gray is. It’s in the thread. You must not live on the coast.
Yes, Dr Gray can be wrong, lets put him up against Gore.
From an Inconvenient Lie. As the oceans warm hurricanes will become bigger, stronger and more frequent.
Sorry, 30 year low for worldwide tropical cyclone activity, three years in a row. Doesn’t matter who said it, thats a fact jack.
Jay:
“Just out of curiousity, if the ice sheets do melt, can we beat the snot out of the all the global warming deniers?”
You can take me and put me against a wall and shoot me if all the ice sheets melt. That is how sure I am that it is not going to happen.
Elaine M. and John Puma,
I see a stark difference between the two articles. The National Review article cites the sources for their information. The Charles Hanley article, well, is just a story.
Elaine FYI, I tried again this morning to go to the thread and once again my computer froze and had to shut it down. We had a similar problem here before on another thread about Orly. It happened to Vince and he requested that the thread be shut.
Not trying to avoid your comment. If you want, pick a thread thats dead or one no one has interest in anymore and let me know.
Thank you,
off topic but talking about re-creations:
http://www.fandome.com/video/116685/Chinese-News-Recreates-Tiger-Woods-Crash-Using-Sims-Graphics/?q=c
老虎Wooods這是一個有趣的傢伙。
Byron: “You can take me and put me against a wall and shoot me if all the ice sheets melt. That is how sure I am that it is not going to happen.”
Before you volunteer to be taken out back behind the chemical shed and be shot; you may want to take a look at what the captains of industry have been doing and planning for the past five years:
http://tinyurl.com/yfb5yyw
To Razmataz:
I did not refer you to the Hanley article nor imply any importance for it. But ALL articles at the National Review must be considered politically motivated. I will refer you to a couple of peer reviewed science articles, cited below.
They say that for the last 740,000 years CO2 has varied between 180 and 280 parts per million on a volume basis (ppmv), essentially in the absence of humans. Since the Industrial Revolution the CO2 levels have risen to 380 ppmv as shown by your very own Mr Murdock (chart: “Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory”). He sees no problem that, in the last 150 years, CO2 levels have risen 36% above the cyclic maximum levels recorded for the previous 3/4 million years.
Unless you (or he) prove that earth surface heating is immediate after CO2 increase or that CO2 does NOT act as a greenhouse gas, then you and he are truly, suicidally reckless.
The most important chart is here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5752/1313/FIG4
The full articles:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5752/1313
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/full/nature02599.html#t1
Bob Esq:
I said “all” the ice sheets.
From one of your links:
“The Bremen-based company that operates the two specially reinforced cargo ships, the Beluga Fraternity and the Beluga Foresight, that made the journey said that taking the new route saved 10 days and $300,000 per ship over the usual 11,000 nautical-mile voyage through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean in order to reach the North Atlantic.”
I knew it, Global Warming is at root a Capitalist conspiracy to save money. Man those guys are really clever. They win if the earth warms and they win if it doesn’t warm and they win if we go green.
Of course. Displacing millions of low land and coastal inhabitants and destroying the weather patterns – and thus disrupting our ability to grow food predictably – is all a plan to cut shipping by sea costs.
This points directly to the fundamental problem with unrestrained capitalism just like the switch to using one drug for executions in Ohio does. You may be joking, but you point to a serious flaw when you show that both ends play against the middle. Rational and rationale are two different words. And rationale, usually ex post facto, is the word of choice for capitalism. Some clouds don’t have a silver lining. You can put lipstick on this pig, but it’s still a Palin.
Shortsighted.
There was a report on CBS News yesterday about how global warming was benefiting the economy of Greenland. At the end of the piece, the narration was talking about a dog musher who was “looking forward to exciting times on the edge of civilization.”
The edge of civilization always gets exciting when rats start fleeing the sinking ship. I’m sure that the people living on the borders of the Roman Empire and the Germanic hordes found it an “exciting time” too. Exciting can and usually includes the effect “interesting”. There is a reason the Chinese curse is “May you live in interesting times.”
This new “green” technology (solar, wind, etc); who is going to profit from that? I heard a rumor that it was “corporations”.
Byron,
I didn’t provide you with a link, I provided you with a cluster of hits on Google (a broad stroke if you will).
Further, I didn’t know or care about the race to map out new shipping lanes and claim resources until a charter pilot I know, who flies one of the ‘players’ so to speak, brought it up in conversation a few years ago.
Let’s put it this way Byron, for the ‘players’ global warming isn’t a theory; it’s a certainty they intend to cash in on.
Yes.
Corporations do stand to profit.
That legal fiction that sociopaths and the generally amoral have used to usurp our political processes and institute a de facto fascist police state. The fiction that is currently without supervision because they have purchased both political parties via K St. graft.
Corporations. As in corporatism. As in Mussolini’s preferred term for fascism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Corporations and their resultant corrupting influence are at the root of all our governmental problems – from the illegal invasion of a country that didn’t attack us to the rewarding of Wall St. criminals who broke the system by selling their made up horseshit shellgame CDS nonsense.
Byron,
Just a quick couple of thoughts on your examples of individuals overturning popular consensus.
Science makes those individuals who go contrary to popular opinion heroes, with one caveat: They have do be able to prove that they are right.
The reason you can create a list of individuals like that is the same reason you can create a list of movies that Kubrick directed. They are the exception, not the rule. We remember the anomalies, not the thousands of faceless\nameless that contribute evidence that helps solidify and tweak existing theories. Do you know the name of the people who wrote papers establishing the presence of a “red shift” in observable galaxies?
This discussion gets me to thinking back five-six centuries to the days of Galileo Galilei when the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and others considered it heresy to promote the Copernican theory that the sun is the center of our solar system. Galileo was interrogated by the Holy Office of the Inquisition–and eventually put under house arrest. Can’t have people going around claiming that the Earth revolves around the sun–or things that go against your belief system. No, it was to remain an Earth-centric system in the eyes of those who closed their minds to new ideas in science.
Rising Sea Levels Greatest LIE ever told.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html
Olberman & Maddow will probably be talking about this one tonight.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,579828,00.html
IPCC says sea level rise 17 inches Gore says twenty feet.
OH NOOOOOOOOOOO
Who do we trust, say it ain’t so Joe, YOU LIE!!!!!!
Correction–I should have written four-five centuries in my previous comment. I wouldn’t want to be accused of “fudging” numbers.
Again with the one guy thing.
AMS.
More eyes and ears to look at the data than the deniers you keep going to for appeals to their authority.
More review equals better analysis because more permutations of the models get tested and either verified or discarded.
Go ahead. Find another denier who disagrees with the majority of the scientists reviewing the global data.
It’s still the same error. bdacherrypicker.
And since you seem to choose a guy who discounts modeling? How about giving up your car. It was modeled a dozen different ways in a computer before a single part was manufactured. Don’t watch the weather on the news and don’t listen to stock analysis. Don’t drive either as traffic patterns are modeled to control traffic flows. Don’t buy food either. The logistics of delivery are modeled before the product shipped.
You’re guy is pissed because he’s supposedly the expert and the majority of the other scientists don’t agree that any discovery regarding the ocean he should get credit for. Your Swedish doctor sounds less like a scientist and more like a guy offended he’s not deferred to by default. Boo hoo because he didn’t get his way. Well . . . no wonder you like him! You’re recycling your birther strategy again. That’s twice you’ve gone green in your trolling and good for you!
I’ll stick with the AMS assessment.
To me, the issue of climate change is simple: yes, it is POSSIBLE carbon dioxide emissions may cause global warming, climate change, crops yields to plummet, oceans to rise, millions of people to be driven from their homes and affected by drought, famine, and natural disasters–but if you are rich, WHO CARES! You will have the resources to take care of yourself and your family. So GET YOURS NOW, and let the little people fend for themselves!
Razmataz & Bdaman–
From World Book at NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html
From NASA JPL
The Big Thaw? NASA Satellites Detect Unexpected Ice Loss in East Antarctica
http://jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2378&icid='NewsFeaturesHome‘
From NASA—Global Climate Change: NASA’s Eyes on the Earth
Climate change: How do we know?
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
P.S. If you don’t like global warming, then TURN UP THE A/C!
DRILL, BABY, DRILL!
Oh we are, All the hoopla of getting off foreign oil, the Interior Dept. just cleared the way so we can drill in the Artic.
Hows that for moving towards clean energy.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20091208/sc_mcclatchy/3373028
Oh and don’t forget we are providing Brazil with BILLIONS to do the same. I think Brazil is foreign, aren’t they.
Conservative deny global climate change and man’s contributions SOLELY out of an attempt to protect business, particularly multi-nations. Heaven forbid these polluters would have to invest in anything that doesn’t smell of executive bonuses. It’s pure and simple greed having NOTHING TO DO WITH SCIENCE. Trying to debunk the science–and doing a very poor job at that–is only intended to obfuscate their responsibility in creating and solving this issue.
These are the same folks that said we don’t need seat belts and that no one would ever again be able to afford a car if seat belts were mandated by the government. Cries, make that whines, of undue government intervention were rife during that debate some decades ago. They did the same kind of whining BS over OSHA. After millions of lives have been spared by just these two pieces of legislation and their value thoroughly embraced, why would ANYONE LISTEN TO A CONSERVATIVE ON CLIMATE CHANGE? Or anything else for that matter? SCROOM!
Bob Esq:
“Let’s put it this way Byron, for the ‘players’ global warming isn’t a theory; it’s a certainty they intend to cash in on.”
the players also cashed in on the real estate bubble, the Internet bubble and the Tulip bubble.
Just because they are playing doesn’t mean they think it exists, it just means they believe they can make money on the belief of the existence.
I have money in green companies as well and I am buying timber rights to use for carbon credits. I think global warming is bogus but I see that a good many people don’t. When the tide turns as it always does the “players” will have sold out and be onto the next great scam er money making opportunity.
Watch a school of fish or a flock of birds and you can predict markets and public opinion.
What I can’t figure out is why these smart people decide to have a meeting or a conference when it’s cold. It’s called the Gore effect. Every time Al goes anywhere to speak an unusual cold spell breaks out.
Amidst new revelations of data manipulation by scientists hoping to ‘prove’ global warming, the infamous ‘Gore Effect’ has socked Copenhagen. One intrepid warmist reports that temperatures are hovering just above zero.
It’s so cold that the media center, depicted requires that reporters bundle themselves up while inside.
“The Gore Effect” has a long and uniquely entertaining history. In simple terms, it strikes the Warmists whenever and wherever they gather as if Mother Nature herself is mocking the UN’s rapidly disintegrating bunko scam.
Byron: “the players also cashed in on the real estate bubble, the Internet bubble and the Tulip bubble.
Just because they are playing doesn’t mean they think it exists, it just means they believe they can make money on the belief of the existence.”
Let’s not get metaphysical here. They made money because there was a bubble that was making them rich until it broke.
Byron: “I have money in green companies as well and I am buying timber rights to use for carbon credits. I think global warming is bogus but I see that a good many people don’t. When the tide turns as it always does the “players” will have sold out and be onto the next great scam er money making opportunity.”
Okay; I’m not stopping you. I wouldn’t care if you invested in coal and brought back a classic line of steam locomotives and contracted to use Amtrak’s rails.
But to suggest in any way that the proper ‘conservative’ thing to do is close your eyes and cover your ears and convince yourself that an exploding growth in population & industry combined with an increasing destruction of non-renewable CO scrubbers (forestation) has no effect on the environment?
And even if you agreed as to the existence of an effect yet differ as to its degree; to assume it’s so minute as to give you sufficient comfort room to laugh off all other claims and arguments smacks of the attitude of the church in the time of Galileo.
“Watch a school of fish or a flock of birds and you can predict markets and public opinion.”
Careful they’re not Lemmings.
Here’s the list and those are the title to the posts.
• The Gore Effect: Politico, November 2008
• First October snow since 1922 blankets London as global warming bill debated: Register, October 2008
• Global Warming Vote on Snowy Day in Washington – Senate committee debates expensive climate change bill as snow blankets D.C.: Business and Media, December 2007
• HOUSE HEARING ON ‘WARMING OF THE PLANET’ CANCELED AFTER SNOW/ICE STORM: Drudge Report, February 2007
• NOT AGAIN! DC ‘Snow Advisory’ Issued on Day of Congressional Global Warming Hearing: Times, March 2007
• Gore decries ‘global warming’ in bitterly cold NYC: WND, December 2006
• Gore delivers environmental message at Harvard …with near 125-year record breaking low temps: MOTLS, October 2008
• Global warming activists urged to focus on Earth Day rallies and ignore snow as it ‘piles up outside our windows’: Alarmism, April 17, 2007
• No Joke! Cyclists ‘braved freezing cold temps’ to promote global warming awareness in New York: WKTV, October 22, 2008
• Global warming protest in Maryland frosted with snow: Baltimore Sun, January 2008
• Global warming rally in the snow: Alarmism, April 2007
• Snow won’t dampen global-warming rallies: Live Daily, April 2007
• Brrrr – Obama to global warming demonstrators: ‘This is probably not the weather to hold up those signs…it’s a little chilly today’, Space Daily, October 28, 2008
• Global Warming Awareness Walk Braves Snow Storm: Nashua Telegraph, March 2007
• The Gore Effect, Cont. – Gore speaks in Italy during ‘rare’ cold and snow: Planet Gore
• Climate protest canceled ‘due to rain and cold’: Telegraph (Australia), Nov. 23, 2008
The Global warming theory asserts that human activity causes dangerous increases in temperatures, despite studies showing the the Earth has been in a cooling pattern since 1998. Liberal scientists have insisted that man-made pollution has caused dangerous warming, but all of their computer models failed to predict cooling that the Earth is experiencing. [1] By pushing their liberal bias, they are misinforming citizens. In November 2009, emails were publicly released that demonstrated wrongful manipulation and concealment of data by scientists who have insisted that there is dangerous man-made global warming.
The myth of dangerous man-made global warming is promoted by liberals and socialists seeking greater government control over the production and use of energy, which is a substantial percentage of the economy. Numerous scientists, especially those outside of university faculties, have been critical of this myth, but liberals have censored dissent and pretended that there is a “scientific consensus” supporting their theory for greater government control. On most college campuses criticism of man-made global warming is silenced or censored, and even scientists skeptical of it are afraid to speak out.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Global_warming
OSHA, at least in the construction industry did not do much for lost time accidents and deaths. those started dropping when companies got rebates on their insurance premiums for being safe.
I don’t argue that seat belts are a good thing, I don’t wear them as a general rule and when I used to work for a construction company I made sure my workers were safe not because of OSHA but because I wanted a safe working environment for the men/women.
When I design excavation support today, I don’t use OSHA guide lines for earth support, they are not safe enough. I use my own judgement and how I would feel if I were working in a trench (which I have done).
All the mandates from government haven’t changed the number of highway deaths since 1960:
“Preliminary figures released by the government today show that 37,313 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year (2008). That’s 9.1 percent lower than the year before, when 41,059 died, and the fewest since 1961, when there were 36,285 deaths.”
Although the article does say that increased use of seat belts and fewer miles traveled may have something to do with the reduced death toll.
Not much of a decline in actual deaths even with all that government intervention/regulation.
and you can’t account for the exact number of drivers between the years. Some more, some less
Bob Esq:
You cannot say with any degree of certainty that human acitivity is the cause. There may be some small component but the earth cools and heats up with or without man.
If you took all of the people in the world and set them down in Texas each person would have about 1,200 sq. ft. of land to call his own.
I think I read somewhere once that insects and bacteria give off more CO2 than man and his industries. I just brewed some beer and the amount of CO2 given of by some yeast was tremendous.
Note to Gyges – Ban all beer brewing because of CO2 production.
Byron–
“You cannot say with any degree of certainty that human acitivity is the cause. There may be some small component but the earth cools and heats up with or without man.”
I’d have to turn the tables and argue that you cannot say with any degree of certainty that human activity isn’t one of the major causes–maybe even the major cause–of global warming.
Here’s one a very liberal friend of mine would like to see.
He wants to ban Christmas, Why? because people who celebrate Christmas chop down trees and burn electric with all their lights they display.
I can tell you this, with the new EPA finding that CO2 which makes up less than 5% of all green house gases is a dangerous.
I’m gonna file a charge of attempted murder on the next person that breathes on me.
Byron,
It’s probably a pretty safe assumption that any CO2 produced by the yeast would be produced as part of the carbon cycle anyways, or maybe that any CO2 produced by the yeast is offset by the CO2 consumed by growing barley and hops in the first place.
There’s a difference between using single cell organisms to produce CO2 by consuming plant material, which is essentially just harnessing a process that would have happened anyway, and creating CO2 by adding processes that wouldn’t have existed in nature. That’s the problem, not that we’re part of the Carbon cycle, but that we’re augmenting the production end while reducing the consumption end. You don’t flood a valley by taking water out from upstream and then dumping it out in the river bed, you flood a valley by damning up one end of the river, adding extra water to the river, or both.
Elaine:
I agree the science isnt yet settled.
Gyges:
thank god, you have saved beer through science and logic, I knew if anyone could save beer it would be you!
Byron–
I’d agree that not everything in climate science is settled. I would argue, however, that there are good indicators that show that humans have had an impact on the warming of the planet. I’m not saying that humans are the only cause of warming.
I think we’d be like ostriches with our heads buried in the sand if we just keep saying that humans are likely not responsible for having contributed to the warming–and close our minds to the idea that there are things we may be able to do to help the situation. What if the deniers are wrong–and we wait too long to address the problem? I believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And seeing as I live very close to the coast, I may be more concerned about rising sea levels than those who live inland.
The Urban Heat Island effect on temperature records is real, despite what some people wish you to believe. Peter, a sixth grader, and his dad, thought so too, and take the data from NASA GISS and show you in a simple video. Urbanization, land use, and station siting matter. Are you smarter than a fifth grader.
Correction Sixth Grader
Byron,
Now that’s not to say that our beer industry couldn’t use some retooling when it comes to being more friendly to mother nature, just that the beer making process is relatively neutral.
Just got an E-mail from a buddy of mine with NOAA out of North Carolina
Take a look at what is forecast for Europe next weekend, a full on Siberian blast 70’s style!
Can’t wait for the poor summit pictures, all down to Global Warming of course! Copenhagen is under the -15C!
Brilliant, you would have thought that they would have scheduled this for a summer conference at least.
Seriously, there is some major winter weather about the hit Europe, all down to a huge mid-latitude blocking High near Greenland, and these are very difficult to shift if the cold pool becomes established.
http://www.wzkarten.de/pics/Rtavn2402.png
Elaine:
what if warming is actually happening through mans activities but the earth is going into a new ice age which it appears to do every so many thousands of years.
What if we stopped global warming caused by man and that would have helped reduce the severity of an ice age or even stop it?
So if we stop man made global warming we may be contributing to an ice age. We could have prevented it if we put out more green house gas.
I think we need to not bury our heads in the sand about a future ice age.
I think we need to have objective scientists flesh this out before we do anything. We may cause an ice age if we reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
We have wasted close to 30 years worrying about global warming when we should have been worried about global cooling.
Do you see why I think this is all a bunch of BS?
I don’t know why people are pushing global warming as hard as they are, I don’t think there has been enough objective criticism of the claims. Whatever happens is not going to happen in 5, 10 even 20 years. The ice caps are not going to melt in that span of time. The glaciers did not recede in 20 years once the ice age ended. They have been receding every year since the end of the last ice age.
I don’t think 3-5 years of additional study and review of existing data is unreasonable. Humans have a very short time reference. Things happen to earth systems over thousands of years, sometimes millions.
Listen to Joe Bastardi about Europes up coming week
http://www.accuweather.com/video-on-demand.asp?video=55253314001&channel=VBLOG_BASTARDI&title=Dec.%2015-25:%20You're%20Freezing%20if%20You're%20in%20Europe
Man, I go to meetings all morning and look what I miss…
Byron,
You said:
‘All the mandates from government haven’t changed the number of highway deaths since 1960:
“Preliminary figures released by the government today show that 37,313 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year (2008). That’s 9.1 percent lower than the year before, when 41,059 died, and the fewest since 1961, when there were 36,285 deaths.”’
And do you think that the number of cars and miles driven has increased or decreased? I’m a mathematician, I can spot lying with statistics a mile off – to make a meaningful comparison you need to look at something like deaths per mile driven or deaths per car.
Bdaman,
I have a question for you. Since you seem to be so familiar with the ‘climategate’ (incidentally, I absolutely despise the practice of appending the suffix ‘-gate’ to scandals) emails maybe you can tell me where to find the proof of the massive global warming conspiracy you’ve been incessantly telling us about. Where’s the email from George Soros telling these guys that they’d better ‘hide the decline’ or they wont get their payoff next month? Where’s the email from Al Gore telling them to get those climate change deniers papers suppressed or he’ll send his environmental commandos after them and their families? In fact, where are all of the papers that were supposedly suppressed? (I’ll give you this one: they were published – the most effective form of suppression, hidden in plain sight.)
Just a little more proof that you don’t care about getting to the truth, you just care about what you can distort to support your misguided agenda. Did you buy an on-line course in sleazy propaganda from Karl Rove? Or is this just the result of watching too much Fox News? You know you can prove anything if 1 = 0… or if you get poll responses from 120% of the people.
Byron,
“I think we need to have objective scientists flesh this out before we do anything. ”
Who exactly do you want to flesh it out? Seriously, if you think that the vast majority of climate scientists on earth aren’t object, where are you going to find objective scientists that understand the material well enough to “flesh it out.”
Furthermore, what proof do you have that all the scientists you’re dismissing AREN’T objective? That’s a pretty serious claim to level.
Slarti:
I found that in an article on highway safety I did not alter or add to that paragraph in any way.
And anyway total number of deaths is total number of deaths. How do you want to flesh it out? Percent of population, number of deaths per miles driven, etc? In the end the total number of dead is still the total number of dead. And there are so many other factors that go into that number, such as better roads, better driver education, etc. So you cant identify a single factor in cause of deaths.
Slartibartfast, your right, my bad, thanks for the comment. Anything else?
Byron,
Two more questions that are much more important:
What evidence is required for YOU to believe that global warming is man made, and have you actively looked for it?
What evidence is required for YOU to believe that global warming is man made,
Teacher, can I answer, me, me, me, o.k. Bdaman go ahead.
Well I would need proof of the warming first and that hasn’t happened since 1998.
Gyges:
That is a good point, but how do you know all the scientists that are pushing global warming are objective and correct? Group think is a pretty powerful thing.
Many people do not have strong personalities and are easily influenced by bullies. Have you read Ibsens’ “An Enemy of the People”?
An independent mind is hard to find.
Gyges:
I have been doing some reading on this mostly in relation to figuring out what those emails are saying. There is a good deal of debate within the climate science community about a whole host of things.
I actually dont have enough knowledge to know for a certainty. But I do know we have a few years to do some additional science to make an honest assesment.
My house is over 120 years old. In an angled corner of the living room an old natural gas fireplace sat unused while the whole house was heated by an ancient but reliable, no electricity, gravity based, coal/gas furnace. I installed a working gas stove in the old fireplace and turned the thermostat for the furnace down to 56 degrees. I put rounded, slip-on, foam coats on all the water pipes in the basement. Before going to bed each night I turned off the fireplace and turned it back on in the morning. By the end of the winter, the gas bill had been reduced by two-thirds. Pleased with such savings I then replaced the old gas hot water tank with a new instant, when needed hot water heater. The gas bill fell even further. Therefore, I decided to move on to the electric.
I purchased new-fangled light bulbs and haven’t had to change one in four years and within a month of doing so saw my electric bill cut by one third. I decided to replace the old washer, dryer, and refrigerator with energy efficient models from New Zealand. My electric bill is now exactly half of what it was.
Global warming … I don’t know … what I do know is that my gas and electric bills are unbelievably low. All the changes are now fully paid by the reductions in costs, and this year every penny saved is pure profit. It’s now time to tackle my cooling costs so next summer a new white roof will replace the old. According to the roofer, the color won’t cost any extra. According to the environmentalists, a white roof should markedly reduce the expense of cooling which will reduce my electric bill even further.
Global warming … I don’t know … but at noon on September 11, 2001, I stopped listening to anything a conservative/republican had to say on any subject. That decision was money in my pocket.
Byron,
That’s easy, because they come from different countries\cultures\world views. They have no reason to agree on anything that’s not demonstrably true. You generally need a group to have group think. These labs generally work in isolation with fairly limited interaction with each other.
Byron,
Don’t be disingenuous. You were making a point about safety – just to illustrate the point, would you rather be in a group of 1 million in which 1000 people died or in a group of 10 where 1 person died?
Blouise:
those are good ideas, thank you for sharing.
Prof. Mojib Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC’s last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.
At the UN’s World Climate Conference–an annual gathering of the so-called “scientific consensus” on man-made climate change –Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering “one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”
The global warming theory has been based all along on the idea that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would absorb much of the greenhouse warming caused by a rise in man-made carbon dioxide, then they would let off that heat and warm the atmosphere and the land.
But as Latif pointed out, the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years.
“How much?” he wondered before the assembled delegates. “The jury is still out.”
But it is increasingly clear that global warming is on hiatus for the time being. And that is not what the UN, the alarmist scientists or environmentalists predicted. For the past dozen years, since the Kyoto accords were signed in 1997, it has been beaten into our heads with the force and repetition of the rowing drum on a slave galley that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm rapidly through this century until we reach deadly temperatures around 2100.
While they deny it now, the facts to the contrary are staring them in the face: None of the alarmist drummers ever predicted anything like a 30-year pause in their apocalyptic scenario.
Latif says he expects warming to resume in 2020 or 2030.
In the past year, two other groups of scientists–one in Germany, the second in the United States–have come to the same conclusion: Warming is on hold, likely because of a cooling of the Earth’s upper oceans, but it will resume.
But how is that knowable? How can Latif and the others state with certainty that after this long and unforeseen cooling, dangerous man-made heating will resume? They failed to observe the current cooling for years after it had begun, how then can their predictions for the resumption of dangerous warming be trusted?
My point is they cannot. It’s true the supercomputer models Latif and other modellers rely on for their dire predictions are becoming more accurate. But getting the future correct is far trickier. Chances are some unforeseen future changes will throw the current predictions out of whack long before the forecast resumption of warming.
Slart we are talking Global Warming not car accidents.
These labs generally work in isolation with fairly limited interaction with each other.
Except thru E-mails in which the hide the decline and perform tricks and make statements such as ” we cant account for the lack of warming and it’s a travesty that we cant”
Slarti:
What is the frequency of deaths. If 1 of 10 was a pool of people that had died over the last 100 years through lightening strikes, then that group.
Follow the money. Scientists who perpetuate the myths and dire predictions get the most research dollars.
The more dire they are, the more money they rake in.
Godless leftists (in particular) do not make sense. They will claim that man is the pinnacle of biological evolution and yet somehow that evolution led to these unimaginable and mostly unknown forces having taken all that time and energy to create the smartest species (humans) that would bump off the planet.
It is really quite silly of them to trash their own theory by proposing this was all for naught.
The main feature about the Biblical end times (in particular the last seven years of man’s rule of earth) is the willingness of the whole world to believe a lie. This is an example of what that will look like.
And now the myths have been commandeered by the Marxists.
Tootie:
bdaman is that you?
Byron no dude I’m definately not afraid to post under Bdaman. Think about it, they’ve called me every name in the book here. I love posting under Bdaman, they hate me and I love it.
Byron and Bdaman,
Can I dump my garbage in your house? I assume that both of you would answer no to this question – what I don’t understand is why you are saying that businesses should be free to dump their garbage in your house. I don’t think anyone should be able to make money off of polluting someone else’s property, but that’s what corporations do when they pollute the air and water. What possible reason is there NOT to charge companies for pollution?
Byron,
Would you rather play russian roulette with a gun with 10 chambers and 1 bullet (10% chance to die) or with a gun with 1,000,000 chambers and 1,000 bullets (0.1% chance to die)? What was the population in 1961? 100,000,000? (That’s just a guess, but I’ll be it’s high.) say we have 3 times as many people and they drive 3 times as much (almost certainly an underestimate of today’s driving), then the statistics you quoted are saying that cars are 3 times safer than they were in 1961. You ripped your own point to shreds.
Bdaman,
Your precious emails were amongst people in one lab, not several. In science, you generally don’t talk much to people outside your lab until your work is published (then you tell everyone who will listen). Add how science works to the list of things that you don’t understand.
Should have said, “…I’ll BET it’s high.”
Bdaman:
that is true.
Your precious emails were amongst people in one lab, not several.
As far as you know they are not done yet.
Tootie,
There’s a problem with falsifying science to get more money – other (independent) people will not be able to verify your results and eventually someone will come along and prove you wrong, totally shattering your credibility and reputation (and probably win a Nobel prize for it). A scientist’s reputation is far too valuable a commodity to risk like this.
Bdaman,
Point out one email where something unethical was discussed with someone from a different lab. Until you can do that no one has any reason to take your allegations seriously (and you’ll need to go a long way beyond that to build any credibility considering where you’re starting from.
Byron—
Man has had a much greater impact on the Earth in the past few hundred years than he did for many millennia before the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine. Humans have certainly added to the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. I doubt humans had that same kind of impact on the planet previous to the last ice age.
In modern times, people have polluted land, rivers and others waters with toxic waste and pesticides, been responsible for the extinction of some animal species, done clear cutting of forests leading to the erosion of topsoil. We’re not very good caretakers of our planet.
I doubt anything I say would sway you in any way.
I believe in taking preventive measures before it’s too late.
CO2 makes up less than 5% of the earths atmosphere.
How much is man contributing to that amount.
How much are peoples animals/cows contributing to that.
How much do all other animals contribute to that.
How much do insects such as termites contribute to that.
How bout Dolphins and whales they exhale
Anybody want yo add to the list.
Elaine,
I totally agree, I just hope it isn’t already too late. Several times I’ve made the case that reducing pollution is still the correct policy even if the climate change deniers are right. Neither Bdaman or Byron has been willing to touch that argument, presumably because they know it’s correct.
Slarti:
1961:
183,691,481 people 37.3 million cars
2009:
305,541,491 62,000,000 cars
if you look at deaths per car you get:
1961 – 973 deaths per million cars
2009 – 602 deaths per million cars
Bdaman,
Have you ever heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back? How much damage can we do to the environment before it can’t be fixed?
Slart did you know that by next week they are projecting that
2/3rds of the United States will be covered in snow. Did you see the video of Joe Bastardi from Accuweather linked above. Europe is going to receive a Siberian Blast of cold and snow.
The Lord does work in mysterious ways. Looks like so does mother nature.
Byron what you are not accounting for is the improvement of vehicle safety.
Airbags
Side impact panels
head restraint
Abs brakes
Traction Control
Speed sensors
Folding Crush design
Now get back to GW and thats not George Bush
Byron,
Thank you for the statistics – I’ll admit I expected them to be stronger, but they still show cars being about 38% safer now – and that assumes that the miles per car is the same as it was in 1961. Taking miles driven into account would probably push that 38% up some more (I’m assuming that the average driver drives more now than in 1961, but I could be wrong about that).
Slarti:
you think I want bad air and water? I don’t and I don’t think the comparison to global warming is apt.
Lead is a proven deleterious substance, CO2 is not.
If CO2 is proven to be deleterious, I will quit breathing.
Elaine:
you are right and as man becomes more technologically capable and learns new things the water and air will become cleaner and cleaner. I don’t know if you are aware but the old Soviet Union was an environmental nightmare and China is as well.
The capitalist west is clean in relation to these 2 countries.
Bdaman,
Those are what we’re talking about you twit! That’s why cars are 38% safer today than in 1961.
Byron: “You cannot say with any degree of certainty that human acitivity is the cause. There may be some small component but the earth cools and heats up with or without man.”
As Gyges so astutely pointed out earlier, nature is not industrialized. Nature may be “made possible by a grant from the people at Mobil;” but it’s not industrialized.
And what is industry but a bunch of physio-chemical systems concerned with maintaining a set equilibrium with itself as opposed to nature. Witness the smokestack.
You say human activity has no certain effect on the environment, I say I woke up to a miserable rainy New York morning and had to re-think my day dream of marveling at the ‘distilled’ water falling from the sky as I recalled what those smoke stacks in the rust belt add to said ‘distilled’ rain water.
Essentially Byron, you’re retreating from true conservatism, i.e. the kind that existed before the right allowed that 25% authoritarian mindset/lunatic fringe on the loose during the last century. You’re accusing liberals of politicizing the global warming debate when you know damn well they’re about as organized as a herd of house cats. So, to add to Gyges’ question about what scientific data would you consider objective, I ask what fiber in your conservative being has turned you into a reckless gambler. There’s not take backs here Byron. My conservative (if I am a conservative) point of view is that the root cause of all this CO2 swapping horseshit stems from deforestation; i.e. PERMANENTLY RIDDING THE WORLD OF A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CO2 SCRUBBERS. Not a conservative move; more like tossing your bankroll down on a roulette table. Yet your pattern of argumentation here places you at that roulette wheel and I’m just wondering why you’re playing this one so fast and loose.
Byron: “If you took all of the people in the world and set them down in Texas each person would have about 1,200 sq. ft. of land to call his own.”
I like the idea of ridding the world of Texas; but I’m not sure what your point is.
“I think I read somewhere once that insects and bacteria give off more CO2 than man and his industries. I just brewed some beer and the amount of CO2 given of by some yeast was tremendous.”
Seriously? Reductio ad absurdum? Please.
Stop trying to hijack this thread. We are talking Global Warming.
You and Byron should go get your cars and bump into each other to have this conversation.
Just teasin
Massive storm buries central US in snow
Strong winds created drifts as high as 15 feet (4.6 meters) as the storm dropped as much as four feet of snow (1.2 meters) in some areas, said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.
“This has been a really big season opening storm,” Slattery said.
Key word Opening it’s the first week in December and let us not forget Houston got it’s earliest snow ever.
Look at this map alot of below zero temps. WOW
http://vortex.plymouth.edu/uschill.gif
Sorry windchill
No surprise here. Few months back Fox News cited the Enquirer has having accurate reporting. I forget the specific political topic, but the Enquirer certainly has not established itself as a reputable news source, unless your searching for recent alien visitations.
Byron,
Can I dump arsenic into the water supply? Why can corporations? This is about property rights – the government is failing to protect the air and water from being poisoned by corporations. Why do you support being poisoned?
Razmataz 1, December 9, 2009 at 10:24 am
Elaine M.,
For the last twelve years, the climate has actually seen a cooling trend. …What has caused this cooling?” …
“Razmataz
When the oceans rise, more surface is exposed for evaporation. Warmer temperatures increase the amount of evaporation. More evaporation causes more rain clouds. More rain clouds causes less sunshine to penetrate. Less sunshine causes the earth to cool.”
——
I have read for more than 5 years that the catastrophic effects of global warming would be: 1)Initial rise in sea levels; 2)Ice age- mini and localized or global, extent not as yet predictable.
What’s the point? If there is ANY contribution that humanity is making to the warming trend then it needs to stop. Just because a negative end is predictable based on entirely natural causes and process’ doesn’t relieve humanity from the responsibility to mitigate any ADDED negative effect our own actions contribute. If there is ANY indication that our practices as a species MAY be a contributing factor then we owe it to posterity to stop those activities LIKELY to be contributory.
I personally believe the conventional scientific wisdom that humanity is a major factor in the warming trend in all of its many and varied manifestations so I’m on board with all changes necessary. That others may believe that changes are happening but hesitate to act because the actual extent of causation by our actions are not fully and exhaustively known and refuse to act to minimize our footprints, carbon and others, seems irresponsible IMO. Any actions that mitigate the magnitude of climate change is a winner in the long run.
Cletus,
I don’t know, the Enquirer is probably more accurate than Fox News…
Here’s a great examination on some of the “data” from the sacred text:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/
This is just one sites of course. I’m totally sure the books are cooked at only one site. The rest of the data is still good. Politicians and the public can’t be THAT gullible.
bdaman/Slarti:
how much of the safety equipment you mentioned has it’s genesis in a government regulation?
the point I was trying to make is how much can government actually do to protect society and how much does it cost and are the results worth the cost? Same with global warming.
If you spend, say, an additional 5,000 dollars on every car to save 23,000 lives (1961 deaths normalized to 2009) is it worth the cost? Obviously if you died it would be worth it. But did all of that money need to be spent or is there one particular safety device that would have saved those people for a 1,000 dollars.
Before you spend billions and billions of dollars I think we need to figure out if GW is actually taking place and if it is, what gives us the most bang for our buck. Do we need to spend billions and billions or would a few 100 million do the trick.
Byron I knew thats what you were talkin about. It’s not so much the Government as it was the Institute for Highway Safety. The free market drove the industry to produce safer cars.
bOB Esq:
Why do we need to act right this very minuet? There is an honest difference in opinion.
The government forced them to produce cleaner emmisions. The two fold part of the question is that they could of cared a less about fuel efficency.
Here’s another one (i.e.-raw data versus “adjusted data”):
http://thedogatemydata.blogspot.com/2009/12/raw-v-adjusted-ghcn-data.html
Bob Esq:
“And what is industry but a bunch of physio-chemical systems concerned with maintaining a set equilibrium with itself as opposed to nature. Witness the smokestack.”
Industry is trying to reduce it’s energy costs so that it can be more profitable. It is not trying to maintain equilibrium (0 sum profit) it is trying to reduce energy costs. They do this by capturing waste heat and recycling it. There is a physical limit on efficiency but the less energy used the more profitable.
As I said above the more technological advancements the cleaner the planet. If you are going to do something with GW you better make darn sure you aren’t going to screw something else up, the law of unanticipated consequences.
Byron,
Who protects me from having arsenic dumped into my drinking water? (For many Americans and many more people worldwide, the answer is “no one”.)Who should be protecting me from having arsenic dumped into my drinking water? I am against pollution. I’ve made my case that carbon reduction is desirable EVEN IF THE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS ARE CORRECT. No one has provided a counter argument. You’ve said that you hold yourself to higher standards than OSHA (which is admirable), but do you believe that everyone in your position does the same? If not, don’t we want OSHA around to enforce some minimum standard? And if that minimum standard isn’t good enough, shouldn’t we raise it instead of getting rid of it?
As an interesting aside on vehicle safety: Did you know that GM invented anti-lock brakes? (along with a lot of other innovations in the industry) but they didn’t think that they could make money putting them on cars, so they didn’t put the technology into cars. Fortunately, Mercedes-Benz felt differently. Is this the American capitalism that you think is so wonderful that it will fix everything if we only let it be?
I think we should stop all rockets for satellites and stop all space exploration. Stop test firing missiles. The burning of rocket fuel must contribute to global warming.
Oh and all guns.
Byron,
You said:
“Industry is trying to reduce it’s energy costs so that it can be more profitable.”
What happens when we artificially suppress a cost? Industry acts in an inappropriate way. If there is no cost to dumping arsenic in the water and a profit can be made by doing it (both true), industry is going to dump, baby dump. If there is a cost to polluting, then industry will correctly account for it AND work to eliminate it in order to maximize profits. Industry cleans itself up, the environment is protected (which I believe is held in trust by the government for the people), and the government gets a short term boost of cash (which could be used to, say, pay down the debt). In exactly what way is a tax on pollution a bad thing?
Slarti:
maybe if they had put anti-lock brakes on their cars they would not be owned by Uncle Sam.
Just because a couple of executives are stupid is not an indictment of capitalism. It is an indictment of stupid executives.
Even Marx gave credit to capitalism in the manifesto saying that it had done the most for mankind in a short period of time. He was right it did and it is still doing so.
Which goes to a pet peeve of mine, namely that most executives could be easily replaced but they have the Board of Directors thinking they walk on water. Some do most don’t and are not worth their multi-million dollar salaries.
Note to Boards of Directors, make sure you are getting your monies worth before agreeing on a salary.
Slarti:
you assume that all companies are run by unethical people, they are not.
Slarti:
“and the government gets a short term boost of cash (which could be used to, say, pay down the debt). In exactly what way is a tax on pollution a bad thing?”
just that government would not use the money to pay down the debt. Think 200 billion TARP money that is going to be spent in violation of the TARP law.
You think the private sector is corrupt I think government is corrupt. Wendy’s cant take my liberty but governments can and do.
bdaman:
is that you?
Byron,
I in no way assume that all companies are run by unethical people (I do, however, assume that SOME companies are run by unethical people). I see that you still have no answer to my question about why taxing pollution is bad. I’d have more respect for you free market guys if you actually understood capitalism a little. The free market is amoral. It will only behave in a moral fashion if EVERY player acts morally (I think you will agree that this isn’t going to happen) or if morality is imposed from without (i.e. by the big, bad government). The government has moral obligations (i.e. to protect citizen’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness). Therefore the government has an obligation (indeed, a DUTY) to impose morality on corporations in defense of its citizen’s rights. You, sir, are taking an immoral, unethical, and dysfunctional point of view. If you ever wonder why some people here so passionately argue against you, this might be why. You don’t seem to believe in a vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy everything American like Bdaman, so why do you support this position? And if you do oppose taxes on pollution, then why can’t you rebut my arguments? If I so badly misunderstand things, then attacking my arguments should be child’s play.
And now you know. SHHHHHH don’t tell all your friends, only tell the closest ones.
Byron,
This will (probably) be my last post tonight, but I’ll be back tomorrow if you miss me.
You said:
“You think the private sector is corrupt I think government is corrupt. Wendy’s cant take my liberty but governments can and do.”
No, I think the private sector is amoral. I certainly wouldn’t deny that there is corruption in the government, although I don’t believe that it is totally corrupt – the question is, what has/is corrupting government? The answer is: the private sector. The private sector acts amorally to increase profits by exerting influence on government (which corrupts it). If we break the private sector’s influence on government, then the system will work (at the very least it will work much better than it does now). Why is the status quo better? (Especially when the status quo is unsustainable.)
I cannot understand why I watched the *Whole* Dopen Video above…
Blouise at 1, December 9, 2009 at 5:54 pm. re: Personal actions to conserve energy.
Call me simple but this is exactly the frame of mind that needs to be encouraged. There are simple strategies that every one of us can take to control our own energy footprint and it will put money in our own pockets. Good on you Blouise.
—
Byron at 1, December 9, 2009 at 7:45 pm
bOB Esq:
Why do we need to act right this very minuet? There is an honest difference in opinion.
—
Byron, you are dancing with the devil, in the cold moonlight. (BIL will get the allusion.)
—————————–
I have a ‘wonder’ and some personal observations. I wonder if any of the climate change deniers have as part of their lives spending time outdoors on a regular and reoccurring basis? I do. I see the ‘climate change’ as it affects my little plot of land and the things planted on and living on it. It was bare when I moved here so I have spent a lot of time over the last 27 years planting and cultivating it to be compatible with the local environment and beneficial to local wildlife. That was my starting point. It’s 1/2 acre, nothing in terms of the kind of land masses we generally envision when we talk about climate change but as a thumbnail it may be valid.
Over the last 5-6 years the warm/cool cycles that were routine and consistent the first 18-20 years I lived here have been changing to the point that almost every one of my trees is dying because the winters are no longer cold enough for long enough to kill boring insects and diseases that invade them as a matter of course. This year the seasonal beginnings and transitions that were normally obvious to me (but increasingly out of their place in time and subject to unusual reversals and stall-outs) disappeared entirely as the warming/cooling – dry/wet spells entered a pattern that I can only describe as destructively chaotic. The effects of the last several years of my close scrutiny of my plants (Veges, trees, bushes, flowers, mosses and likens.) the bird population and even insects (I like bugs and like to watch and follow the life cycle of ‘my’ bugs) has been destructive to the point of becoming devastating. Literally devastating.
5-6 years:
I’m seeing new bugs, new bird species attracted to the new bugs with large fluctuations in the existing populations;
This year:
Trees (a type of Japanese cold-bearing plum) that were sold and behaved as decorative trees ‘tricked’ into producing THOUSANDS of plums each instead of the 1-2 hundred each normally produced each year (Broke every major limb on every tree. Killed them all.);
All other trees obviously ill enough (even with yearly maintenance) that I hired an arborist to give me a prognosis. “Start replacing them now…3 years.”
All fruiting bushes and trees dropping their leaves in early AUGUST and killing a 15 year accumulation of mosses on the rocks placed near and normally shaded kept moist by them;
Fruit production from all fruiting bushes virtually non-existent;
Seed production on about half the flower species planted to attract butterflies failed.
This was a ecological ‘crash’. I observed this in a small environment that had done well, flourished in fact, for almost 20-21 years. It was a direct result of changes in the (micro) climate in my immediate locale. It took about 6 years to reach this point.
WTF! SOMETHING is going on. I live in South Saint Louis County. That’s Missouri. I live in a small part of the breadbasket of the country and if my little – tiny, minuscule, infinitesimal really – bit of the Midwest ecosystem is reflective of greater and long lasting change we here in the Midwest/Prairie states are in serious trouble for the future. I see it right here; don’t the deniers ever get out of their offices or homes?
It dont’t matta FFLEO, why ah 100 years from now, we all gonna be dust anyways, that is unless there’s some type-a de-vine entervention. No what I mean, pot-ner, gotcha Vern
you take care now, ya hear.
Right there with you, FFLEO…
lottakatz,
A friend of mine pointed out that you can get a pretty good idea of global warming by looking at the recommended planting locations from the seed companies and how they’ve changed. They clearly believe that climate change is happening (they’re betting their businesses on it anyway). Thanks for the empirical evidence.
Twenty seben years bees a mighty long time, bout a third if ya make it ta eighty. But ya see, what you think is an eternity aint but a small little tick on a hound dogs ass.
Earth been around a long long time. Question is, in the next twenty seben if ya see it all comeback then what ya gone say.
Right now you probly feelin like them poor peeple back in the GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL, it only lasted for bout ten year or so. But don’t worry it all came back.
Slarti:
“You, sir, are taking an immoral, unethical, and dysfunctional point of view.”
Because I believe in free markets and free people?
Why is government the answer to everything? Do you think government is any more ethical than the market? I know you and Buddha and Mike S and Mike A and Gyges are very smart people but you think government is moral and industry is not. What is the difference? They are both only made up of individuals with human failings.
Why do you give government a higher moral standing than markets? Do you think that government workers are super-moral agents only doing good? That they can only do good because profit is not their motive?
I don’t think profits are evil. If it wasn’t for profit we would be living in mud huts gathering nuts and berries with a life expectancy of 35.
Do you actually think I want bad air and water, harmful chemicals in peoples food, unsafe cars, workers being killed on job sites? Or that any of my free market friends want those same things?
We want exactly what you want a safe, friendly world with global prosperity and individual freedom. We just think the evidence doesn’t give a ringing endorsement to government fixing much of anything. And you feel the same way about free markets, which aren’t really free. But you don’t believe the problem is a mixed economy, you think it is the lack of regulations that causes the harm. Me and my brothers think it is the mixture that is harmful and a cause for the trouble you see.
Maybe there is middle ground, Aristotle’s “Golden Mean”, but I doubt it because each side is so sure they are right.
I cant rebut your argument, our epistemologies are different. And that, I think is why people who believe in government and people who believe in free markets will never see eye to eye on anything. My world is green, your world is blue and neither one of us can see yellow.
Speakin of the GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL,
was that Global Warmin or Climate Change
I’m still tryin ta figur that one out
Byron be careful on your name callin, these peeple got that down pat.
Speakin of Pat, how she doin, I herd them children of hers turnt out mighty fine.
Byron: “Industry is trying to reduce it’s energy costs so that it can be more profitable. It is not trying to maintain equilibrium (0 sum profit) it is trying to reduce energy costs. They do this by capturing waste heat and recycling it. There is a physical limit on efficiency but the less energy used the more profitable.”
Byron, we were discussing man’s activities as they affect nature; not economics. Why twist the metaphor as you did other than as an expression that you don’t want to engage the argument?
Byron: “As I said above the more technological advancements the cleaner the planet.”
Ah yes, the similarities between nuclear waste and Irish Spring soap is astounding.
“If you are going to do something with GW you better make darn sure you aren’t going to screw something else up, the law of unanticipated consequences.”
Seems to me that damn near all of the “somethings” proposed by people who are playing this more conservatively than ‘You’ are predicated upon a ‘decrease the impact’ design.
You don’t like this topic; do you Byron?
lottakatz: “Byron, you are dancing with the devil, in the cold moonlight. (BIL will get the allusion.)”
lottakatz,
That was a twist on Byron’s ‘minuet’ with global warming and not an allusion to me being an agent of Satan; right?
Lottakatz:
it’s that friggen Bush brewery.
Good thoughts and good eye. I live in Virginia and it is getting colder. When I first came here in 1986 the winters started in December with most of the snow in late December or January and February. Once in awhile it would snow in April and summer started in early May or late April.
It has been getting more moisture as well and summer isnt starting until the end of May or the first part of June.
There are weather patterns for different parts of the country. A few years ago we had a drought but the rest of the country had more water than they knew what to do with. I dont think you can extrapolate a local change to an overall global change. There are too many factors at play.
I am not denying that earth’s climate changes, I just want to make sure we can actually do something about it before we spend billions and billions.
Bob Esq:
I like this topic just fine.
“Byron, we were discussing man’s activities as they affect nature; not economics. Why twist the metaphor as you did other than as an expression that you don’t want to engage the argument?”
not evading anything, just pointing out that technological improvements are better for the environment. And that wealthy countries are typically cleaner than poor countries. I think that we can extrapolate and suggest that a very advanced economy would probably be cleaner than ours.
Bdaman 1, December 9, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Twenty seben years bees a mighty long time, bout a third if ya make it ta eighty. But ya see, what you think is an eternity aint but a small little tick on a hound dogs ass.
*****
I know that- bugs eye view, not a birds eye view. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or is divorced from greater patterns. What caused it is obvious to me: increasingly disorganized seasons culminating in this year when discernible seasonal changes were virtually non-existent in my little corner of paradise. The question is what is our part in it and what can/should we do to about it?
———————–
Bdaman: Earth been around a long long time. Question is, in the next twenty seben if ya see it all comeback then what ya gone say.
Different posting: Bdaman: It dont’t matta FFLEO, why ah 100 years from now, we all gonna be dust anyways, that is unless there’s some type-a de-vine entervention.
*****
Ask me again in 27 years, though you shouldn’t hold your breath, I’ll most likely be dead of old age/disease by then. I will mercifully escape the climate change horror if blind faith and a lack of planning doesn’t work. I know that just because my own universe ends does not mean that everyone elses will and that knowledge acts to motivate my concern and many of my actions. It’s the difference between a moral (conservative) position on acting in ways that affect the future and amorality IMO. This is America, you get to pick and advocate for your side. God bless America.
———————–
Bdaman: Right now you probly feelin like them poor peeple back in the GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL, it only lasted for bout ten year or so. But don’t worry it all came back.
*****
You do know that the dust bowl horrors were a combination of a prolonged drought and the total misapplication of conventional tilling to a prairie environment over many years. You do know that? You do know that your question is it’s own indictment of ignorant land use practices don’t you?
No, It didn’t ‘all come back’. The millions of tons of topsoil (most precious resource on earth) that was carried away on the wind didn’t come back.
“just pointing out that technological improvements are better for the environment”
Except for Love Canal.
And Chernobyl.
And Bophal.
Technology does a lot of things Byron. Improving the environment isn’t one of them as a general rule. There are some things to be certain, like oil spill containment systems. The neglects the obvious point that we wouldn’t need this “good for the environment” if we hadn’t been letting drunks pilot inadequately hulled ships to transport oil, but what the Hell! It’s cheaper that way. Sure, we could also make new technology to help improve the environment like carbon scrubbers. Can’t exactly get those at Ace Hardware at the moment. Seems like a lot of corporations are really interested in keeping us on the Oil Teet and are fighting alternative energy – unless they can figure out how to screw us for that first too.
Technology gives us a higher quality of life but that quality comes at a price. It has since the first wheels dried out a lowland with ruts, since the first food creature was hunted to extinction with an atl or a bow or a sling. Technology impacts the environment. We have to try REAL HARD to make not be a negative impact. We also fail miserable at it. We always have as a species. We won’t always continue though. This ride has a stop and the indications we are not going to be successful in holding on a gull eight seconds. Unless you count success as living in a world where a river could EVER catch on fire ANYWHERE. Cleveland. 1969.
Do you have any idea how toxic electronics are? Tin. Lead. Antimony. Mercury. Arsenic. Silicon. All required to build modern circuitry. All toxic to humans. Very. And don’t get me wrong. A properly built reactor is a thing of beauty. Does not change one damn bit that they produce radioactive waste that you can’t exactly put in Hefty and leave in a ditch. Not like that hasn’t stopped industry from trying shit like that. Saves money don’t you know.
Ask the Aztec about this topic. They built highly advanced pyramids. Very nice technology. Made the contemporaneous European builders look like chumps. They built them over all their arable land. The price they paid was starvation. Same with the Nazca. New studies show that arid salt pan they drew giant line drawings on used to be a vibrant forest with trees that kept the salinity of the soil in check and could support agriculture and robust fauna. Now it’s a desert.
Technology is a lot of things. It’s a destructive process though. And you should know better than this. You are speaking as if products appear like magic and then the trash just goes away to Happy Fun Trash Land. You are speaking as if you are an engineer who has never been to a job site too.
That timber used to be a forest and what’s wasted in the process of construction ends up as trash or burnt, neither of which are “good for the environment”.
That was a very ill thought out statement. Not even close to correct.
Bob,Esq: …dancing with the devil, in the pale moonlight …That was a twist on Byron’s ‘minuet’ with global warming and not an allusion to me being an agent of Satan; right?
—-
Well BobE, ARE you SATAN?
No. It wasn’t about you being Satan but the line regarding dancing with the devil in the cold moonlight was the Jokers line from a Batman movie and I couldn’t resist seeing the word ‘minuet’ used. I have no authority to comment on anyones spelling but I just couldn’t restrain myself.
Byron–
Sorry to be so slow in responding to you. I needed to take a break!
You wrote: “I don’t know if you are aware but the old Soviet Union was an environmental nightmare and China is as well.”
I am especially well aware of the pollution problem in China. Our country has exported tons and tons of electronic scrap to that country.
My husband was a co-founder of three electronics recycling companies. He was interviewed on Maryland Public Television in 2000 regarding the need to recycle computers. He was also interviewed by Jim Puckett of the the Basel Action Network (BAN) for a report prepared by BAN and and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) in 2002 titled “Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia.” My husband provided Puckett with information about the amount of scrap/E-waste from the US being exported to Asia. (My husband is noted in the report’s footnotes.)
Excerpt from Exporting Harm”
Electronic waste or E-waste is the most rapidly growing waste problem in the world. It is a crisis not only of quantity but also a crisis born from toxic ingredients – such as the lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated flame retardants that pose both an occupational and environmental health threat. But to date, industry, government and consumers have only
taken small steps to deal with this looming problem. This report reveals one of the primary reasons why action to date in the United States has been woefully inadequate. Rather than
having to face the problem squarely, the United States and other rich economies that use most of the world’s electronic products and generate most of the E-Waste, have made use of a convenient, and until now, hidden escape valve – exporting the E-waste crisis to the developing countries of Asia.
http://www.ban.org/E-waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdf
That should say “hold on the bull” although I suspect holding on to ride a gull for that time period would be difficult as well.
Elaine:
that does not sound very good. But then that doesn’t surprise me, we don’t drill for oil in most of our backyard either. So I suppose it makes sense. Don’t soil your nest.
Not exactly ethical.
Buddha:
things are cleaner today because of better technologies. Granted some of that is the EPA pushing industry but the other part is improved technology.
This entire thread has been very thought provoking, thank you all for an interesting conversation.
BobE, here’s the link to the scene- I don’t think the thread will take an embed at this point.
————————-
Slartibartfast, changes in planting recommendations: I never bother to check those guides anymore because they (the old ones) weren’t working for me for a few years now. I’ll check them again with a more critical eye when I order my seeds to see if I can spot the changes. Thanks.
————————-
Byron, I know there are different, broadly predictable climate expectations for different regions and that a change in one area- specially when you talk about something like your 1/2 acre kingdom- can be extrapolated to prove a global trend. If you add up all of the anomalies happening everywhere I would think 99% of people could agree that something is happening. I’m just saying that whatever is it’s noticeable at a scale that doesn’t require a billion dollar scientific study or a trek to a glacier to monitor.
lottakatz: “Well BobE, ARE you SATAN?”
I reject Lord Scalia in every form.
Byron–
Folks on the left are just as much to blame as folks on the right when it comes to NIMBY.
P.S.
This is the ninth anniversary of the day Scalia & cadre stabbed the constitution in the back:
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/Supreme_Court/orders/2000/00-949.html
Vincent Bugliosi: “In yet another piece of incriminating circumstantial evidence, Scalia, in granting Bush’s application for the stay, wrote that “the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner [Bush] has a substantial probability of success.” But Antonin, why would you believe this when neither side had submitted written briefs yet (they were due the following day, Sunday, by 4 pm), nor had there even been oral arguments (set for 11 am on Monday)? It wouldn’t be because you had already made up your mind on what you were determined to do, come hell or high water, would it? Antonin, take it from an experienced prosecutor–you’re as guilty as sin. In my prosecutorial days, I’ve had some worthy opponents. You wouldn’t be one of them. Your guilt is so obvious that if I thought more of you I’d feel constrained to blush for you.”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010205/bugliosi/single
Slartibartfast
Do you think that the possibility of ruining his reputation stopped Tiger Woods from behaving badly?
I don’t think that scientists are necessarily any more worried about ruined reputations than golf stars. For some, the cult-like obsession about the earth and a seeming hatred of the human race pushes them to shoe-horn their facts into their pre-determined conclusions.
Many scientists also live in obscurity, plodding away, perhaps unappreciated by the world. And I’m afraid some might do anything to get attention or funds.
Remember the recent tragic story of the distinguished scientist who fudged the data about stem cell research? I’ve provided a link below for you if you like. There are many of these kinds of stories.
The whole culture in America was changed in the 60s based on the fraudulent research of Alfred Kinsey. Your proposal seems to simplify human nature too much as it seems to presume that scientists are not similarly susceptible to human emotions like we are because they deal with things logical.
I saw an interview this evening with Anderson Cooper, I believe, where the fellow who was spoken about badly in the “Climate-Gate” emails said even the SOFTWARE codes used for collecting the data (or for the climate models) was intentionally shoddy and responsible for yielding some these absurd predictions and results.
For some scientists the absolute power they derive from the thought of controlling the whole world is far too tempting to walk away from. And since the perpetrators of any false predictions will be running the show, their reputations may never be “destroyed” until they are long gone from this earth. In other words, the lunatics will be running the asylum. The status of their reputation will be irrelevant for a very long time because they control the information.
Following the money is just the easiest way to see what it going on. It is a sort of radioactive dye that lets us see the flow of the life-blood within the structure.
Human nature is such that when absolute power is laid at your feet, common sense and integrity are generally thrown overboard.
I think we give scientists too much slack for not being as flawed and subject to bad characteristics as the rest of us.
And I think it is extremely dangerous to put them on a pedestal.
Story of Hwang Woo Suk (stem cell scandal)
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/hwang_woo_suk/index.html
Info on Study of Dishonest Scientists and Researchers
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6425036.ece
lottakatz
Was just trying to bring a little humor into the party.
Allow me to ask you, which came first?
Prolonged drought or the total misapplication of conventional tilling. Thats right, you said combination of, but, had there been no drought the soil would of been suitable for tilling.
Although the plains was under severe drought, I often wonder if it was Fludden in Texas as our beloved Jimmy Ray use to sing about. Here today, the sky is cryin and I can see the tears rollin down the street. I wish you the best, it looks like it’s gonna be a long winter for you folks in Missoura, but before ya know, you’ll be back in the field tendin to all of Gods little creation. You take care now, ya hear.
bdaman:
I can tell you are of mixed race, once day chatten it up like a brother, the next drawlin like a Georgia cracker. You are trilingual.
Obama told some congressmen at a “bi-partisan” White House meeting “republicans were scaring the electorate”. He is right, republicans are scarring me because they are not opposing his hair/lame brained schemes hard enough.
Lottakatz:
Minuet/minute, I am glad you were able to have a laugh over that.
Bob Esq is certainly not the devil. But he does give you a “devil” of a time because of his ability to apply logic to a particular topic.
Dust bowl.
Caused by poor soil practices (not rotating crops etc) in farming combined with a drought. THE DUST BOWL WAS MAN MADE ECOLOGICAL DISASTER. Not all disasters are caused by global warming. Love Canal was a man made ecological disaster. Nothing to do with global warming. Thanks for brining up an example that shows what a total distortionist propaganda tool you are and that we as a species are capable of trying to kill ourselves in multiple ways.
Again, you can’t even get the basics right, bdacherrypicker.
Also: In re “They hate me and I love it”
You are assuming again. I dislike you intensely. I said so before and I’ll gladly say so again. You’re a bad person with bad ideas and bad intentions. If you showed up in my yard? I’d turn the dogs on you. Not because I hate or even fear (snicker) you, but simply because I don’t let vermin in the yard. I don’t care about you enough to hate you. You’re not that good at your job of ruining the world for the rest of us to merit that emotional response. Your buddy Jim Byrne was better at your little lying game than you are and he’s not important enough to hate either. I save real hatred for people like your boss Cheney – a traitor who deserves to be shot on live television. Or perhaps life in the electric chair. Also on live television. The people I actually hate I can count on my fingers. You really don’t want to be on that list. You may think you do, but thinking isn’t your strong suit. But you? I could give a popcorn fart about you so, speaking for myself, if you think I hate you? You really should get over yourself. You’re simply not important enough to hate. Hatred is an active response. Disdain is passive. You’re a symptom, not the illness. Just a nasty side effect of fascism. See, I hate the illness. You’re just an itch – annoying but ultimately harmless effects of the disease actually killing America and the Constitution.
But you are not important enough or dangerous enough to merit hatred, bdaperpetuallymarginalized. Disdain and repulsion at your ignorance and bigotry, most certainly. To be singled out as a negative example and cautionary tale for sure. But hatred?
You’re a legend in your own mind, sport.
See ya around, Mr. Copy Paste Bigot.
Buddha:
“Or perhaps life in the electric chair.”
low voltage or is it wattage, I never get those straight.
Buddha:
do you have a lexicon of satirical biting prose?
Geoffrey Chaucer has nothing on you.
Byron,
It’s the amperage that kills you. Voltage (up to a point) is harmless if there aren’t enough amps to shut down your heart or brain. Personally for him a trickle charger would the most appropriate. Something that would cause a lot of pain but slow to kill. Only fitting for the fascist driver of torture as an American value.
Byron,
No templates. It’s just a gift.
lol Well, it’s a gift that gives to some more than others, but hey, life isn’t fair.
Byron
I can tell you are of mixed race, once day chatten it up like a brother, the next drawlin like a Georgia cracker. You are trilingual.
You have heard, I am the grey rider.
You know dyin aint so hard for men like you and me, it’s the livin that’s hard, when all you’ve ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well, I came here to give you either one, or get either one from you.
I came here so you would know that my word of death is true, and therefore my word of life is also then true.
The democrats post here the liberals post here and so will the trolls. Now I will only hunt and distort the facts same as the others do. Every election cycle when the grass turns green and the other side goes North you can rest here in peace. They can butcher some of our politicians and jerk beef with them.
The sign of the troll will be on my lodge, thats my word of life. My word of death are here in my pistols and in your rifles and I’m here for either one.
These things I say, you say we already have, Thats true. I aint promisin you nothin extra. I’m just givin them crap and they’re just givin me crap.
It’s sad that governments cheat with the speak of double tounge. There is iron in my words of death for all trolls to see, and so there is iron in my words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron, it must come from trolls. The words of polar bears also carry this iron, of life and death.
It is good that warriors such as we meet, in the struggle of life or, death.
Elaine this is for you.
Bdaman:
isnt that from Jeremiah Johnson? or is it a Man called Horse?
quoting the Indians in relation to GW very interesting. Are you making some sort of statement?
The Outlaw Troll Bdaman
Bdaman:
If I could talk to you in person, I would tell you that you are full of shit and I would tell you why. And you would believe me when I tell you and you would know my words were true. Your words are false and not attainable, that is why I think you are full of shit. When I told you why they are not attainable you would believe me and know my words were true.
here is my web address so I can tell you to your face why your words are false.
priceengineersinc_com
Byron this was not intended as a personal Attack against you. I was referencing you as to not pick out any others. I feel your views are somewhat the same as mine. If you still would like to discuss anything I can set up a seperate e-mail account so let me know. That way If things do not work out well, then I won’t have to worry about that account.
going to your website now to take a look.
Did you want me to call you?
Just put my phone on charge give me a bit and I’ll call you.
Bdaman or email me, whichever you prefer.
No I’ll call I really hate e-mail and text. Hang in there I have to go outside to talk.
Buddha: “It’s the amperage that kills you. Voltage (up to a point) is harmless if there aren’t enough amps to shut down your heart or brain.”
Not correct.
Sufficient amps (current) & insufficient voltage (pressure): I can put jumper cables on a fresh battery (with 600 cold crank amps) and take the other ends and touch them to my face without getting a shock because 12 volts is not enough to break through the insulation provided by the skin. That requires approximately 60 volts.
insufficient amps (current) & (more than) sufficient voltage (pressure): Witness the Tesla Coil.
P=IE Power = Amps x Volts
Bob, no it is you that is wrong, Buddah never is, you should know that.
Bob,
I fail to see what impedance has to do with it amperage. The voltage and the resistance of the path through the body determine the current. A current with less than a 100 mA is going to be uncomfortable but not per se life threatening. Anything over 100mA and you’re looking at effects that disruptions of your heartbeat or even cause your heart to seize. That’s not to mention the natty burns you’d be sporting. This is why stun guns can have stupid voltages, to help overcome any insulation, but most have less than 5mA.
“do with it. The voltage”
Skin Resistance
The voltage necessary for electrocution depends on the current through the body and the duration of the current. Using Ohm’s law, VOLTAGE = Current × Resistance, we see that the current drawn depends on the resistance of the body. The resistance of our skin varies from person to person and fluctuates between different times of day. In general, dry skin is a poor conductor that may have a resistance of around 100,000 Ω, while broken or wet skin may have a resistance of around 1,000 Ω[4].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock
Bob Esq:
that is all greek to me:)
Don’t worry about it, just know Buddah’s right and everybody else is wrong.
There are two types of people in this world, Buddah, and people who wish they could be him.
How did we go from 120% to 120 volts?
Death by electrocution or improper blood flow is the result of four factors Voltage, Amperage, Resistance, and Frequency.
We all know about why the electrocity killed the person whose body is burnt and smoking, so let’s look at the other stuff.
Impedance, the extension of resistance to A/C power, is a variable. The amount of current which passes through a body depends on the ratio of the voltage of the electricity to the resistance of your body. The smaller the resistance (or the larger the voltage), the more current passes through the body. A wet body has less resistance than a dry body, but is not necessarily more susceptible to death by electrocution. The body’s electrolytes can have a much greater effect. Those with flu-like symptoms generally have less resistance. If you’re feeling ill, it’s not a good time to play with electricity.
Most people are unaware the 60~ A/C power is the best frequency to stop the human heart. 50~ as used in Europe is not as efficient for stopping the heart, but does a better job at causing the heart to fibrillate.(uncontrollable twitching)
The most dangerous range of currents is from 0.1 to about 0.2 amps. Currents in this range can cause death by initiating fibrillation of the heart, which stops the regular flow of blood to the rest of the body. The human body is not very good at recovering from fibrillation on its own. This can result in death. Currents much above 0.1 amp DO NOT result in fibrillation and instead stop the heart completely. If the duration of the current is short, the heart will usually start to beat by itself after the current is removed.
The path of current through a body also determines the magnitude of the effect. Current entering a body wants to travel a path of least resistance and exit through the part of the body touching the ground. Because the heart is on the left side of the body, touching a live wire with your left hand means that the shortest path to the ground involves passing through your heart. If current travels through the right side of the body, the current is less likely to affect the heart. (Leave the electrical work for the right-handed people.)
All I said was that current does not kill without sufficient voltage and vice versa. Thus the reason a car battery, capable of TURNING OVER AN ENGINE, cannot kill you if you touch the terminals (ends of jumper cables) to your face. 12 volts ain’t enough voltage to get the current through.
Furthermore, all voltage and no current is equally innocuous.
Hasn’t anyone ever scared the shit out of someone with the jumper cable trick? It’s hilarious.
Byron: “that is all greek to me:)”
I’m sure it is.
BobEsq:
I was commenting on the Omega symbol, if I remember correctly it stands for Ohms = Voltage/Amps or some such thing. It has been over 20 years since I took circuits. And I dont use it. When I need to wire my house or kill someone with electricity, I call a professional electrician.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/when-120-makes-sense-fox-friends-defends-poll-display/#more-55071
Byron,
Yeah, but the thing about physics is it’s intuitive; mathematical confirmations of things you’d been observing since you were a kid. Maybe not so much the electro-magnetic or the lens formulas, but Newtonian physics? I’m pretty sure I learned the lessons of angular velocity and angular momentum with my attempts to build high structures with wooden building blocks. It always seemed to hurt more the further away I was from the structure when it fell on my head. lol
You know, having seen your web page this morning, I think I have a greater understanding as to why you couldn’t just laugh off those laws of physics that just happened to be deemed in abeyance on 9/11/01 (and through February of 2002 if you include the molten metal and the violation of such laws as thermal equilibrium.)
I think it would take me about six months to a year to get myself back up to speed with college level Physics I & II and three levels of Calculus just to approach your understanding of the topics; but my intuition and comprehension of the basics have served me well so far.
Just Sayin: “Don’t worry about it, just know Buddah’s right and everybody else is wrong.
There are two types of people in this world, Buddah, and people who wish they could be him.”
Sorry, I like Buddha. I’m just F’n with him in more of a correcting his grammar just to piss him off kind of way.
Gretchen Carlson is an enigma, I think she must have either studied something easy at Stanford or she is playing the part of dumb blond as Stewart says.
Bob, Buddha, Byron, etc.
I was going to weight in on the electrocution issue, but Medic!! did a better job of clarifying things (and adding additional information) than I could have, so I’ll just get to answering Byron’s post from last night. Just to emphasize, if a current on the order of 100 milliamps goes through your heart, it will disrupt the electrical system which makes your heart beat (which is fascinating, by the way) and stands a good chance of killing you.
Byron,
First off, I do not think that word means what you think it means…
e⋅pis⋅te⋅mol⋅o⋅gy [i-pis-tuh-mol-uh-jee] –noun
a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.
Origin: 1855–60; < Gk epistm(ē) knowledge + -o- + -logy
You said:
"I cant rebut your argument, our epistemologies are different. And that, I think is why people who believe in government and people who believe in free markets will never see eye to eye on anything. My world is green, your world is blue and neither one of us can see yellow."
I have to disagree with you here, the only condition which precludes debate is if you agree with me (which I'm pretty sure isn't happening
). If you don't agree with my conclusion (taxing companies who pollute is an appropriate policy from both a pragmatic -it's an effective way to produce a result – and a moral – the result produced is a desirable one – point of view) then there are several options available to you:
1) Attack my premises – there is no (or very little) cost for companies to pollute and companies can increase profits if they pollute. (Don't suggest you try this one, I'm on very solid ground here.)
2) Refute my argument – in light of (1), taxing corporate pollution is an effective policy for producing results (eliminating pollution, forcing the development of green technology, and providing a short-term income stream) and these results are desirable and appropriate public policy goals (I said that government, in fact, has a moral obligation to pursue this policy). There is a lot of ground here on which you may attack me (which will result in a response from me and hopefully a spirited debate in which forces both of use to sharpen our arguments and gain a better understanding of each other's positions – and it will be fun, too (at least I'm enough of a geek to think so)).
3) Leave me unopposed on the field of battle – a tacit admission that I am correct (this is what you seem to want to do and it's certainly your right to do so).
So let me know which option you'd care to take (or point out another option which I didn't consider). I would prefer it if you chose option 2 – I don't come to this blog to preach to the choir, I came looking for vigorous debate with people who have honest disagreements with me and are willing to engage rationally (well, that and to debunk the birthers – thanks Vince!). In any case, I've enjoyed our interaction so far and hope to continue it, thanks.
Tootie,
I'm preparing a response to your comment from last night, but this is already quite a long post, so I'll post it separately. And fair warning: As you will see, you touched a nerve with me and I strongly disagree with some of your statements on issues which are very personal to me. I mean you no disrespect and apologize in advance if I go over the top a bit.
Bob Esq:
“I think it would take me about six months to a year to get myself back up to speed with college level Physics I & II and three levels of Calculus just to approach your understanding of the topics; but my intuition and comprehension of the basics have served me well so far.”
I need to go back and review myself, most of what I do is statics and strength of materials. Pretty simple stuff really. F=ma can be applied only so many ways.
We never did finish our discussion on the Towers. I saw a couple of history channel programs that had a pro/con set-up. Rather interesting. The people that thought the towers had been destroyed by planes set up all of these field experiments and the cons dissected them and gave their thoughts as to why they thought the experiment did or did not hold water.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure the pros had proven their points, but I also thought the cons had not really debunked the experiments. I came away thinking what I thought before. It might be possible that it was controlled demolition but highly unlikely.
There was just too much destruction of the main support members and the additional thermal stresses in the remaining steel put to much stress in those members leading to the collapse.
I know you don’t think so, but my understanding of building systems leads me to that conclusion. I may be guilty of group think as well.
Byron: “There was just too much destruction of the main support members and the additional thermal stresses in the remaining steel put to much stress in those members leading to the collapse.
I know you don’t think so, but my understanding of building systems leads me to that conclusion. I may be guilty of group think as well.”
Per the History channel and others like it, I no longer see them as ‘educational’ — not since they’ve been showcasing series about UFO’s and haunted houses, etc., etc.
Per the Towers, you may want to investigate it for yourself. With 47 vertical steel columns at the core of the buildings, none of which were compromised below the points of impact of the planes, I’m at a loss as to how 1)the South Tower fell first, when the plane blew most of its jet fuel while missing the core columns and creating a fireball upon exit; and 2) how either of them fell at free fall speed, down a path of increasing resistance (the columns). Three perfectly symmetrical collapses of steel buildings on the same day, when in the history of mankind no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire until that day; not to mention building 7 having not been hit by a plane (as if that mattered, structurally, to the portion of the building supporting the plane wreck).
On its face, Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of another entity to explain the contradictions.
And that’s my 2 cents.
As long as we’re changing topics, I’ll weigh in on the current discussion.
In 1993 an attempt was made to take out the footings of one of the WTC towers. Thankfully, it was unsuccessful. What would be the damage and loss of life had the footings been taken out and the 1400 ft tall building fell over in downtown Manhatten?
Not only would the building have been destroyed, but it would have also destroyed but the collateral damage to buildings and infrastructure for about five city blicks would have been destroyed. That doesn’t take into account the additional loss of life within the “crash zone”.
Do you think the city, state, and federal government didn’t explore the “what ifs”? They must have. To not recognize the potential damage caused, not only to the WTC, but the surrounding area would be unbelievable. After recognizing this they had to do something about it. Placing thermite and charges capable of taking the building down within its own footprint would have been a reasonable solution. If the building tilted too far, it would initiate automatically. Look at the video of WTC #2. The top tilts, and the controlled demolition initiates.
Slarti:
I agree that pollution is a negative, poison water and air is a negative and not conducive to human life (a high value).
So therefore the extension and protection of human life is a positive. I think we both agree on this point.
But industry also promotes and extends human life by creating jobs and wealth and new technologies. I think we both agree on this point as well.
What if we had no industry, we would be back in the stone ages and life would be brutal and short. So we have pollution and a fairly high quality of life on the one hand and a short brutal existence on the other. We need industry and no industry is risk free, people will die fixing those giant wind turbines.
So how do you balance the need for industry and the need for a clean environment? I don’t think you need to, I think innovation and prosperity will lead to a clean environment.
Wouldn’t it be better to change things through market forces – consumer spending, rather than taxes on pollution. A company will just absorb those taxes and pass them on to the consumer, which is how all taxes are paid. You are not punishing the company by making it pay a pollution tax. If it gets taxed $10,000 and it makes a 1000 widgets the cost of the widget increases by $10. There is no real monetary loss to the company. Unless of course the company goes out of business, but then real people are hurt because they are out of a job. I will assume companies could also be put out of business by consumers, but that would happen gradually and they would most likely make the necessary corrections to maintain market share.
If the press would do an honest job and point out to consumers which companies were good stewards of the environment and which were not, I will hazard a guess those companies that pollute would change their ways faster than through some government imposed tax. All taxes and penalties imposed on industry are paid by consumers and not the particular company. In reality, we are paying the tax you wish to impose. It is the equivalent to rubbing your wife’s face in the mess the puppy made.
Bob Esq:
“Per the History channel and others like it, I no longer see them as ‘educational’ — not since they’ve been showcasing series about UFO’s and haunted houses, etc., etc”
I need to clean my keyboard, luckily it was only tea with no sugar.
Back to taxing poluters.
If you tax the electric company for releasing toxins into the atmosphere, they just pass that cost along to the consumer. Most electric companies have no local competition. In fact, I recently read a story about an electric company wanting to raise their rates because people reduced their consumption. The consumer goes green, the electric company doesn’t sell as many kilowatts, so they want to charge more per kilowatt. How can the consumer afford to go green, and pay more to the electric company?
There was a good show on PBS last night about precious metals used in green technology. China is the biggest polluter, and the primary source for precious metals used in green technology. China wants to be able to pollute more, in order to mine and process the precious metals.
Robert:
then why wouldnt they just say that? So you are saying they planted those charges in say 1994 in case something happened? I dont think I would do that, what if they went off accidentaly?
There wasnt enough time to plant charges right after 9/11 anyway, it takes weeks to put those charges in place.
Tootie,
You may not know that I’m a scientist (I’m a mathematical biologist doing cell cycle modeling) and you certainly don’t know the particulars of my situation that I’ll detail below, so I’m trying not to take what you said personally, but I hope you’ll understand why I’m passionate about it.
You said:
“Do you think that the possibility of ruining his reputation stopped Tiger Woods from behaving badly?”
I think that while his reputation does have an effect on his income, he’s likely to keep the bulk of his endorsements, his reputation doesn’t effect his playing golf professionally, celebrities tend to get a lot more forgiveness from the public than most people (especially on the topic of sex scandals), and besides that, he’s a frakking billionaire, for god’s sake! Comparing his public reputation to a scientist’s professional reputation is apples and oranges.
You said:
“I don’t think that scientists are necessarily any more worried about ruined reputations than golf stars. For some, the cult-like obsession about the earth and a seeming hatred of the human race pushes them to shoe-horn their facts into their pre-determined conclusions.”
Most people don’t go into science to promote an agenda, they go into science because they become interested in a field and want to study it. I’m confident that the vast majority of climate change scientists came to their position on climate change because of their studies rather than the other way around.
You said:
“Many scientists also live in obscurity, plodding away, perhaps unappreciated by the world. And I’m afraid some might do anything to get attention or funds.”
Okay, I live in obscurity, plodding away, and I’m certainly feeling at least under-appreciated by the world these days. My current funding runs out at the end of the month which will leave me unemployed and without health insurance. At best, I can’t expect to obtain new funding to continue a project that I’ve spent the last 4 years of my life on which I consider extremely promising until sometime this fall. I would NEVER compromise my science to get attention or funds, despite my need, because that would defeat the purpose of being in science – discovering how the world works. If I didn’t care more about understanding things, I could have a great job with a salary well into 6 figures (say doing financial math on Wall Street like some classmates of mine). I’ll stand by the side of the road with a sign saying “Will do mathematical modeling for food” before I’ll compromise my scientific integrity for funding or attention. I believe that most scientists are much closer to my position than the one you describe.
You said:
“Remember the recent tragic story of the distinguished scientist who fudged the data about stem cell research? I’ve provided a link below for you if you like. There are many of these kinds of stories.”
These stories are far from the norm. The pressure to publish or perish can push people into desperation causing them to falsify a result which they believe is true but can’t prove, but the idea that someone would falsify data in order to support a position they know to be false is laughable, at least in an academic setting – in a corporate setting the pressures are different, so maybe this could happen there (in a company, scientists are paid to produce research supporting the company’s position, while in academia, scientists must publish in quality journals and earn the respect of their peers for the merits of their work in order to further their career – I’ve never heard of academic career in science being built of lies like you suggest).
You said:
“The whole culture in America was changed in the 60s based on the fraudulent research of Alfred Kinsey. Your proposal seems to simplify human nature too much as it seems to presume that scientists are not similarly susceptible to human emotions like we are because they deal with things logical.”
I have no knowledge of, and therefore opinion on, the veracity of Kinsey’s work. As I scientist, I am well aware that scientists are humans with human emotions (at least I think I’m human – quick, somebody give me a Turing test!
). I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t problems with the peer-review system either (believe me, that’s the last thing I’d argue right now), but the things that you suggest are not them. The pressures in the peer review system don’t tend to push people into falsifying data as it is ineffective and counterproductive.
You said:
“I saw an interview this evening with Anderson Cooper, I believe, where the fellow who was spoken about badly in the “Climate-Gate” emails said even the SOFTWARE codes used for collecting the data (or for the climate models) was intentionally shoddy and responsible for yielding some these absurd predictions and results.”
The only code from the hacked emails I’ve seen was a fragment posted by Bdaman titled ‘The Smoking Code’, which turned out to be totally innocuous when I looked at it – I strongly doubt this statement.
You said:
“For some scientists the absolute power they derive from the thought of controlling the whole world is far too tempting to walk away from. And since the perpetrators of any false predictions will be running the show, their reputations may never be “destroyed” until they are long gone from this earth. In other words, the lunatics will be running the asylum. The status of their reputation will be irrelevant for a very long time because they control the information.”
You think people go into science for money and power? That one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard (I’ve already said I could easily make significantly more money in another field and it’s hard to think of any all-powerful scientist. People go into science for the GLORY! We don’t want our reputation to last long enough to keep the grants rolling in until we retire or die, we want our reputation to outlast the human race! I don’t want to be a billionaire or rule the world, I want my name to be included on lists like Aristotle, Lebnitz (yes, this is a dig at Newton), Darwin, Gauss, Poincare, Einstein, Feynman…
You said:
“Following the money is just the easiest way to see what it going on. It is a sort of radioactive dye that lets us see the flow of the life-blood within the structure.”
I don’t disagree. I don’t think you understand how the money flows into peer-reviewed research – there are problems that would be highlighted by your radioactive dye, but they’re not the ones you’re concerned about.
You said:
“Human nature is such that when absolute power is laid at your feet, common sense and integrity are generally thrown overboard.”
Show me any scientist who has had absolute power laid at their feet. Considerations of money and power corrupting the scientific process are much more relevant in corporate research than they are in peer-reviewed research.
You said:
“I think we give scientists too much slack for not being as flawed and subject to bad characteristics as the rest of us.”
As I said before, I am painfully aware that scientist are as flawed as any other human beings (myself maybe more than others), but the pressures of our world don’t tend to turn those flaws into the problems that you suggest.
You said:
“And I think it is extremely dangerous to put them on a pedestal.”
We shouldn’t put ANYONE on a pedestal (except me…
)
BoB
Per the Towers, you may want to investigate it for yourself. With 47 vertical steel columns at the core of the buildings, none of which were compromised below the points of impact of the planes, I’m at a loss as to how 1)the South Tower fell first, when the plane blew most of its jet fuel while missing the core columns and creating a fireball upon exit; and 2) how either of them fell at free fall speed, down a path of increasing resistance (the columns). Three perfectly symmetrical collapses of steel buildings on the same day, when in the history of mankind no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire until that day; not to mention building 7 having not been hit by a plane (as if that mattered, structurally, to the portion of the building supporting the plane wreck).
________________________________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-thermite
http://www.voltairenet.org/article160636.html
Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming – Now Skeptics
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927b9303-802a-23ad-494b-dccb00b51a12
Slartibartfast,
When scientists arive at a conclusion, then change their tune, how do you explain it?
Byron,
I saw your post and I’ll reply to it but I need to take a little break first… I just thought I’d weigh in on the 9/11 issue.
While there might be more legitimate questions raised by the 9/11 truthers than the birthers, the leaders of the movement are whackjobs on Orly’s level and the ‘controlled demolition’ theory is on par with the theory that President Obama is an Indonesian citizen, in my opinion. It takes weeks (if not months) to rig large building for controlled demolition when they’ve been gutted and you can place the charges in plain sight. It’s silly to think that the WTC could have been either been rigged for demolition immediately before 9/11 or have have charges implanted after the first terrorist attack on the WTC without anyone noticing. Occam’s razor clearly points to flaws in engineering resulting from a failure to envision such a scenario (the towers being hit deliberately by an aircraft larger than any is service when they were built with full fuel tanks and an abundance of flammables (plastics) packing into the office space causing (a) the instant removal of the fire protection from the structural steel and (b) significant degradation in the strength of the steel due to heat, leading to (c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse). Also, the buildings did not collapse at free-fall speed and several skyscrapers have been destroyed due to fire and a couple have collapsed in a manner similar to controlled demolition. I don’t have the links handy as I looked into this years ago, but just google ’9/11 truth debunked’ and you should be able to find plenty of good information.
Bdaman,
I’m well aware of the physical evidence recently confirming the existence of active thermitic material found in the debris.
http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm
I tend to focus, however, on the patently obvious contradictions of laws of physics and reason itself as found within the commonly accepted mythology.
Slartibartfast,
“Also, the buildings did not collapse at free-fall speed and several skyscrapers have been destroyed due to fire and a couple have collapsed in a manner similar to controlled demolition.”
The towers did fall at free-fall speed. No other steel structures have collapsed due to fire. You’ll have to provide me with links to support your claim.
Even if you want to attribute the pancaking of the floors to weakening by the fires, how do you explain the demolition of the verticle center structure (the core structural component) when no sheer force was applied?
Robert,
You said:
“When scientists arive at a conclusion, then change their tune, how do you explain it?”
I would hold it up as an example that I’m right about the system – it’s possible for scientists to get things wrong, but extremely unlikely (as near to impossible as you can get) that a large group of scientists (individually or in collusion) falsified data to provide evidence to support a political agenda. Good science wins out in the end, that is the strength of the scientific method. Also, since my position is that cutting carbon emissions (carbon emission may not be the best metric of pollution, but its a reasonable one) is a good idea even if climate change isn’t correct, a reversal of the current consensus (which I don’t think is happening, but could be possible) wouldn’t affect my argument at all.
Bdaman,
What a treat! We get to see your lies on a different topic! “…when in the history of mankind no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire until that day…”. Yeah, and Barack Obama was born in Kenya. And building 7 was gutted when the towers fell (tower 2, specifically, I believe). For all of the talk of ‘collapsing into their own footprint’ the towers created an enormous amount of debris nearby (unlike controlled demolition which really does cause buildings to collapse into their own footprints). If you look at pictures of the other side of building 7 (the side facing the towers), you can seen that the building suffered major structural damage (enough to reasonably been the cause of the collapse).
Slarti:
you arent a thermiter?
Robert,
The best all-around 9/11 debunking site I know is:
http://www.debunking911.com
I believe this site address all of the issues you raise.
Slartibartfast: “Occam’s razor clearly points to flaws in engineering resulting from a failure to envision such a scenario (the towers being hit deliberately by an aircraft larger than any is service when they were built with full fuel tanks and an abundance of flammables (plastics) packing into the office space causing (a) the instant removal of the fire protection from the structural steel and (b) significant degradation in the strength of the steel due to heat, leading to (c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse). Also, the buildings did not collapse at free-fall speed and several skyscrapers have been destroyed due to fire and a couple have collapsed in a manner similar to controlled demolition. I don’t have the links handy as I looked into this years ago, but just google ‘9/11 truth debunked’ and you should be able to find plenty of good information.”
First, you apparently wouldn’t know Ockham’s razor, or the law of parsimony, if you were pissing on it. “Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” ["It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less"]. Thus, according to Ockham, we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so.” You, like many others, interpret Ockham as saying “the simplest answer is most likely the correct answer.” Thus your tendency to create a ‘simple’ mythical theory for yourself out of whole cloth and argue your way backwards in a piecemeal fashion; feigning true analysis.
Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion. Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…
Second, Leslie Robertson, et.al. designed the Towers to withstand the impact of a 707 traveling heavy at full speed; have you done the math to compare the impact force between the 707 and the planes that hit? If you did, you would have seen that the difference was negligible.
Third, you may have noticed that the towers had two support systems; one internal, i.e. the 47 steel columns, and the exo-skeletal support forming the perimeter of the building itself. Note that when the architects discussed the 707 impact design, they made the analogy of poking a hole in a metal screen; the hole exists, but the screen remains in tact. Then there are those interior columns, like rail road spikes, that weren’t exactly designed to just collapse on themselves now were they? Accordingly, when you say: “(c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse” you’re adopting the pancake theory assumption that the building was a hollow box. (See the FEMA report)
Fourth, fires burn up, building fall down. How hot is a diffuse jet flame? If you poured jet fuel onto concrete and lit it with a match; what happens and why? Where is the steel losing its strength and how the hell does that affect the rest of the building below? Was it built upside down? Do you see buildings as nothing more than fancy forms of stacked boxes of equal strength? Do tree trunks on your planet go from small diameter to larger diameter as you travel upwards on the tree?
Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.
Finally, unlike the conspiracy nuts that happen to have doubts similar to mine, I don’t get a cheap pornographic thrill from ‘blaming the govmint.’ I simply have a low threshold tolerance for bullshit.
Byron,
No.
Slartibartfast,
The debunking911.com website, from an engineers point of view, is bunk. It is intended to tell those who know nothing about metallurgy, thermodynamics, or structural engineering how to think. They throw everything into the pot, and hope it will believed. That’s salesmanship, but is has nothing to do with engineering.
Bob Esq.,
You probably already know this, but many do not. In 1945, a B-52 bomber flew into the Empire State Building during inclimate weather. That was the reason the WTCs were built to withstand the impact of a 707.
Bob,
You said:
“Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion. Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…”
At or near the heat of fusion? Are you saying that there was molten metal at or near the heat of the center of the sun or an nuclear (not atomic) bomb? To give a theory that addresses some of your issues (I have no desire to take the time to address all of them): What happens when you pour burning jet fuel on plastic? Is it possible that globs of burning plastic glommed onto structural steel that was exposed when its fire-resistant coat was blown off by the impact of an airliner? What happens to maximum load capacity of steel when you heat it? What is the maximum load on the steel core of the building after the impact? At what temperature would this load exceed the carrying load of the steel? Can mixing burning plastics with molten steel produce something like thermite? (Some experts think it can – see the link I posted.) I’ll try and find you the link about other buildings collapsing due to fire (one of them was a hotel in France, if I recall correctly) later if I get the chance. I also have a low tolerance for bullshit, and while it’s possible that I could be wrong (I think that it’s very unlikely in this case), I’m not taking a knee-jerk position from ignorance – I’ve looked at both sides and I find your position unconvincing. The fact that there are whackjobs with doubts similar to yours doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it sure as hell doesn’t add credibility to your argument.
Robert,
Yes, I’m well aware of the Empire State Building crash. But getting back to a point you were making about ‘salesmanship,’ here’s a rare video clip indicative of how hard and fast the ‘salesmanship’ of (incredible) explanations were flowing that fateful day. In light of the fact, and I did confirm this from an actuary chart, that no steel building had ever completely collapsed as a result of fire until 9/11, I’m at a loss as to what kind of engineering genius or prophet was able to explain the collapse of WTC 7 20 minutes before it happened.
Bob Esq.,
I think the first tower to collapse did so by design when the top tilted far enough. (That’s exactly how it would have gone down if I was involved in devising a method to protect the city from a tower about to fall over.)
The second tower, and WTC 7 were purposely collapsed. The second tower to collapse was probably initiated as a measure to prevent further damage or loss of life (it was as empty as it was going to get). They pulled the plug on WTC because an investigation into that building would have exposed the “take down measures” that had been installed in the others.
I don’t really like to discuss this in an open forum. If thermite and explosive were installed in the WTCs to prevent them from falling over, and doing more damage, they have probably been installed in other skyscrapers. If that becomes common knowledge, a terrorist could use our own safety measures to take down another skyscraper.
Slartibartfast: “At or near the heat of fusion? Are you saying that there was molten metal at or near the heat of the center of the sun or an nuclear (not atomic) bomb?”
Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ. You don’t even know what the term “heat of fusion” means. How can you be so bold in your statements when you’re so ignorant of basic chemistry and physics?
Slartibartfast: “To give a theory that addresses some of your issues (I have no desire to take the time to address all of them): What happens when you pour burning jet fuel on plastic? Is it possible that globs of burning plastic glommed onto structural steel that was exposed when its fire-resistant coat was blown off by the impact of an airliner?”
Hmm, let’s see… heat of fusion for molten plastic — a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit; heat of fusion for steel — oh, about a couple thousand degrees Fahrenheit… But seeing you don’t know what the heat of fusion is, you don’t comprehend how ignorant you sound.
Slartibartfast: “What happens to maximum load capacity of steel when you heat it? What is the maximum load on the steel core of the building after the impact?”
How many vague predicates can you pull out of thin air to form your smoke screen of nonsensical questions lacking any direction whatsoever?
Slartibartfast: “At what temperature would this load exceed the carrying load of the steel? Can mixing burning plastics with molten steel produce something like thermite? (Some experts think it can – see the link I posted.)
So where do these experts of yours find the molten metal to mix with your burning plastic to create the very substance capable of creating the molten metal in the first place? Are you for real?
Slartibartfast: “I’ll try and find you the link about other buildings collapsing due to fire (one of them was a hotel in France, if I recall correctly) later if I get the chance.”
Don’t bother; at best you’ll find a floor or two collapsing–NEVER THE ENTIRE BUILDING.
Slartibartfast: “I also have a low tolerance for bullshit, and while it’s possible that I could be wrong (I think that it’s very unlikely in this case), I’m not taking a knee-jerk position from ignorance – I’ve looked at both sides and I find your position unconvincing.”
How exactly do you find my position “unconvincing” when you’ve betrayed your ignorance of what I’m saying? You need to read up on Q=MCΔT, the heat of fusion & heat of vaporization; the plateaus created by a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT during each phase change and why, etc., etc. Till then, try not to draw any more conclusions as to how ‘convincing’ you find my arguments.
Slartibartfast: “The fact that there are whackjobs with doubts similar to yours doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it sure as hell doesn’t add credibility to your argument.”
And that’s called the bandwagon fallacy, a/k/a Appeal to Popularity; Argument by Consensus; Argumentum ad Populum; Authority of the Many
Fifty dollar philosopher talk for “since your ‘argument’ is based on an informal fallacy of logic, it’s a load of horseshit.”
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Robert: “I think the first tower to collapse did so by design when the top tilted far enough. (That’s exactly how it would have gone down if I was involved in devising a method to protect the city from a tower about to fall over.)”
But there was no ’tilt’; the rest of the perimeter of the building and the interior support structure were doing what they always had been doing; holding up the building. To say that it tilted (before it collapsed) is to say that the building distributed its load unevenly. Yes it did appear to tilt as the collapse began, but did you ever ask yourself what in the name of Christ reversed the angular momentum and velocity, FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BUILDING, to keep it from toppling?
In any case, I tend to go with what I know I can prove from a practical standpoint and stay far away from the hypotheticals attempting to explain it all.
Bob Esq.,
I’m refering only to the top section. It started to lean or tilt, and then the bottom fell out. The best part of this video is that it also demonstrates that it did not smack down on the lower floors. It just seems to enjoy the ride.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-736262871641918799#
Bob Esq.,
Look at 2 seconds into the video. What is the white puff in right portion of the building?
SD,
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/proofs/rotation.html
Robert,
I agree with your observation; I’m simply saying that the only way it could collapse on the corner is if the rest of the building was shattered at the time the collapse began.
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/collapses/shattering.html
In Re the white puff, taking into consideration the excess heat for six months, thermitic material found in the dust, it’ smost likely
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/collapses/squibs.html
Slartibartfast December 10, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for the (lengthy!) response. When I was scrolling up through the comments and ran across one that went on and on forever, I thought: oh oh, that is probably for me!
LOL
And it was.
You asked:
You think people go into science for money and power?
No, absolutely not. I think most go into science because of a passion to know and understand the world around them. It is just that now scientists and researchers seem to have a greater political role in which they can become subject to the same errors as non-scientists who acquire great power.
I think most never thought they would have such a role.
I loved science in school and always had a crush my science teachers.
259 Bob,Esq.
1, December 10, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Slartibartfast: I don’t know what Bob said at 6:31 but it looks like you were sitting on a high horse and he took his lance and knocked you right the F@#@ off.
Good job Bob an education is a terrible thing to waste.
A press release from the European police force Europol states that the VAT fraud afflicting the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme in the past 18 months, has resulted in the loss of approximately €5 billion euros for several national tax revenues. It is estimated that in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.
http://openeu.bluestatedigital.com/page/m/4b66096e/1ba92b0c/85c56ce/7c556fcb/3477542164/VEsCBg/
It seems so hard to believe that a scheme concocted by Ken Lay and the boys at Enron in the mid-1990s, adopted recently by derivatives-types as their next playground, pushed all along by Goldman Sachs and feverishly demanded by George Soros should have to suffer the indignity of such charges.
There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people’s faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. – Lord Turnbull Dec 8th 2009
Climategate reaches the British House of Lords
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/10/climategate-reaches-the-british-house-of-lords/#more-13969
(CBS) News To anyone who is skeptical about the science of global warming, “ClimateGate” is the biggest scandal ever.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/09/eveningnews/main5955012.shtml
Tootie,
You’re welcome. I agree that most people get into science because of a passion to understand the universe, but as baser motives glory far outweighs money or power as a motivation to be a scientist.
Bob,
This will be the last post I make on this topic. I’m not going to waste my time doing the research to debate you on a topic that I just don’t care very much about. Feel free to have the last word.
You said:
“Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ. You don’t even know what the term “heat of fusion” means. How can you be so bold in your statements when you’re so ignorant of basic chemistry and physics?”
Sorry, it’s been a long time since basic chemistry and physics and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term ‘heat of fusion’ before, although I certainly am familiar with the concept. And I am in no way ignorant of basic chemistry and physics – I spent 3 years as a physics major as an undergraduate (chemistry wasn’t my best subject, but I’ve had the basics).
You said:
“Hmm, let’s see… heat of fusion for molten plastic — a few hundred degrees Fahrenheit; heat of fusion for steel — oh, about a couple thousand degrees Fahrenheit… But seeing you don’t know what the heat of fusion is, you don’t comprehend how ignorant you sound.”
Is it not possible that burning jet fuel and plastics (and whatever other inflammables in the WTC could result in a fire hotter than any of these elements would burn at individually?
I said:
“What happens to maximum load capacity of steel when you heat it? What is the maximum load on the steel core of the building after the impact?”
You replied:
“How many vague predicates can you pull out of thin air to form your smoke screen of nonsensical questions lacking any direction whatsoever?”
What I was implying is that the structural strength of a steel beam declines as the beam is heated. It’s not hard to imagine that between the structural damage from the plane’s impact and the burning jet fuel and plastics that one of the columns was heated to the point where it could no longer support the weight bearing on it and failed, causing a chain reaction resulting in the collapse of the building.
I said:
“At what temperature would this load exceed the carrying load of the steel? Can mixing burning plastics with molten steel produce something like thermite? (Some experts think it can – see the link I posted.)”
You replied:
“So where do these experts of yours find the molten metal to mix with your burning plastic to create the very substance capable of creating the molten metal in the first place? Are you for real?”
I don’t concede that there was thermite in the building – the expert I’m talking about explains how particles identified as resulting from thermite could have been created.
I said:
“I’ll try and find you the link about other buildings collapsing due to fire (one of them was a hotel in France, if I recall correctly) later if I get the chance.”
You replied:
“Don’t bother; at best you’ll find a floor or two collapsing–NEVER THE ENTIRE BUILDING.”
So if a normal fire could cause a couple of floors to collapse it seems well within the realm of possibility that the extreme damage to the towers caused a couple of floors to collapse after which the weight of the building above the collapse gained momentum and the lower (intact) floors were unable to stop the descent of the floors above. No other skyscrapers have suffered the kind of damage that the twin towers sustained on 9/11, it is reasonable to assume that the effects might be qualitatively different (and substantially more destructive) than other skyscraper fires with less extreme causes.
I said:
“I also have a low tolerance for bullshit, and while it’s possible that I could be wrong (I think that it’s very unlikely in this case), I’m not taking a knee-jerk position from ignorance – I’ve looked at both sides and I find your position unconvincing.”
You replied:
“How exactly do you find my position “unconvincing” when you’ve betrayed your ignorance of what I’m saying? You need to read up on Q=MCΔT, the heat of fusion & heat of vaporization; the plateaus created by a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT during each phase change and why, etc., etc. Till then, try not to draw any more conclusions as to how ‘convincing’ you find my arguments.”
The theory that the twin towers were brought down by controlled demolition requires that thermite or its residuals be found in the debris, that at some point (presumably after the 1993 attack or immediately before 9/11) the twin towers were rigged with thermite charges in either (a) what could only be described as an incredibly stupid and misguided safety measure in case of an attack (in which case, it would have had to escape anyone’s notice that the buildings were rigged over the course of years) or (b) a false flag operation that would require a massive conspiracy to pull off (without anyone talking, at least so far…) not to mention the fact that a team, working in secret, in a limited amount of time (say over the weekend), would have to do a job that would take demolition experts weeks even if they can put the explosives in plain sight, let alone if they have to hide them… and on it goes. You’re promoting a conspiracy theory which, by its nature, depends on a chain of logic which is only true if every single link is true – which is why I say that Occam’s razor favors my theory (which is just the negation of yours) as requiring ‘less’ as you put it.
I said:
“The fact that there are whackjobs with doubts similar to yours doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but it sure as hell doesn’t add credibility to your argument.”
You replied:
‘And that’s called the bandwagon fallacy, a/k/a Appeal to Popularity; Argument by Consensus; Argumentum ad Populum; Authority of the Many
Fifty dollar philosopher talk for “since your ‘argument’ is based on an informal fallacy of logic, it’s a load of horseshit.”’
If I had said: “Everyone thinks your theory is silly, so therefore it’s false.”, I would have committed the bandwagon fallacy, but all I said was that whackjobs (like the makers of ‘loose change’) that believe the same thing as you don’t ADD to your credibility – and they don’t. You wouldn’t argue that Orly Taitz adds to the credibility of the birthers, would you? That’s a fancy way of saying “he who smelt it, dealt it.” in reference to horseshit.
In any case, I realize that I’m not going to convince you that the twin towers collapsed due to the primary and secondary effects of airliners crashing into them, but if you think that I came by my opinion out of ignorance, without considering it and examining both sides, you are sorely mistaken.
Byron,
See, I knew we still had something to say to each other! Thanks for your reply. Sorry to take so long to get back to you (I should have known better than to get involved in the 9/11 discussion…).
You said:
“I agree that pollution is a negative, poison water and air is a negative and not conducive to human life (a high value).
So therefore the extension and protection of human life is a positive. I think we both agree on this point.
But industry also promotes and extends human life by creating jobs and wealth and new technologies. I think we both agree on this point as well.”
I’d prefer a bit more qualification on your last point, but I’ll let it slide…
You said:
“What if we had no industry, we would be back in the stone ages and life would be brutal and short. So we have pollution and a fairly high quality of life on the one hand and a short brutal existence on the other. We need industry and no industry is risk free, people will die fixing those giant wind turbines.”
Why shouldn’t we have a fairly high quality of life without pollution? In fact, pollution lowers quality of life substantially – it’s hard to have a high quality of life when someone’s dumping arsenic in your drinking water. And it’s interesting that you bring up wind turbines… What does it say about our country that Texas is buying wind turbines, based on technology developed in the US, from China? And no industry has the right to impose a risk on me merely to increase their profit (like contaminating the water table with arsenic).
You said:
“So how do you balance the need for industry and the need for a clean environment? I don’t think you need to, I think innovation and prosperity will lead to a clean environment.”
I balance industry and the environment by assigning a cost to pollution (I would think that would be obvious by now
). Then industry is able to account for it and market forces take care of the problem. If industry is so good at regulating itself, why is history so replete with examples of its abuses? The Jungle by Sinclair, Love Canal, hog farms, etc.
You said:
“Wouldn’t it be better to change things through market forces – consumer spending, rather than taxes on pollution. A company will just absorb those taxes and pass them on to the consumer, which is how all taxes are paid. You are not punishing the company by making it pay a pollution tax. If it gets taxed $10,000 and it makes a 1000 widgets the cost of the widget increases by $10. There is no real monetary loss to the company. Unless of course the company goes out of business, but then real people are hurt because they are out of a job. I will assume companies could also be put out of business by consumers, but that would happen gradually and they would most likely make the necessary corrections to maintain market share.”
You’re an engineer, right? Would you try to control a system with positive feedback? (For those of you who don’t know, if you use positive feedback to control a system, it oscillates out of control.) Because that is what you are suggesting – consumer spending. What I am suggesting is negative feedback – taxing pollution. That is the correct way to control the system to achieve the desired results (high standard of living without pollution). The company may pass the tax along to consumers, but if they don’t adapt to reduce costs, then another company will come along and provide widgets without polluting and undercut the first company. Aren’t you FOR this sort of competition?
You said:
“If the press would do an honest job and point out to consumers which companies were good stewards of the environment and which were not, I will hazard a guess those companies that pollute would change their ways faster than through some government imposed tax. All taxes and penalties imposed on industry are paid by consumers and not the particular company. In reality, we are paying the tax you wish to impose. It is the equivalent to rubbing your wife’s face in the mess the puppy made.”
“If the press would do an honest job…” How do you propose to get them to do it? The taxes get passed along to the consumer – which prejudices the consumer towards buying products that don’t incur pollution taxes – exactly the incentive structure you want! Upside: Your wife would train the puppy pretty darned quick. Downside: You wouldn’t be around to see it.
To me, what it comes down to is this: Why do you think that industry should have the right to dump arsenic in our drinking water? And if you don’t think they have that right, then what are you proposing that will stop them? I know I’ve been going on about the arsenic in the drinking water quite a bit, but it’s something that companies actually do, and they do it because it enables them to make more profits. I’m suggesting a course of action that will fix the problem (and I’ve explained how that will work). If you’ve got a better solution I’m all ears, but if not, why are you insisting that we all drink arsenic?
Robert,
You said:
“Back to taxing poluters.
If you tax the electric company for releasing toxins into the atmosphere, they just pass that cost along to the consumer. Most electric companies have no local competition. In fact, I recently read a story about an electric company wanting to raise their rates because people reduced their consumption. The consumer goes green, the electric company doesn’t sell as many kilowatts, so they want to charge more per kilowatt. How can the consumer afford to go green, and pay more to the electric company?”
This is why industries in which competition is not possible (like health care) should be run in the public trust rather than by for profit enterprises.
There was a good show on PBS last night about precious metals used in green technology. China is the biggest polluter, and the primary source for precious metals used in green technology. China wants to be able to pollute more, in order to mine and process the precious metals.
And how would you solve this problem? (You should be able to guess how I would solve it by now…)
D’oh! I forgot to put quotes around “There was a good show on PBS… precious metals.” – Robert said that, not me.
Bob Esq:
“Second, Leslie Robertson, et.al. designed the Towers to withstand the impact of a 707 traveling heavy at full speed; have you done the math to compare the impact force between the 707 and the planes that hit? If you did, you would have seen that the difference was negligible.”
I believe he designed it for around 160-200 mph and the plane was assumed to not be fully loaded with fuel. Basically an accidental strike during a landing.
Since velocity is squared 500 mph would a tremendous additional force – over 6 times assuming constant mass.
To have designed that tower for a heavy 707 traveling at 500 or 600 mph would have made the towers too expensive to build.
Bob Esq:
“Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.”
A steel building does not collapse because of fire but because of additional stresses caused by the heat. Building connection are mostly stationary and restrain columns and beams from moving vertically or horizontally. As you well know when steel heats it expands in a very predictable fashion and there is a constant of thermal expansion for steel (you can look it up). Ergo the need for expansion joints on steel bridges, sometimes allowing for 6″ of movement depending on bridge length.
If a beam or column is restrained this strain (movement) has to be taken up somehow and that is by additional stress in the heated beam. This additional stress is a function of the steel temperature and member length (when a member gets hot it expands [a little engineering humor]).
Hot gets the steel down comes the building if the steel members are stressed to the point of failure. Simple stuff:
sigma (stress) = load/area.
I’m going to say one thing only about this discussion:
Uniform orderly collapses require either 1) lots of planning or 2) a huge confluence of coincidence that it strains credibility at best.
This never smelled right to me, not even the day of the crash, and it never smelled right because of chemistry.
When the tower fell that day, my immediate response was “Was there a secondary device on the plane?” Because of the nature of jet fuel (and safety additives), first there is the lower heat issue. Second, there is the dispersal issue. If a fuel is not evenly distributed it with burn unevenly. Third, local materials – while they may have boosted or retarded spot specific areas burn temperature-wise would also increase the variances in temperature applied across the structure. Fourth – failure temperatures for the structural members isn’t enough for orderly collapse – that requires sequence. Randomly hitting an appropriate sequence, while not impossible, seems highly improbable.
That’s a lot of variables around temperature alone that have to come together just so to make what should be a chaotic event fairly ordered. That’s a lot of chance.
Will I say it was conclusory that it was an inside job? No. Even with physics, that’s an incredible claim and requires more causal evidence. Evidence something happened, proof of cause and the identity of actors are different. Identity would be required. We KNOW Saudis attacked us for a fact. We can’t say with that same level of certainty that the collapse was (or wasn’t) rigged. What I will say is that killing civilians to start their little war for oil profits is not beyond anyone in the Bush White House as evidenced by their subsequent behavior. Dick Cheney would have killed twice as many civilians if he thought it’d make Halliburton’s P/E statements look good. No doubt in my mind.
Personally? I lean toward the complicity by provocation and deliberate inaction theory as far as the traitors go, but the order of the fall is in itself suspect. I don’t have an issue with buildings failing. Gravity happens. I do have an issue when they do it so neatly without specific human intervention. Complexity compels me to question that. Both plane and building are complex systems. Combining them under chaotic conditions should create a greater chance for error as more parts always means more chance for error. The logic goes that the probability of disordered collapse (possible across a broad range of numbers – in this case probabilities of structural failure) is much much higher than an ordered collapse (possible on a narrow range of numbers – there are a limited number of orderly outcomes).
To allude to Tom Stoppard, an orderly collapse is a lot of coin tosses coming up heads.
And that is all I have to say about that.
Byron,
To limit design to near-empty, close to stall speed aircraft doesn’t make sense. It fails to take into account other very possible scenarios.
Planes are at low altitudes during take-off too. Trouble during take-off could cause the plane to be off course. (possibly making turns to return to the airport)
Where did you come up with velocity squared? We’re talking about force of the impact. Force equals mass (which would change immediately upon impact) and acceleration (which would also change upon impact).
Slartibartfast,
Why did you decide to limit the time for installation of thermite and charges to one weekend? Why couldn’t a “maintenance contractor” have installed the necessary items over a period of months or years? Of course it would be done in secret.
“Is it not possible that burning jet fuel and plastics (and whatever other inflammables in the WTC could result in a fire hotter than any of these elements would burn at individually?”
What are these other inflammables? How did they get put in the right combination and the right proximity? MOST of the fuel went up in a ball of flame upon impact. There was no constant supply of jet fuel (which we should really be calling kerosene).
I could respond to many of the things that you presented, but one thing is more important than all of them. If you were in charge of safety for Manhattan, and after somebody had attempted to take out the footings of the building in 1993 you recognized the potential damage caused by a 1400 ft. tall building would cause if it fell over in downtown Manhattan, what would you do?
Byron: “A steel building does not collapse because of fire but because of additional stresses caused by the heat. Building connection are mostly stationary and restrain columns and beams from moving vertically or horizontally. As you well know when steel heats it expands in a very predictable fashion and there is a constant of thermal expansion for steel (you can look it up). Ergo the need for expansion joints on steel bridges, sometimes allowing for 6″ of movement depending on bridge length.”
Byron,
There’s a difference between the need for expansion joints on a bridge and a fire on a few floors of a high rise tower. The entire bridge is reacting to a change in temperature; with added solar radiation directed at the pavement. The tower, above and below the points of fire, remain at room temperature. IOW, that hot little pancake will never fall through the stove and floor of the kitchen.
In Re design for jet impacts:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html
Bryon,
The laws of physics demand an explanation for the excess heat residing in the debris piles of both towers and WTC 7. A NASA thermograph taken a few days after the attack measured the temperatures to be far from reaching thermal equilibrium at ground zero.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Thus, according to Sir Ockham, we must postulate the existence of another entity acting here; i.e. the source of the sustained heat.
Robert:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/airports/faqs/arcandapproachspeeds.pdf
approach speed for 707 is 128 knots is equal to 147 mph.
why would you design a building for a fully fueled plane traveling at 600 mph? that doesn’t make sense to me.
I have to believe the evidence of my own eyes and my knowledge of structural engineering. A building designed in 1970 is not going to be able to sustain that amount of energy and remain standing. The fact that it remained erect for over an hour is a testament to the brilliance of the design engineer and his team.
In fact a building designed under today’s codes is not going to be able to sustain a hit like that.
I can account for every single phenomenon you or Bob Esq describe with a simple explanation. Note to Bob Esq. see Ockham’s razor and law of parsimony.
Why did you decide to limit the time for installation of thermite and charges to one weekend? Why couldn’t a “maintenance contractor” have installed the necessary items over a period of months or years? Of course it would be done in secret.
In September of 2006, Kelly J. McCrum sold 1525 S Sangamon St. Unit 707, Chicago IL to a person named Osama Barakat.
Kelly J. McCrum is the wife of Craig M. Robinson. Craig Robinson is Michelle Obama’s brother.
The part of the transaction that I found odd was the creditor. Burlew Plumbing & Heating of New Jersey issued credit for the transaction.
Burlew also owns Magic Touch Construction Company Inc. This contractor does nonresidential construction, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning.
Knowing how New York and New Jersey share contracts for Port Authority work, I can’t help but wonder if this is the same Magic Plumbing and Heating that had contract work at the World Trade Center on September 5th, 2001.
Excerpts of stories:
Magic Plumbing and Heating who messed up the sprinkler systems in the WTC that failed on 9/11.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2001 : (WTC : HAMMAD DOES WORK ON WTC SPRINKLER SYSTEM — See MAGIC PLUMBING & HEATING, 9/11 INVESTIGATION, TN LICENSE CASE — BROOKLYN CELL) Sakher “Rocky” Hammad, who works for Magic Plumbing and Heating on 93rd Street in Brooklyn, is known to have done work on the sprinkler system in the World Trade Center, and when arrested he has a photo ID WTC visitor’s pass for this date. The identity of the tenant who hired him is not known. On 2/5/02, Hammad is one of five Arab men arrested in connection with the fiery murder of Tennessee drivers’ license examiner Katherine Smith several days earlier. Hammad also spent time in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 2000.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 : (WTC CENTER —– See SAKHER “ROCKY” HAMMAD , MAGIC PLUMBING & HEATING, BROOKLYN CELL) “The sprinkler system had turned on and had started to do something, but it wasn’t doing its job as it should, so there was water sloshing down the stairways.”
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 : ( NY TO MEMPHIS, TN – See : TN LICENSE FRAUD CASE, ?MAGIC PLUMBING?, 9/11 SCOUTS) One of the men, authorities say, drove from New York to Memphis on September 11 — the day of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. And one of them, at the time of his [Sakher A Hammad's] arrest, was carrying in his wallet a pass to the trade center dated September 5.
FEBRUARY 5, 2002 : (SAKHER “ROCKY” HAMMAD IS ARRESTED– See MAGIC PLUMBING & HEATING, TN DMV CASE, BROOKLYN CELL) On 2/5/02, Hammad is one of five Arab men arrested in connection with the fiery murder of Tennessee drivers’ license examiner Katherine Smith several days earlier. Hammad also spent time in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 2000.
I have often wondered if that was the Brooklyn terror cell that was being tracked in Able Danger.
The Congressional Record:
77 . ABLE DANGER FAILURE — (House of Representatives – October 19, 2005)
Excerpt of Curt Weldon:
What I did not know, Mr. Speaker, up until June of this year, was that the secret program called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda in January and February of 2000, over 1 year before 9/11 every happened. In addition, I learned that not only did we identify the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, but we identified Mohamed Atta as one of the members of that Brooklyn cell along with three other terrorists who were the leadership of the 9/11 attack.
I have also learned, Mr. Speaker, that in September of 2000, again, over 1 year before 9/11, that Able Danger team attempted on three separate occasions to provide information to the FBI about the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda, and on three separate occasions they were denied by lawyers in the previous administration to transfer that information.
Mr. Speaker, this past Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, was interviewed by Tim Russert. The first question to Louis Freeh was in regard to the FBI’s ability to ferret out the terrorists. Louis Freeh’s response, which can be obtained by anyone in this country as a part of the official record, was, Well, Tim, we are now finding out that a top-secret program of the military called Able Danger actually identified the Brooklyn cell of al Qaeda and Mohammed Atta over a year before 9/11.
And what Louis Freeh said, Mr. Speaker, is that that kind of actionable data could have allowed us to prevent the hijackings that occurred on September 11.
Byron,
Approach speed is a full-flaps, decreasing altitude, speed. It is not a speed in which the aircraft is intended to remain in the air. In addition, the possibility of a damaged aircraft must have been recognized. If the lift surfaces are damaged or fouled (icing) greater speed must be maintained in order to create lift.
We need to look at what hit the building. The buildings had more than 1,000 times the mass of the aircraft and had been designed to resist steady wind loads of 30 times the weight of the aircraft, this ability to withstand the initial impact is hardly surprising. Furthermore, since there was no significant wind on September 11, the outer perimeter columns were only stressed before the impact to around 1/3 of their 200 MPa design allowable.
The only individual metal component of the aircraft that is comparable in strength to the box perimeter columns of the WTC is the keel beam at the bottom of the aircraft fuselage. While the aircraft impact undoubtedly destroyed several columns in the WTC perimeter wall, the number of columns lost on the initial impact was not large and the loads were shifted to remaining columns in this highly redundant structure.
If we ignore everything else, can you explain the residual heat?
Here’s a good picture that demonstrates what happened to the kerosene (jet fuel) as the plane hit WTC-2 (on the left) and the black smoke on the right demonstrates the burning of plastic.
I can’t figure out how to post a link to a GIF file. Sorry
Slarti,
Seriously, you work with statistics and complex differential data sets. It doesn’t strike you odd that such a narrowly defined behavior (orderly collapse) came from such a long string of conditional probabilities (temp/materials/sequence of failure/collateral stresses and factors)? One can answer singular questions in analysis without having answered the underlying math being expressed. Heisenberg, Bohr and Hawking would have had much different careers if Einstein had been able to “see perfectly” all the math his theories implied. This isn’t solely a chemistry or engineering problem is my point. It’s also a probability problem. Keep in mind the more conditions precedent there are to an outcome, the greater the chance that outcome will not be achieved due to error in operation. More parts equals more chance of error in all systems.
I’m not saying an anomaly or a narrow result isn’t possible. I’m saying it’s improbable. I’m not going to side other than that on this issue and I don’t think I did above. Mark me down as “present but skeptical”. Like Bob I’ll admit I have some energy deficiency questions too, but that has never been my grind. But what I do find unusual is your easy acceptance of an “optimal” outcome (not truly or no one would have died, but you get my meaning) on based on so many contingent variables. Given what I know you know about complexity from previous discussions, I find this a little curious.
That long chain of conditions precedent and the narrow rage of desired behaviors from the complex system(s) under stress nags at me. I don’t have a problem with so much that the building failed but with how it failed. It in spectrum of possible outcomes absent intervention, it’s like winning a lottery. Actually, a consistently good pick at roulette is probably a better analogy. Speaking of probability, probably everyone’s grandfather has said (in this country anyway), “That’s too much sugar for a nickle.”
At least it seems to me anyway.
Hansen said CRU scientists should
release data “science works that
way” even though GISS, headed
by Hansen, has thus far not released
information requested through the
freedom of information act and may
soon end up being sued by C.E.I.
Slarti:
“You’re an engineer, right? Would you try to control a system with positive feedback? (For those of you who don’t know, if you use positive feedback to control a system, it oscillates out of control.)”
Exactly how will that happen? You assume that this is taking place in a vacuum or closed system it is not. The “market” is a huge diverse, chaotic system with literally infinitesimal inputs.
Please explain to me how consumer regulation will cause it to spin out of control?
Man I am really waiting to hear this, if you answer this it may just cause me to change my mind about capitalism.
This video shows where all that fuel went. When the plane hit the building, the fuselage being much weaker than the building, disintegrated. The fuel dispersed and ignited, resulting in a ball of flame.
infinite inputs
Buddha,
I agree with everything you’ve been saying regarding asymmetrical damage causing a symmetrical collapse. But you should know why I begin my argument with the heat problem.
To begin an analysis, of what happened that day, with a discussion of the destruction of the buildings, you’re inviting anyone within earshot to rattle off a ‘possible scenario’ that smacks of “Indiana Jones Science.” What’s Indiana Jones Science, I hear you ask? It’s magical thinking pushed beyond the limits of even the histrionic imagination. Jumping out of an airplane with a life raft means safety (because, according to movie magic, the terminal velocity of a free falling inflated raft is slow enough to keep your skull & spine from shattering upon impact); hiding in a refrigerator at ground zero of a nuclear test blast will keep you from burning to a cinder or breaking your neck upon impact; etc.
The other problem is the tendency for blind adherents to the ‘official story’ to demand that the person challenging the plausibility of the official story come up with an all encompassing alternative theory. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (the burden of proof rests on who asserts, not on who denies). Your everyday tin-foil hat conspiracy nut doesn’t comprehend the aforesaid principle, and thus makes claims without support. This is yet another violation of Ockham’s razor, or the law of parsimony, since the very existence of claims without support is clear evidence of postulating the existence of another entity when it is not absolutely necessary to do so.
So why do you begin with the molten metal and heat? Because it brings up a deficit in the explanation provided pursuant to an inviolable law of nature. The requirement for an explanation is so demanding, it sounds like a character from “Goodfellas” is demanding it.
Henry Hill: [narrating] “Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week no matter what. Business bad? F’ you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F’ you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning huh? F’ you, pay me.”
Steel and other metals existing at the heat of fusion for nearly six months REQUIRES A SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Where did it come from? Or … “F’ you, pay me.”
Byron,
John Skilling
John Skilling was the head structural engineer for the World Trade Center. In a 1993 interview, Skilling stated that the Towers were designed to withstand the impact and fires resulting from the collision of a large jetliner such as Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8.
A white paper released on February 3, 1964 states that the Towers could have withstood impacts of jetliners traveling 600 mph — a speed greater than the impact speed of either jetliner used on 9/11/01.
“The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 707—DC 8) traveling at 600 miles per hour. Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact.”
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html
BTW, what’s the maximum operating speed of a 767 and how fast was AAL11 reported to have been traveling when it hit the North Tower?
Sorry, I meant ‘what’s the maximum operating speed of a 767 and how fast was AAL175 reported to have been traveling when it hit the South Tower?
A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis.
A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits simply by closing a steel production facility in Britain with the loss of 1,700 jobs.
The Tata Group headquartered in Mumbai anticipates receiving windfall profits of up to nearly $2 billion from closing the Corus Redcar steelmaking plant in Britain, with about half of the savings expected to result from cashing in on carbon credits granted the steelmaker by the European Union under the EU’s emissions trading scheme, or ETS.
Corus has accumulated 7.5 million European Union surplus carbon allowances, or EUAs, given the company free by the EU, after corporate officials lobbied EU officials aggressively in Brussels.
Mean while I can’t see thru my windows or open my front door, too much snow.
Bob Esq:
something smells fishy about that site you linked to.
bdaman,
I am about to shock you.
You’re right in what you see and you’re right it’s a shell game.
Where you are wrong is thinking it would be terribly controversial.
That fascists are turning what is ostensibly supposed to be a plan to reduce carbon in the environment into just another Ponzi shell game of shuffle the money is a point many here would not contest. Carbon Trading is going to fail because of the trading part of that equation. Market mechanisms are not an appropriate fix to a problem that requires regulation and forced compliance. Especially when there is more money in not fixing a damn thing and making people think you are hard at work. Creating the illusion of work/change is cheaper than actually working/changing. And Wall St. isn’t just greedy. They are lazy too. Why work for what you can steal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain . . .
bDAMAN:
that is a very interesting piece of information. can you document it?
Looks like the rich and powerful are going to make out like bandits and the working man is going to get f . . . d right up his proletarian ass.
And this is all being done by who? Oh yes Al Gore and his buddies, no greedy capitalist pigs in that bunch, socialist pigs certainly.
No wonder the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy are buying timber land, carbon credits, big money, socialist T. Looks like old Reds gonna be a trillionaire on the backs of them lackey proletarians. If you cant beat the capitalist pigs just put them out of business, I guess Lenin had the right idea. Except this bunch isn’t using rope.
I love the smell of fresh air in the morning, it smells like poverty for the working man and money for the rich environmentalists.
I wonder how much money an acre of timber will be worth in terms of carbon credits, I hope a bunch. I might just come to like global warming and environmentalism.
Byron,
A little research before going partisan might have better served you. Even wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading
Gore isn’t the issue. And for the record, I find him a bit of a tool. Not evil per se, but a bit of a doorknob. I’m not defending Mr I Invented the Internet.
The issue is that industry is not capable of self-regulating through a market mechanism or any other mechanism. Any industry. One cannot put the foxes in charge of the henhouse and not expect disaster. The issue is that by their nature corporations and their amoral drivers will not change without regulation and forced compliance – which is not a market mechanism it’s a legal mechanism. It’s not a political partisan abuse. Unless you think Gore forced this scheme on the EU too (which is ridiculous). And I’m pretty sure Tata’s Indian owners could give a damn what the former Veep has to say unless they just happen to agree with him. It’s a systemic legal formal abuse that’s the root cause here. The problem is corporations want to turn everything into a shell game when left to their own devices. Profit uber alles. But the problem isn’t partisan. It’s bi-partisan. It’s corporatism. That carbon trading is going to be abused should be no more of a shock than any other Wall St. Ponzi scheme.
Buddha:
the more I read the more I am starting to think we are being controlled by your man behind the curtain. It doesn’t really matter at this point whether it is corporations, industrialists, environmentalists, socialists, fascists, communists, capitalists.
Although I will point out that when a companies ability to turn a profit is reduced or eliminated by regulations or other non-market forces they will devise other ways to generate revenue. Idle hands are indeed the devils workshop.
Byron, you missed it talking about the inside job on 9-11
Bdaman
1, December 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Byron, I have told people many times before, be it in your e-mail box or in a comment section. Pick out key phrases or words and enter it into google, then read away. I sometimes do not provide a link to a story I paste from, Why, because then you get responses of, that came from the blank blank website and they blank blank are a hack ect. ect.
In this case, take this, Rajendra K. Pachauri stands to make several hundred million dollars in European Union carbon credits
put it into Google and pick from whatever site you would like to read from. The Gray Rider post I did the other day shows you that one can take something someone else says and massage it to their liking.
Never trust something someone else post even if they provide a link. The words can be changed in the short paragraphs that they give you and provide you with the link and then you never read the whole story taking what they posted as gospel.
Buddah, I read your post, TWICE, and had to change my underwear twice.
Not only did you shock me, you shocked the S……….. TWICE
The EPA’s Carbon Bomb Fizzles
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703514404574588120572016720.html
Buddah Europe has Cap and Tax do you think their emmisions have gone up or down?
Money and Lobbyists Hurt European Efforts to Curb Gases
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/worldbusiness/11carbon.html?_r=1
Byron,
The site’s only as good as its sources; did you check them?
And per your remark about the speed of the aircraft, here’s a little ditty from the Pilots for 9/11 Truth; n.b. the group’s mission is to never to support any theory but simply show all the places where the ‘knowledge’ alleged in the ‘official report’ fails to agree with the ‘object’ of analysis.
‘We Can’t Kill the Business Climate,’ Says Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D)
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6428644
Byron,
First, I find it amusing that you refer to market forces as ‘consumer regulation’ (that’s not really a criticism, just a little poke at your doublespeak…).
I said:
“You’re an engineer, right? Would you try to control a system with positive feedback? (For those of you who don’t know, if you use positive feedback to control a system, it oscillates out of control.)”
You replied:
“Exactly how will that happen? You assume that this is taking place in a vacuum or closed system it is not. The “market” is a huge diverse, chaotic system with literally infinitesimal inputs.”
It’s well established that there are many cycles in the market (and when I see the word ‘cycles’ I immediately think of oscillations), so let’s take the ‘bubble’ cycle of boom and bust which, I think you’ll agree, has had a pretty negative effect on our economy lately. If you use positive feedback to encourage booms (cause booms are good, right?) you increase the size of the bubble. Unfortunately, the direct effect of this is to increase the severity of the bust when the bubble pops. If you continue to do this, the highs get higher and the lows get lower until a ‘bust’ occurs that’s so low that you can’t pick up the pieces. For instance, if you take away the controls of risk/reward (say by allowing hedge fund managers to leverage at 30:1 with other people’s money, offer them huge rewards if they’re successful and no risk if they fail (or, as it appears to have happened, huge rewards for failure, too), then inevitably a collapse would happen. To take an extreme hypothetical, say instead you executed hedge fund managers who lost their (and other people’s) shirts – these guys are good at analyzing risk vs. reward – they would find that kind of risk unacceptable compared to the potential reward. The simplest way to add negative feedback to the this system would be to give shareholders a voice in executive compensation (not giving people who presided over epic failure huge bonuses makes sense to me – and Wall Street types are much more likely to be act responsibly if they risk their huge compensation packages by acting irresponsibly.
I don’t want to get into the complexity issues of the market (as that is a much more involved topic and I can’t really do it justice briefly). But I have a couple of comments – to nitpick, you’re using ‘infinitesimal’ wrong (it means very, very small), in context, I think you meant infinite inputs. More substantially, when engineers design control systems, they attempt to remove chaos (while chaos makes for pretty pictures and fascinating mathematics, you don’t want, say, the steering in your car to behave chaotically). They do this by damping out oscillations in order to make the system more predictable and stable. There is no reason that the complex system represented by the economy can’t be controlled in the same way. In order to get rid of the ‘busts’ you damp down the boom and bust cycle (by restoring the balance of risk and reward). As a consequence of this, you eliminate the ‘booms’ as well and are left instead with slow, steady growth. How would this be bad? (It only hurts people that would profit on the loss of others and, quite frankly, screw them!)
You said:
“Please explain to me how consumer regulation will cause it to spin out of control?”
I explained my position above and will clarify anything you like. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by ‘consumer regulation’, but if you’d care to suggest a method that you think would lead to the end we both consider desirable (no pollution), or explain to me why you think my proposal wont work, I’m happy to continue discussing it.
You said:
“Man I am really waiting to hear this, if you answer this it may just cause me to change my mind about capitalism.”
Now I’m waiting for you to tell me that you’ve changed your mind.
You seem to think that I’m against capitalism – I’m not. There is no known engine that does a better job of creating wealth than capitalism. I just don’t think that it is sacred – it has flaws (while capitalism creates wealth, it also concentrates it, which is bad), and there are things which it does poorly (health care, control pollution, etc.). It frustrates me, because I see the behavior of industry as very easy to predict if you just assume that the players tend to act in an amoral way to increase profits (not saying everyone in business is amoral, just that assuming businesses act amorally is an effective way to predict their behavior) and very easy to control (by the use of negative feedback), but far too many people who don’t think of public policy this way end up legislating with the best of intentions and failing to meet their goals while spawning undesirable, unintended consequences.
Slarti:
Perpetual cycles of booms and busts like we have now are caused by the Federal Reserve manipulating interest rates. If you let interest rates float and let markets establish the cost of money, I think you would not have these exaggerated swings of bubble and bust.
Yes I did mean infinite and I corrected it in the post below the original.
Steering your car and a market are not the same things. This is where I think people such as you go wrong. Very smart people have a tendency to think they can control things by virtue of their intelligence and computer models. It may work with a small system like a car or even a human body or a rocket ship. The market is millions of people taking billions of decisions every day about how to spend their money. The complexity is staggering and any computer model would be incapable of determining the correct permutation. Statistically it would be impossible, but by virtue of superior intelligence they believe they can. I think this is called rationalism but I am not sure.
If you damp out the booms and busts? What do you think the Fed has been doing or trying to do for 90 years?
Consumer regulations are market forces. The problem is exactly as you say; business is predictable and when they are given government regulations, in the form of low interest rates you get a real-estate boom that had no basis in reality other than the Federal Reserve artificially holding rates low.
I suggest a healthy dose of Von Mises and Hyack to inoculate you from your Keynesian conundrum.
Sorry Slarti, I am still a capitalist pig.
Byron,
I’m thinking about your last post – I’ll reply to it later tonight. I’d rather take my time to try to more fully explain my ideas than quickly respond to your posts. I’m finding that you’re challenging me to better organize my thoughts and I like it. Hope you don’t mind.
Buddha
I really wanted to drop this topic, but out of respect for you and an interest in discussing probability, I’ll allow myself to get dragged back in… Oh well, as Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. I’m working on a reply to your post.
Slarti:
No problem, I actually appreciate you being willing to organize your thoughts. Although I thought they were well presented and I certainly understood what you were saying.
I dont think the problem is your organization.
30,000 Scientists
That’s what we need. A televised debate on global warming.
It may get more viewers than the OJ trial.
Al Gore.
He played on our fears!
(Will his photograph go next to the dictionary definition of megalomaniac?)
Gallup should do a poll on it.
Slartibartfast,
My apologies, but I find it difficult to carry out an argument with an opponent who keeps inserting his own premises into my argument and reducing them to absurdity.
When I asked you to account for an immense surplus of sustained ‘residual heat’ sufficient to keep the metal at ground zero at or near the heat of fusion, you turned into Fred Astaire with your tap dancing “Indiana Jones Science” bullshit. Thus I replied as I did. Accordingly, when you replied yet again without addressing the issue, which by the laws of physics DEMANDS an answer or so much as an acknowledgment of your ignorance, attempting to attribute more and more of your own premises to my argument, well, as I said above, that’s simply not argumentation.
Bob,
Sorry. I do not know why there was metal at or near the heat of fusion at ground zero after the collapse (just out of curiosity, could you provide me with a reference as to evidence of molten metal at ground zero?). I believe that the theory that the WTC was brought down by thermite charges implausible due the extremely (in my opinion) unlikely premises that must be fulfilled for this theory to stand up. Why thermite? It’s not an explosive, nor is it used for purposes of demolition (it takes time to act – not what you want for a precisely controlled and timed demolition). Why would the WTC have been rigged with thermite charges? When was it done? How was it done without anyone’s notice? If it was done as a safety measure (as someone here suggested – itself one of the least likely theories I’ve ever heard), the who approved it and who paid for it? Without (plausible) answers to these questions, the assertion that molten metal at ground zero implies that the building was taken down by thermite charges (which would make it, as far as I can tell, the first building ever brought down this way) seems less likely (to me, anyway) than the theory that the combination of structural damage and loss of fire protection from the impact, heat from the fires led to the collapse.
Buddha,
You said:
“Seriously, you work with statistics and complex differential data sets.”
I don’t (generally) work with statistics and I would say I model complex dynamical systems.
You said:
“It doesn’t strike you odd that such a narrowly defined behavior (orderly collapse) came from such a long string of conditional probabilities (temp/materials/sequence of failure/collateral stresses and factors)?”
Since there are only two examples of skyscrapers being hit by fully fueled jetliners and both resulted in similar collapses, we don’t really have any idea of the probabilities involved. I don’t find any of the links in the causal chain particularly unlikely – The structure was damaged and its fireproofing destroyed by the impact, the fires heated the core structure until it couldn’t bear the load and the building collapsed. This story fits all of the evidence I’ve seen of the collapse.
You said:
“One can answer singular questions in analysis without having answered the underlying math being expressed.”
Not sure what you mean by this.
You said:
“Heisenberg, Bohr and Hawking would have had much different careers if Einstein had been able to “see perfectly” all the math his theories implied. This isn’t solely a chemistry or engineering problem is my point. It’s also a probability problem. Keep in mind the more conditions precedent there are to an outcome, the greater the chance that outcome will not be achieved due to error in operation. More parts equals more chance of error in all systems.”
While the chance of any individual chain of events happening may be extremely small, the probability that some chain of events will occur is 1. If there were many examples of skyscrapers being hit by planes in this manner and these were the only buildings that collapsed, I would of course be skeptical, but I have no way of estimating the probabilities of what ‘should’ happen a priori and since the evidence of the collapse is consistent with the official explanation, I have no trouble accepting it, nor do many experts who have published scholarly articles on the collapse.
You said:
“I’m not saying an anomaly or a narrow result isn’t possible. I’m saying it’s improbable. I’m not going to side other than that on this issue and I don’t think I did above. Mark me down as “present but skeptical”. Like Bob I’ll admit I have some energy deficiency questions too, but that has never been my grind.”
Again, I just don’t think that we can really estimate probabilities here and that’s not the way I think of it. I look at an explanation and ask “does this agree with the facts?”. I think that the official explanation of the collapse (and I am specifically limiting my statements to the events between the first impact and Tower 1′s collapse) fits the observed facts. As to energy deficiency questions, I’ll just note that something like one trillion joules of energy were released in each collapse (the gravitational potential energy of one tower).
You said:
“But what I do find unusual is your easy acceptance of an “optimal” outcome (not truly or no one would have died, but you get my meaning) on based on so many contingent variables. Given what I know you know about complexity from previous discussions, I find this a little curious.”
I have no way of knowing that this was an ‘optimal’ outcome (and yes, I know what you mean – as an aside, I wish there was a hell so these assholes (the terrorists) could be burning in it), I can only fall back on the scientific method – to make a hypothesis and see if it fits the facts. I study complexity in the sense of the emergent behavior of complex systems (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts type stuff) – what happened on 9/11 isn’t really complexity in that sense. The impact of the planes on the structure of the buildings has been modeled and the models are consistent with the facts – this is persuasive to me.
You said:
“That long chain of conditions precedent and the narrow rage of desired behaviors from the complex system(s) under stress nags at me. I don’t have a problem with so much that the building failed but with how it failed. It in spectrum of possible outcomes absent intervention, it’s like winning a lottery. Actually, a consistently good pick at roulette is probably a better analogy.”
Actually, I think that the lottery analogy is better – any particular way of failure might be very improbable, but after the planes hit, some kind of failure was certain. Just like it being very improbably that a particular person wins the lottery, but certain that someone will win.
You said:
“Speaking of probability, probably everyone’s grandfather has said (in this country anyway), “That’s too much sugar for a nickle.”
At least it seems to me anyway.”
Neither of my grandfathers (both natural born citizens) every said that (at least not in my hearing), maybe they weren’t as wise as your grandfather.
I don’t think we’re getting too much sugar here, but if you do I suggest that you put your skepticism to work and look at how well the theories match the events of that day. Like I said, I think they match up pretty well.
Robert,
You said:
“Why did you decide to limit the time for installation of thermite and charges to one weekend? Why couldn’t a “maintenance contractor” have installed the necessary items over a period of months or years? Of course it would be done in secret.”
If it was done over months or years (presumably after 1993) in secret, who ordered it done? Who paid for it? How many people were required to do the job? (This would have had to have been a massive conspiracy in which NOBODY talked – not even AFTER 9/11 – that strains my credulity past the breaking point.) And one more question – why thermite? It’s not an explosive and it’s not used in demolitions. If you wanted to cut a building’s main supports at the same time (critical for controlled demolition), why would you use something that can’t be timed precisely?
I said:
“Is it not possible that burning jet fuel and plastics (and whatever other inflammables in the WTC could result in a fire hotter than any of these elements would burn at individually?”
You replied:
“What are these other inflammables? How did they get put in the right combination and the right proximity? MOST of the fuel went up in a ball of flame upon impact. There was no constant supply of jet fuel (which we should really be calling kerosene).”
Office furniture, carpets, computers, monitors, interior walls, etc. It is well established that there was serious fire on several floors of both towers after the impacts. The kerosene fireball was quite sufficient to set other things on fire.
You said:
“I could respond to many of the things that you presented, but one thing is more important than all of them. If you were in charge of safety for Manhattan, and after somebody had attempted to take out the footings of the building in 1993 you recognized the potential damage caused by a 1400 ft. tall building would cause if it fell over in downtown Manhattan, what would you do?”
I would never, under any circumstances, rig the largest office building in the world to demolish itself when some sort of trigger was tripped or a big red button was pushed. I might, for example, increase security around the footings of the building to prevent someone from taking the out. But there’s a question that I would ask myself first – how does a 110 story building fall when it’s footings are cut? There’s only one force that collapses buildings and it only acts in one direction (that’s gravity and down). It seems to me that any collapse would be closer to a controlled demolition than ‘falling over’ like a tree (toppling a building generally requires carefully placed charges and cables to help pull it over). And let’s not forget, ‘collapsed into its own footprint’ is a pretty loose description here – the debris covered an area much larger than the footprint of the building, it just reached 3 or 400 feet away rather than 1400 feet away.
A few things here, first allow me to remind you of a few of my favorite quotes from Gandhi,
Do not think something is not possible without first looking at the possibilities.
and
Even if you are in a minority of one the truth is still the truth.
Enough doubts have been raised about the events of 9-11. Although not a well educated man I know when I smell a rat. There are many examples in history where something taken as gospel by many educated people turned out to be false by a theory of another. My favorite example of this is the Piltdown man. I am clueless at applying science to any discussion. Whether or not molten metal and plastic or structural stresses collapsed the buildings in an orderly fashion I couldn’t tell you. I know two things, they came down fast and hard and Bush had a smile on his face standing on the rubble. That part I will never forget. Anytime this discussion gomes up, a picture flashes into my mind like it was yesterday. Bush with the bullhorn, his arm around the fire chief and a smile on his face. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, As far as 9-11 is concerned, I have mine and their is NOTHING you can do or say to make me change it. I know what happened.
Now, I would like to see if any of you can help with a little research. I do not have the education in which to do it. If you have any doubts that data has been massaged in reference to temperatures, here’s a little exercise that may help convince you one way or the other.
Would You Like Your Temperature Data Homogenized, or Pasteurized?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/would-you-like-your-temperature-data-homogenized-or-pasteurized/
The UK’s Met Office released a subset of the HadCRUT3 data set used to monitor global temperatures. Basil Copeland took a copy of the subset and then began looking for a location near where he lived to verify the data. His results are the post, Would You Like Your Temperature Data Homogenized, or Pasteurized?
If everyone in their respected vicinities or location would duplicate what he did the answers should become clear.
Finally, I am a big fan of Joe Bastardi from Accuweather. He’s a no nonsense kinda guy with a New Yorker type attitude. I was gonna say Jersey but nobody’s from Jersey. He did an interview with Don Imus. For the record, I’m not a big fan of him but thats a personal reason, so I try to block him out while listening to Joe. Newsbusters IMO has the best article on the interview and whether or not you like Newsbusters try to HEAR the message without pre judgment. Video included.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2009/12/11/accuweather-forecaster-climate-change-it-s-ice-not-fire-you-re-going-be-w
Byron:
You said:
“Perpetual cycles of booms and busts like we have now are caused by the Federal Reserve manipulating interest rates. If you let interest rates float and let markets establish the cost of money, I think you would not have these exaggerated swings of bubble and bust.”
I’m no fan of the fed, although I think we’re stuck with it, and while it may be (probably is) one of the exacerbating factors, I think that the root cause is removal of the regulations on the market (which tend to damp the system) and the breaking of the balance of risk and reward (which causes positive feedback).
You said:
“Yes I did mean infinite and I corrected it in the post below the original.”
My bad. I missed your correction. Sometimes I don’t notice the posts that aren’t several paragraphs.
You said:
“Steering your car and a market are not the same things.”
I wasn’t comparing steering a car to the market, I was just pointing out that in designing controls you try to prevent chaos in favor of more predictable outcomes.
You said:
“This is where I think people such as you go wrong. Very smart people have a tendency to think they can control things by virtue of their intelligence and computer models.”
This has nothing to do with computer models. (As an aside, I think a computer model of the effects of public policy on the economy would be cool – just give me a grant that can support a couple dozen people for a decade and I’ll gladly give it a try!) I’ve made a hypothesis – I’d test it if I could, but unfortunately the best I can do is to explain how I think it will work and why. That’s something that would be better if scientists ran the country (and I’m not advocating that) – we generally agree on the facts and we don’t tend to do the same thing twice and expect different results. And I would really rather that people who aren’t intelligent not be allowed to make public policy.
You said:
“It may work with a small system like a car or even a human body or a rocket ship. The market is millions of people taking billions of decisions every day about how to spend their money. The complexity is staggering and any computer model would be incapable of determining the correct permutation. Statistically it would be impossible, but by virtue of superior intelligence they believe they can. I think this is called rationalism but I am not sure.”
I don’t think that you understand how mathematical modeling works. I don’t want to try and explain it here, but in modeling complex systems the goal is to simplify the system to the point where you can understand the model’s behavior, but it still retains enough complexity for that understanding to apply to the system you’re modeling. The human genome has something like 50,000 proteins and we only know a fraction of the interactions between them, let alone all the behavior of micro-DNA, organelles, transporters (little ATP-driven motors that walk along micro-tubules), etc. Yet I still find it possible to model cellular systems and use the results to make experimentally testable predictions. I’m not sure what rationalism is, but I make testable hypotheses and if they’re put to the test, I’m content to be judged on their accuracy. (If only I had a way to test these hypotheses of mine – where’s a psycho-historian when you need one?)
You said:
“If you damp out the booms and busts? What do you think the Fed has been doing or trying to do for 90 years?”
If they haven’t done it in 90 years, they’re doing it wrong and should try something else (like negative feedback).
You said:
“Consumer regulations are market forces. The problem is exactly as you say; business is predictable and when they are given government regulations, in the form of low interest rates you get a real-estate boom that had no basis in reality other than the Federal Reserve artificially holding rates low.”
Please tell me how market forces will clean up pollution? And artificially lowering interest rates is exactly the kind of positive feedback that I’m arguing against.
You said:
“I suggest a healthy dose of Von Mises and Hyack to inoculate you from your Keynesian conundrum.”
Never studied Keynes (or any other economist really), I tended to be annoyed at the lack of mathematical content in my econ courses (a scuba diver isn’t going to be satisfied with water wings in the kiddie pool…).
You said:
“Sorry Slarti, I am still a capitalist pig.”
Don’t worry, I still have hope that you can understand that the unregulated market is an unmitigated horror and that proper regulations can produce stability and predictable, desirable results. Then we’ll figure out how to pay off the national debt…
Slartibartfast,
Look into nanothermite. Not only is it possible, remnants of nanothermite were found in the WTC dust.
http://www.clipser.com/watch_video/1328541
Why hasn’t anyone come forward about installing nanothermite? It was a top-secret installation, paid for by secret funds. Do you expect to find a list of national security projects and the allocation of funding to each? People with top-secret clearances don’t spill the beans. Why would they? There’s a good chance that the same type of devices are installed in other skyscrapers. Coming forward would endanger the other buildings.
Automatic initiation would require input from a number of sensors. This would prevent accidental initiation on failure or tamper.
As for your “one-button” premise. I agree. What about two buttons? (This one is important for you to respond to.)
Who would have performed the installation? A government contractor. The U.S. Government would have paid for it.
“The kerosene fireball was quite sufficient to set other things on fire.”
So we don’t have a combination of kerosene and other items. We have kerosene that lit those other items. How much heat was transferred by the kerosene-fueled flame ball? These fires were not extremely hot fires (relatively speaking) The color of the smoke indicates that they were starved.
Go back over this post
Just Sayin
1, December 11, 2009 at 10:56 am
The first time the WTC was bombed in didn’t work. There’s an old saying about returning to the scene of the crime. There’s also such a thing as targeting something that you value so much or symbolize for mass effect. Hence, I would really hate for something to happen to your family. Psychology plays a great deal into a mind of a criminal.
Where’s the inferno?
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wtc_fire.htm
“It was noticeable that with the South Tower, the one that fell first, the ensuing ash was white and grey, whereas with the second tower that fell, the North Tower, it was black. Now, if that was because it burned longer or what I don’t know, but it was a noticeable difference.” [Nova Online]
This observation along with the above indicates two things:
There was little fire in WTC 2 prior to its collapse.
The black ash from WTC 1 indicates the presence of large amounts of soot. Soot is a byproduct of inefficient combustion, therefore the fires in WTC 1 did not burn at extreme temperatures.
Glenn Beck Proves CO2 Is Safe
Kinda Funny Elaine but CO2 is not the only thing that comes from exhaust.
There’s Carbon dioxide and monoxide hydrocarbons, nitrogen and sulfur.
CO2 IS carbon dioxide.
bdaman–
I misread your comment. I missed the word hydrocarbons.
By posting the humorous video, I wasn’t trying to imply that carbon dioxide is the only emission from cars. I believe the main emissions from cars are nitrogen, CO2, and H2O.
Slartibartfast: “Sorry. I do not know why there was metal at or near the heat of fusion at ground zero after the collapse (just out of curiosity, could you provide me with a reference as to evidence of molten metal at ground zero?).”
No problem.
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091201moltenmetal#a091201moltenmetal
Slartibartfast: “I believe that the theory that the WTC was brought down by thermite charges implausible due the extremely (in my opinion) unlikely premises that must be fulfilled for this theory to stand up.”
There you go again inserting premises into the argument that bear no relevance whatsoever to the evidence and claims at bar.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13049
Slartibartfast: “Why thermite? It’s not an explosive, nor is it used for purposes of demolition (it takes time to act – not what you want for a precisely controlled and timed demolition). Why would the WTC have been rigged with thermite charges? When was it done? How was it done without anyone’s notice? If it was done as a safety measure (as someone here suggested – itself one of the least likely theories I’ve ever heard), the who approved it and who paid for it? Without (plausible) answers to these questions, the assertion that molten metal at ground zero implies that the building was taken down by thermite charges (which would make it, as far as I can tell, the first building ever brought down this way) seems less likely (to me, anyway) than the theory that the combination of structural damage and loss of fire protection from the impact, heat from the fires led to the collapse.”
First, you need to learn the basic laws of thermodynamics, heat exchanges & phase changes; to say the least. Why? Well since you’re defending an ‘official explanation’ that I’m claiming is false, let’s begin with the definition of truth; shall we?
Kant: “The question, famed of old, by which logicians were
supposed to be driven into a corner, obliged either to have
recourse to a pitiful sophism, or to confess their ignorance
and consequently the emptiness of their whole art, is the
question: What is truth? The nominal definition of truth,
that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object, is
assumed as granted; the question asked is as to what is
the general and sure criterion of the truth of any and every
knowledge.”
Since we’re not so much concerned with epistemology, excepting by analogy as to the validity of “sources,” let’s reiterate the definition of truth:
“The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object, is assumed as granted…”
So, when there is agreement between knowledge and its object, we call it truth. Example: The law of gravity. The ‘knowledge’ as expressed within the equation conforms with and explains the object of our analysis; e.g., although apocryphal, the apple falling on Newton’s head. Thus the law of gravity is ‘true.’
But what do we call the result when there is a gap between knowledge and its object? Well, since it doesn’t fit the definition of truth, unless we’re discussing fraud or deception, it doesn’t matter what we call it so long as we deem it as NOT TRUE.
Now recall that I said you needed to learn and understand, or refresh your recollection of, the basic laws of thermodynamics, heat exchanges & phase changes. Why? Because once you understand the GRAND CANYON GAP between the ‘knowledge’ as expressed in the ‘official story’ and the ‘object’ of analysis, i.e. the existence of metal at or near the heat of fusion under towers 1, 2 and building 7, your ONLY conclusion would be that the official story is … untrue.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, much less all your speculations about who what or why, do not even approach the analysis required to, how shall we say, account for ‘the gap between knowledge and its object here.’
Since neither jet fuel nor textiles found within office buildings, etc., could ever account for that much heat, perhaps you can understand why I wasn’t surprised when active thermitic material was discovered in dust at ground zero.
Slarti:
“Don’t worry, I still have hope that you can understand that the unregulated market is an unmitigated horror and that proper regulations can produce stability and predictable, desirable results. Then we’ll figure out how to pay off the national debt…”
I guess I must have missed something, the Fed is a regulatory agency – it regulates interest rates.
And what do you think taxes are? They regulate behaviour. Why do you think a government can regulate behaviour so that the proper outcome is achieved? You are hung up on this positive feedback thing.
You are trying to control human behaviour and you cannot do it within the bounds of a free society. To control an economy you must control a population and that is exactly what has been going on for many years. A free market is necessary for a free society and vice versa.
Political freedom and economic freedom are corollaries of each other. If you do not have one you do not have the other.
We have a highly regulated economy. One of the reasons that you had problems (financial) is that people were trying to get around government regulations in the financial markets. Regulations were and are causing artificial financial vehicles to be created.
You cant control a market and expect a good result.
One last thought on positive feedback, I have children and I give them lots of positive feedback and guess what they are both great kids and thriving. They haven’t “spun” out of control.
You are dealing with human behaviour, you are not dealing with a closed system scientific experiment.
A mans very nature is to be free, it is the human condition. We are not hard wired to be controlled. We don’t like it, we react against it.
Although I suppose some of us like being controlled more than others because they are afraid of the consequences of freedom and liberty – which is failure and the realization that life isn’t fair.
Bob,
Okay, it’s taken me a while to get up to speed here, but I’m there now. I apologize for the inelegance of my arguments to date. I’m not a trained lawyer, I’m a scientist and I did a poor job of separating remarks about your allegations from premises that I was suggesting were required for the controlled demolition (CD) conspiracy theory. Again, I apologize, and I will try to be clear in what my remarks are referring to. As a scientist, one thing I feel confident in doing is evaluating the scientific credibility of things like theories about the collapse of the WTC and this is what makes me believe that the controlled demolition theory is about as sound as citing Vattel’s definition of natural born citizen. To make my position clear: I accept that there were fires and molten metal at ground zero for at least 12 weeks after 9/11 as fact; I accept that dust was found at ground zero that was similar to the residue of thermite; I believe that the official theory of impact plus loss of fire-resistant insulation plus fire being the causes of the collapse (NIST’s report) best fits the observed facts of the collapse; and I believe that the theory of CD is so unlikely as to be impossible. Here is a link to a paper by Brent Blanchard, Senior Editor for Implosionworld.com and Director of Field Operations at Protec Documentation Services, Inc. and an authority on explosive demolition:
http://www.jod911.com/WTC%20COLLAPSE%20STUDY%20BBlanchard%208-8-06.pdf
Quoting from his conclusion:
“With all due respect to distinguished scholars and others alike, it matters little whether Alex Jones is drawing parallels to building implosions, Steven Jones is drawing conclusions from hot metal or Chuck Jones is drawing dynamite in the hands of Wile E. Coyote; for assertions to be credible the must eventually comply with the scientific principles of explosive initiation and of structural failure, realistic judgements of probability, and indisputable visual evidence.
Thus far, every assertion we have investigated scores a resounding 0 for 3.”
This should provide you with the reasons that I think that CD is not a credible theory of the collapse. As to molten metal at ground zero, I will just note that something like 1 trillion joules of energy was released in the collapse each towers – equivalent to more than 500 tons of TNT. That’s about one tenth of the energy released in the Hiroshima explosion. That could certainly be the source of quite a bit of heat. While I read an article years ago suggesting that the residue identified as nano-thermite was the result of the plastic of tens of thousands of computers burning, I can’t find the reference now, so I will just cite that as evidence that I have seen alternate theories of this residue without asserting anything about the credibility of this theory. My confidence in the NIST report is based on many sources both scholarly and on the web which support the NIST account as well as being very credible to me.
You quoted me as saying:
“I believe that the theory that the WTC was brought down by thermite charges implausible due the extremely (in my opinion) unlikely premises that must be fulfilled for this theory to stand up.”
And replied”
“There you go again inserting premises into the argument that bear no relevance whatsoever to the evidence and claims at bar.”
I trust that I have now made my position clear. If not, I’ll gladly clarify it.
You said:
“First, you need to learn the basic laws of thermodynamics, heat exchanges & phase changes; to say the least.”
I understand these things fairly well, thank you.
You said:
“Why? Well since you’re defending an ‘official explanation’ that I’m claiming is false, let’s begin with the definition of truth; shall we?
[...]
“The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of knowledge with its object, is assumed as granted…” [from Kant]
So, when there is agreement between knowledge and its object, we call it truth. Example: The law of gravity. The ‘knowledge’ as expressed within the equation conforms with and explains the object of our analysis; e.g., although apocryphal, the apple falling on Newton’s head. Thus the law of gravity is ‘true.’
But what do we call the result when there is a gap between knowledge and its object? Well, since it doesn’t fit the definition of truth, unless we’re discussing fraud or deception, it doesn’t matter what we call it so long as we deem it as NOT TRUE.”
Accepted.
You said:
“Now recall that I said you needed to learn and understand, or refresh your recollection of, the basic laws of thermodynamics, heat exchanges & phase changes. Why? Because once you understand the GRAND CANYON GAP between the ‘knowledge’ as expressed in the ‘official story’ and the ‘object’ of analysis, i.e. the existence of metal at or near the heat of fusion under towers 1, 2 and building 7, your ONLY conclusion would be that the official story is … untrue.”
I have spent time refreshing my memory of the WTC collapse and once again looking at several sources on both sides of the issue and I certainly don’t reach these conclusions. While I don’t know what exactly caused metal to melt and remain molten (presumably near fires which were also burning) for weeks or months after 9/11, I see no reason to prefer the theory that this required thermite (or any other incendiary or explosive compound) over the theory that the release of 1/10 th the energy of the Hiroshima bomb could have supplied the heat. Furthermore, the ‘Grand Canyon gap’ between the ‘knowledge’ as expressed in the CD theory and the ‘object’ of analysis, i.e. the observed facts of the collapse. This is were all of the premises I’ve raised come in – according to undisputed facts, the collapse (in both towers) began at the area of impact (rather than the bottom of the building as in CD), meaning that for demolition to be involved, charges would have had to be placed on these floors AFTER impact (and doing this during a rescue operation on a burning section of the building with the fire department had decided not to fight strains credulity past the breaking point) or the charges (and their detonators) had to survive the impact of the planes and the subsequent fires (far more improbable than anything I’ve suggested). And since I have seen no facts which contradict the NIST report’s theory of the collapse, my only conclusion is that the CD theory is untrue and the NIST report is reasonable.
You said:
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, much less all your speculations about who what or why, do not even approach the analysis required to, how shall we say, account for ‘the gap between knowledge and its object here.’”
I see it differently, based on what I have seen and read. I feel I’ve explained my position and established the evidence by which I came to those conclusions, if you would like to continue this discussion in that context, that’s fine with me. I cannot state unequivocally that there was no thermite present in the rubble, but I don’t believe that it is the only available theory to explain the facts and as for the CD theory, as you said, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…”.
You said:
“Since neither jet fuel nor textiles found within office buildings, etc., could ever account for that much heat, perhaps you can understand why I wasn’t surprised when active thermitic material was discovered in dust at ground zero.”
I don’t accept that active thermitic material was discovered in dust at ground zero and I believe that 2 trillion joules is a lot of heat…
Bdaman,
You said:
“Slartibartfast: I don’t know what Bob said at 6:31 but it looks like you were sitting on a high horse and he took his lance and knocked you right the F@#@ off.
Good job Bob an education is a terrible thing to waste.”
My previous post is an example of what you can do with an education and a rational position supported by evidence. You should try it some time.
Robert,
For a more complete statement of my position and what it’s based on, see my post to Bob, but I thought that I would add some comments about your latest post.
You said:
“Look into nanothermite. Not only is it possible, remnants of nanothermite were found in the WTC dust.”
As I said to Bob, I don’t accept that the residue that was found was indisputably nanothermite, and I totally reject the idea that thermite or explosives were used to trigger the collapse in any way.
You said:
“Why hasn’t anyone come forward about installing nanothermite? It was a top-secret installation, paid for by secret funds. Do you expect to find a list of national security projects and the allocation of funding to each? People with top-secret clearances don’t spill the beans. Why would they? There’s a good chance that the same type of devices are installed in other skyscrapers. Coming forward would endanger the other buildings.”
Given that there is no evidence that the towers were brought down by controlled demolition and plenty of evidence that they weren’t, speculating about how and why the charges were placed is pretty much moot, so I wont try to answer you systematically, but here are a few comments: the idea that some government black-ops agency decided that there needed to be charges to take down the WTC in the event of an attack to prevent it from toppling over is ludicrous on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start, but a couple of the most obvious problems are why would anyone expect the buildings to topple over if the footings were compromised? That’s not the way that a gravitational collapse of a building works – see the report I linked on my post to Bob if you like more info from a demolition expert. And why, if the whole building was rigged with charges, were only the charges on the impact floors, not the whole building? (Cutting charges anywhere besides the immediate area of the impact are not consistent with the observed facts of the collapse.)
You said:
“Automatic initiation would require input from a number of sensors. This would prevent accidental initiation on failure or tamper(ing).”
Sure, whatever you say.
You said:
“As for your “one-button” premise. I agree. What about two buttons? (This one is important for you to respond to.)”
No, I would never rig the largest office buildings in the world to demolish itself at the push of any number of buttons and I challenge you to find a single structural engineer who wouldn’t laugh you out of the room at this suggestion.
You said:
“Who would have performed the installation? A government contractor. The U.S. Government would have paid for it.
“The kerosene fireball was quite sufficient to set other things on fire.”
So we don’t have a combination of kerosene and other items. We have kerosene that lit those other items. How much heat was transferred by the kerosene-fueled flame ball? These fires were not extremely hot fires (relatively speaking) The color of the smoke indicates that they were starved.”
The building was unequivocally on fire – the NYFD explicitly made the decision not to fight the fires, this implies to me that they were pretty significant blazes if they didn’t try to put them out in order to save the people above the impact area. What do you think that a plot of the load bearing capacity of a steel girder vs. its temperature looks like? (I think that it weakens continuously until it gets hot enough to fail entirely.) The added load from columns knocked out by the impact and a degradation of the structural integrity of the I-beams due to the heat of an office fire (plus any leftover kerosene and inflammables from the planes – plain old plane crashes can have significant fire even if the fuel doesn’t ignite) are perfectly reasonable explanations for the girders failing.
Slarti,
I generally have no issue with many of the items you have brought up. This is why I’ve always kept to the “present by skeptical” stance on this issue. The “secret demolition” plan seems as tenuous to me as the possibility of a non-engineered collapse. Retrofitting every building over X high without it becoming public knowledge just wouldn’t happen – too many people, too much public paper required for a cover up, too many non-compliant owners that would raise a stink, etc. A few buildings? That, however, is quite possible. I also agree once energy is being transferred that past minimal thresholds some sort of damage/failure occurs. None of what you say addresses the likelihood of specific sequence (a known feature of CD) other than to brush it off as unimportant related to failure. While not all failures are equal, again, it’s not the failure that bothers me. It’s the order of it. And as to two planes leading to a collapse in two other buildings, you should know both that two is a weak sample space (just as a matter of statistical operation) and that it’s a facile comparison for this reason – no two buildings are alike. They are snowflakes. Even if designed the same, the realities of the construction world aren’t as neat and tidy as the paper world. Every site poses a challenge no one in the design process thought of. It just happens. Every job has something that is 1) ugly 2) not part of the design spec and 3) done out of necessity. The only way to accurately address the probabilities here is on a conditional/component basis. By this I mean from a synthesis of probability of individual component failure weighted by local conditions contrasted to the likelihood equal distribution of fuel/oxygen to create failure conditions within “CD critical” supports within the timeframes required for the collapse to be ordered. For example of a fail in this respect, there was a recent story about a demolition gone wrong where half the charges didn’t go off and the building fell over – not down. Like I said, I have energy deficiency issues. Just not so much net joules. My issues are in uneven distribution of accelerant. An asymmetrical event causing symmetrical behavior of a liquid/gas just rubs me the wrong way (and I admit I’m too lazy to go work out this compound probability myself, this is instinct at work here). If the distribution was equal? I’d have less problem with the timing as an orderly distribution would be more likely to produce orderly failures. For a CD to happen, things need to fail both quickly but relatively contemporaneous and in sequence. You are right about a lot things Slarti. You have a fine mind as does Bob and you both present compelling arguments. Neither are conclusory though in concerns to my questions about distribution (although Bob’s comes closer, this is by happenstance of initial starting points in your relative positions to mine).
I’ll retain my skepticism, but I leave you with a (rhetorical)question and a simpler problem within this net compound probability problem. What’s the probability that in a transfer of such force a liquid designed to not go aerisol from liquid easily (as jet fuel is) being distributed evenly? Keep in mind both the nature of liquids vs. gases (at that height, one would flow to gravity but the other would be fighting against the winds) and that there would be supervening structure interfering with that flow.
Again, I’m not yea or nay. I’m present but skeptical with a healthy dose of “it’s not past an evil bastard like Cheney.”
In the end though, I am going to draw an analogy to the physical person of Christ.
What difference does it make?
Real or not, there is social impact regardless of cause. Besides, it’s not like we don’t all actually know who was behind the 9/11 attack, orderly collapse or not – Saudi Arabia and the Bush/Cheney Big Oink, er, Oil machine did it (either explicit or complicit – makes no difference, treason is treason even if you use foreign actors to do the dirty deed proper). CD or anomaly, there will be no justice until those criminals are taken out. And I mean “taken out” as in “taken out and shot after a nice long through trial”. No gaming the system once found guilty (and they would be on the evidence), not 20 years of appeals while under house arrest or some nonsense bullshit like that – just taken out and shot like the rabid venal dogs they are once the blood of innocents is clearly shown on their hands. Treasonous traitors deserve EXACTLY that. But I digress.
So in he end, this is perhaps arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin – entertaining, but ultimately beside the point as other less disputed evidence points to the guilty parties in this instance. Winning the war against fascism is more important than winning any single battle. Whether Obama has the balls to do anything about 9/11 crimes or not – which he manifestly does not have at this point – is another question. If Obama wasn’t in on it? He is now by protecting Yoo. It’s all part of the Big Oil conspiracy. Got to cover up those crimes done in furtherance of their agenda, don’t you know. And arguing about this topic is a distraction from that much more timely (and still possibly correctable) error.
______
As a personal aside to all the regulars, I have been called away on family business. That, combined with this being a busy time of year for business and holiday reasons, my postings may be of a somewhat uneven distribution as well until after the holidays. Those of you in contact via e-mail, know I will be answering that even if I am not posting.
Buddha,
Since your not contesting me on the facts and my opinions are just that no matter how confident I am in them, I’ll try to keep this response brief (at least for me). I think that even my disagreement with Bob is mostly limited to him believing that some compound like thermite was needed to generate the lingering heat and my assertion that the gravitational energy of collapse plus exothermic reactions in the debris were sufficient to account for the observed heat (Robert is a different story (and Bdaman is a troll
)). First, a few things about CD – while the WTC collapse ‘looked like’ CD I think this is just an artifact due to the extreme height of the buildings (they were four times the size of the largest building ever brought down by CD – 25 stories) and the fact that the buildings disappeared into their own pyroclastic clouds well above ground level. Theses buildings didn’t collapse into their own footprint, the debris field extended 300 to 400 feet from the building’s footprint (longest in the directions extending out from the face of the buildings). I thought that the report I posted by a demolition expert did a very good job of explaining the differences between what was observed and what would have been observed if the buildings were taken down by CD. In particular, I think that his argument that the only place charges could have been used was in the impact zone (in CD the supports at the bottom of the building are cut causing the collapse to start there – in the WTC the collapse began at the impact zone, in both cases – in fact in all building collapses – gravity does all of the work) very persuasive.
You said:
“For a CD to happen, things need to fail both quickly but relatively contemporaneous and in sequence.”
As I understand it, in CD you cut the lower supports (quickly with explosives – not slowly with thermite) and gravity does the rest – there may be some charges on higher floors to guide the fall, but the sequence is always remove the supports from the bottom of the building -> building falls down. There are other facts (not in dispute) that haven’t been brought up here that are consistent with the NIST report and not CD (such as the buckling of the facade below the impact immediately before the collapse), but I wanted to make a comment about something that has been discussed here (although not by you): there has been a lot of talk about the buildings being designed to withstand exactly this kind of impact (which it was), to which my only reply is: the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable and we all know how that turned out. The best design in the world can’t always account for the thing you didn’t think of (in this case the removal of the fire-resistant insulation by the impact. You raise the question of distribution of jet fuel and while I have no insight into question of dispersal of liquid, I will note that it dispersed well enough and evenly enough to cause the huge fireballs that were observed and it seems likely that said fireball ignited many fires (especially in light of the fact that NYFD explicitly decided not to fight the fires).
You said:
“None of what you say addresses the likelihood of specific sequence (a known feature of CD) other than to brush it off as unimportant related to failure.”
What we know here is that some sequence of events will happen (and that sequence will always be very improbable beforehand – it’s unlikely that you will win the lottery, but certain that someone will) and that the (known) sequence of events characteristic of CD (cut the support at the bottom and let gravity take the building into its own footprint) did not happen here. While I agree that two (or three) is a small sample size, I think that the argument “no buildings of this type ever collapsed from fire before this” to be disingenuous at best (I know that you’ve not said this). No buildings were every hit by fully loaded airliners (or gutted by falling debris) before. This was a unique event and as such the only reasonable statistical universe is these two (or three) buildings, meaning all we can say is that of the two buildings hit by 767s, both of them collapsed. While this is (as you said) a weak sample space, it’s all we’ve got.
As an addendum to what I said to Bob about heat possibly being generated by 1/10th the energy of the Hiroshima bomb being released in the collapse, I would like to add that at temperatures above 400 deg C iron and steam undergo a vigorous exothermic reaction. Between the gravitational energy released and the constant water being sprayed on the rubble pile, this seems a possible, even likely, source of the heat that Bob is referring to.
I have (until now I guess) limited my comments to the collapse and the premises required by the CD conspiracy theory, but since you brought it up, a few comments:
You said:
‘I’m present but skeptical with a healthy dose of “it’s not past an evil bastard like Cheney.”‘
I find it hard to argue with that – I see Cheney as the Machiavellian Sith lord and President Bush as the incompetent sidekick, but I think that Cheney’s evil runs more towards expanding executive power (and the torture, don’t forget the torture) than executing a false flag operation to get us into a war he wanted (I find it easy to believe that he would ignore the warnings and make full use of the crisis for his own – evil – ends). To me something like, say, allowing Osama bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora because his capture would reduce support for the Iraq war is more his style.
I think your Christ analogy has a lot of truth to it, although (just like the birther movement) a lot of time and money has been wasted on unrealistic claims – skepticism is good, but when it crosses into fanaticism, I’ve got a problem with it.
Okay, this was not a brief response.
Sorry, I just get carried away sometimes. I hope your family business goes well and your holidays are joyous.
Slartibartfast: “Okay, it’s taken me a while to get up to speed here, but I’m there now. I apologize for the inelegance of my arguments to date. I’m not a trained lawyer, I’m a scientist and I did a poor job of separating remarks about your allegations from premises that I was suggesting were required for the controlled demolition (CD) conspiracy theory.”
Since we’re not discussing the elements of the inchoate (incomplete) crime of ‘conspiracy’ I’ll ask you to refrain from using that term.
Slartibartfast: “Again, I apologize, and I will try to be clear in what my remarks are referring to. As a scientist, one thing I feel confident in doing is evaluating the scientific credibility of things like theories about the collapse of the WTC and this is what makes me believe that the controlled demolition theory is about as sound as citing Vattel’s definition of natural born citizen.”
Seeing that the constitution, since its inception, has always made it clear that states elect presidents and reiterated this fact in Amendment XII, and since the state of Hawaii, acting on Equal Footing as the 13 original colonies stated that Obama was one of its natural born citizens, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the birther movement. I do however find a slight resemblance between Brent Blanchard and Orly Taitz. While Blanchard may not be an idiot on par with Taitz, he does rely heavily on intellectual dishonesty and fallacious reasoning to make his points as discussed in detail here:
http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/blanchard/index.html
Slartibartfast: “To make my position clear: I accept that there were fires and molten metal at ground zero for at least 12 weeks after 9/11 as fact”
You’re half way home.
Slartibartfast: “I accept that dust was found at ground zero that was similar to the residue of thermite”
“Similar?” By what grounds do you make that distinction in light of this:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13049
Slartibartfast: “I believe that the official theory of impact plus loss of fire-resistant insulation plus fire being the causes of the collapse (NIST’s report) best fits the observed facts of the collapse”
I see; and how do you reconcile your statement, to wit: “I accept that there were fires and molten metal at ground zero for at least 12 weeks after 9/11 as fact” WITH spokesman and one of lead engineers at NIST denying any knowledge the fact that you accepted above? Don’t believe me, look up ‘John Gross denies existence of molten metal’ on youtube and see for yourself.
Slartibartfast: “and I believe that the theory of CD is so unlikely as to be impossible. Here is a link to a paper by Brent Blanchard … This should provide you with the reasons that I think that CD is not a credible theory of the collapse.”
And the link I provided you above saves me the typing to explain why you should pick your sources more carefully.1
Slartibartfast: “As to molten metal at ground zero, I will just note that something like 1 trillion joules of energy was released in the collapse each towers – equivalent to more than 500 tons of TNT. That’s about one tenth of the energy released in the Hiroshima explosion. That could certainly be the source of quite a bit of heat.”
One trillion joules you say? Was it heat energy or kinetic energy? Is it your contention that I can light a fire in the woods by simply stacking enough wood on high, i.e. adding more and more potential energy, and create a fire by knocking it down, i.e. converting potential into kinetic energy (measured in joules?) A whole bunch of steel & concrete packed with potential energy up to the sky suddenly falls and PRESTO we have heat energy in lieu of kinetic energy? Are you kidding me?
Slartibartfast: “I will just cite that as evidence that I have seen alternate theories of this residue without asserting anything about the credibility of this theory.”
Since science would be worthless if were not refutable, thank you Karl Popper, then by all means sir; bring that evidence forward.
Slartibartfast: You said: “First, you need to learn the basic laws of thermodynamics, heat exchanges & phase changes; to say the least.” I understand these things fairly well, thank you.
Then why would you confuse kinetic energy for heat energy? Simply because they’re both measured in joules; or did you find the ‘joules’ segue a convenient method of concealing a flaw in your argument?
Slartibartfast: “I have spent time refreshing my memory of the WTC collapse and once again looking at several sources on both sides of the issue and I certainly don’t reach these conclusions. While I don’t know what exactly caused metal to melt and remain molten (presumably near fires which were also burning) for weeks or months after 9/11, I see no reason to prefer the theory that this required thermite (or any other incendiary or explosive compound) over the theory that the release of 1/10 th the energy of the Hiroshima bomb could have supplied the heat.”
Once again, not to cause any ‘friction,’ but kinetic energy does not necessitate heat energy.
Furthermore, I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about re: placing explosives at the points of impact during the event. Also, you seem to be adopting Blanchard’s assumption assumption that all demolitions have to be engineered in the same way as those designed to implode buildings with minimal collateral damage.
Slartibartfast: “I don’t accept that active thermitic material was discovered in dust at ground zero and I believe that 2 trillion joules is a lot of heat…”
Blanchard wrote that cherry picked fallacious piece in 2006; the paper proving the existence of thermitic material found in the dust wasn’t published until April of 2009.
Also, you’re a bit fast and loose with your joules; what’s a trillion joules among friends; right?
Once again, kinetic energy is not heat energy and heat energy is not temperature.
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Bob,
Are you kidding me? First when I don’t recognize a jargon term you denigrate my knowledge of science and suggest I can’t understand what you’re saying (I can and do). Then you accuse me of committing a logical fallacy when I wasn’t. Then you lecture me about Kant and the definition of truth and proceed to use that to obscure the truth by applying it narrowly. Finally you unload two whoppers in a single post: an implication that I don’t understand energy that would get a failing grade from a bad first year physics student and an assertion that I’m not allowed to bring up CD conspiracy theories (presumably because you are embarrassed to be associated with them).
Now I’m going to have to lecture a bit here, as you need someone to instruct you. I’ll try to keep things as simple as possible so you can understand. From wikipedia:
“In physics, energy (from the Greek ἐνέργεια – energeia, “activity, operation”, from ἐνεργός – energos, “active, working”[1]) is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force, an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law. Different forms of energy include kinetic, potential, thermal, gravitational, sound, light, elastic, and electromagnetic energy. The forms of energy are often named after a related force.
Any form of energy can be transformed into another form, but the total energy always remains the same. This principle, the conservation of energy, was first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system. ”
Okay, now that we know what energy is, lets talk about specific kinds. Objects get gravitational energy (or gravitational potential energy – GPE) via their height above the Earth. This potential is given by the equation E=mgh (Energy is equal to mass times the acceleration due to gravity (~10m/s^2) times height. From the paper “Good Science and 9-11 demolition Theories” we get that the GPE of ONE of the twin tower was estimated to be 1.139 x 10^12 Joules – that’s a little over one trillion Joules, approximately the same as 270 tons of TNT (I made an error by a factor of two – accidentally factoring in the number of towers twice – in a previous post). Thus the twin towers had a total of TWO trillion Joules of GPE, which is about as much as 540 tons of TNT. This is about 1/20th the 12-14 kiloton yield of the Hiroshima atomic bomb (my aforementioned mistake caused my to say 1/10th in a previous post, sorry).
At 6am September 11, 2001 that GPE was stored in the WTC. Later in the day all of that GPE was pretty much gone (there was still some GPE in the rubble pile). What happened to it? Upon structural failure of the building, it was transformed into kinetic energy (energy of motion). But the rubble pile didn’t have any of that kinetic energy, so where did it go? The answer is into pulverizing concrete (and other things) AND THERMAL ENERGY (i.e. heat). There is plenty of energy here (1/20th the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb) to do both. If you don’t think that kinetic energy can be converted into thermal energy in this way, ask yourself what happens when a meteor hits the earth. If all of this GPE were converted into kinetic energy, it would be sufficient to melt 1,000 metric tonnes of steel. (Additionally, the kinetic energy of the faster plane on its own would have been enough to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel. You should realize that this energy was stored in the aluminum hull of the aircraft – we’ll get back to that later.) This should convince you that GPE (and the kinetic energy of the planes) is a source of heat that must be considered.
So we have 3 potential sources of heat for iron in the rubble: 1)Fire (both before and after the collapse); 2) GPE converted to kinetic energy and then converted to heat energy on impact; and 3) exothermic reactions in the rubble pile (I’ve suggested the reaction of steam with hot iron – two substances in plentiful supply in the rubble – this reaction also gives off hydrogen, which itself undergoes an exothermic reaction in the presence of oxygen…). I think these sources can reasonably account for all of the heat seen in the debris, including all of your molten metal. (My personal favorite is a picture – not in the article you posted, but widely touted on 9/11 truther sites – purporting to show workers clustered around a pool of molten iron. This picture is notable in that one of the worker’s legs are actually in the glow of the ‘molten iron’ and show a noticeable lack of being on fire – asbestos Levi’s, I guess…)
You said:
“Since we’re not discussing the elements of the inchoate (incomplete) crime of ‘conspiracy’ I’ll ask you to refrain from using that term.”
From now on I will refer to IFT (impact fire theory) and CDT (controlled demolition theory), however, in the interest of truth (as you so helpfully defined) there are aspects of conspiracy that we cannot ignore. This is because of your clear implication that evidence for thermite is evidence of CD (otherwise it’s irrelevant) and the fact that the CDT necessitates some form of conspiracy to have taken place. We cannot possible decide if the CDT agrees with the object (the collapse of the WTC and aftermath) without considering possible conspiracies which could have resulted in the collapse. I understand your wish to narrowly focus on molten metal and possible evidence of thermite to avoid being associated with CDT conspiracy theories, but that is not the object of inquiry here, the object here is the collapse of the WTC and aftermath. The test of a theory is not how well it accounts for a specific fact, but how well it accounts for all of the facts. (In science we attempt to strictly control the number of facts in an experiment in order to make it easier to determine the truth of our experiments, unfortunately that cannot be done here.) It’s easy to come up with a theory that explains a particular fact (I myself have developed a hypothesis regarding molten metal involving invisible alien landsharks with laser beams strapped to their heads which perfectly explains all of the observed molten metal), but that doesn’t make that theory a consistent part of an explanation of the collapse.
Here are just a few problems that the CDT suffers from and dubious conjectures associated with it.
1) Apparent molten metal being ejected from the vicinity of the impact pre-collapse.
People who support the CDT take this to be iron and start making back of the envelope calculations purporting to show how this can’t be possible without thermite, yada, yada, yada… But wait, was iron the only metal around it quantity? Hmmm… I seem to recall some aluminum with a planeload of kinetic energy stored in it. I wonder what could have happened to that?
2) On this thread people have been suggesting that office materials, computers and building materials cannot burn sufficiently hot to do things like melt iron.
This seems to conveniently ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room – the airplane. There have been airplane crashes where the fuel tanks remained intact, yet resulted in fire hot enough to melt the entire aluminum skin of the aircraft. There were many different inflammables in the impact zone which could easily have unknown synergistic effects. Not to mention enough kinetic energy to melt 4 metric tonnes of iron.
3) The north tower was hit earlier and more seriously (it was hit pretty much on center and the south tower was hit in the corner), yet the south tower fell first. (This is a common argument among the proponents of the CDT.)
Well, I think that the fact that the south tower had twice the weight bearing on the impact zone that the north tower might have made a difference (The south tower was hit 30 stories from the top, the north only 15).
4) There wasn’t sufficient energy to pulverize all of the concrete observed. (Another common CDT argument.)
I’ve established that there was plenty of energy available for this (1/20th of the Hiroshima blast), but there are a couple of ridiculous corollaries that should be mentioned. First, if additional explosive force was required, this would necessitate 1000 tons of TNT (or its equivalent) to merely triple the available energy – that’s a lot of explosives to hide even with more powerful, modern explosives. That’s not taking into account that explosives are not used for this purpose in CD – in CD, explosives are used to cut the supporting structure, gravity does the rest. Could the collapse of a building over four times taller than the tallest building which has ever been imploded do a more thorough job? We are essentially considering the gravitational collapse of a building 20% taller than any ever felled by CD on top of an 80 story building. Should it surprise us that it was more violent than any collapse previously seen?
These are just some of the issues were the knowledge contained in the CDT fails to match the object of the WTC collapse and aftermath. Taken as a whole, there is no CDT that agrees with the observed facts even close to as well as the IFT does. That being the case, my opinion that the IFT is far closer to the truth than the CDT is on very solid ground. If you’re willing to admit that the twin towers (and WTC 7) were not felled by CD, I’ll take an Alford plea on thermite and we can both walk away. If not, then while I’m sure you are a fine litigator, you make one lousy scientist.
A final note to clear up some of your misconceptions. You closed your post with the statement:
“Once again, kinetic energy is not heat energy and heat energy is not temperature.”
Kinetic energy and heat energy are two types of energy. Types of energy can be transformed into other types of energy – i.e. a meteor hitting the earth (or a building collapse) transforms much of its kinetic energy into thermal (heat) energy, and a steam engine is a device for turning thermal energy into kinetic energy. Temperature is a measure of the thermal energy contained in an object. Here endeth the lesson.
Slarti:
Very good, well said. Although I agree with your assessment. But in any event you did cover the energy thingy quite well.
I did not know there was that much potential energy, I knew it was a pot full though. The meteorite hitting the earth was a good analogy and one I haven’t seen, although I only read a little bit on this as I pretty much figured it was 2 big planes that killed those people and those buildings.
Thanks Byron. I’ll try to answer your last post tonight, but since Bob was attacking my credibility as a scientist, I felt I had to answer him first. That’s what you get for being polite…
Slarti,
Thanks for the well wishes.
Bob,
I think Slarti has hit a contention that I have left alone as I am not an expert on HE and can offer no chemically compatible solution to your assertion or an alternative way to explain thermite related compounds at the site. All of my martial training is considerable more personal than bomb making and geared toward self-defense. My chemistry knowledge in the area of HE is very limited at best. Knowing the physics behind an explosion and knowing how to make explosives are two entirely different things. Since this cat is out of the bag . . . from what I have read about thermite, it truly has horrid characteristics as a demo charge. Not only does it burn slow, it’s inherently unstable. You can set of an igniter in it an it may still take time to flash (I witnesses this very phenomena on “Mythbusters” where they were doing ice myths that required them to use thermite – one charge went off as planned, the other they had to wait . . . and wait). I know its industrial application is primarily as an ice softener for construction – not exactly precision blasting. Even plain old TNT would have been a better choice than thermite in demolition. Even if the goal was just to create enough uniform softness in the steel to cause collapse that way (which could be calculated) based on compression strength rather than shattering the supports with a concussion, it’s just not the right material it seems. That also plays against sequence from a materials standpoint. Even if you planned a “slow collapse” like that, you’d still need to be able to calculate a constant heat to plan for timely failure. However, I just don’t have the chemical expertise to hazard a guess at what could form a thermite like compound and not actually be thermite. Jet fuel has a hell of a lot in it besides high octane fuel (anti-vaporizing agents, cleaners, other safety additives) let alone all the toxic and assorted other compounds that go into making a plane and a high rise complete with furnishings. It is not impossible that given it was a high energy/complex chemical compound fire that the compounds could be residual from an interaction we are not seeing. It’s not the simplest solution, but not an impossible one either. Chemistry is a funny thing. Flour and water one way is a cake. Another way, it’s glue. Another way still and it’s a brick. All dependent upon mixing conditions and relative water content and curing process. But since I cannot offer an alternative that’s less speculative than that to either explain or deny the compounds, I’ve left that topic alone. But as a demo material, I will say thermite does seem a bit odd.
Buddha,
And if you mix flour and air, it’s an explosive. I’m not sure how that fits into your analogy, but I thought I’d mention it…
Slarti:
wont any material capable of burning explode if pulverized to a fine powder? And with great effect?
They never did find much of those planes, what a horrible end for those people. Although I guess it was as instantaneous as you can get. They probably never even knew what happened, that is some small consolation.
Byron,
You said:
“wont any material capable of burning explode if pulverized to a fine powder? And with great effect?”
Yes. That’s basically the reason that fuel-air explosives are the most powerful non-nuclear bombs in the US military’s arsenal. And for what it’s worth, I would have rather been on one of the planes than in one of the towers above the impact.
Slarti,
I was trying not to ruin it for Continental Bakeries (based in KC and makers of Wonder Bread). I understand they are working on a cake flour with almond extract smart bomb for Raytheon, Sara Lee and DARPA.
And I’ve seen the aftermath of a grain elevator explosion up close. Oh yeah. Grain dusts can go boom.
Buddha,
I knew it! You’re really the Breadmaster! I bet you’ll be writing your villain laugh on your next post!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1I-NfgCNHY
Muhahhahhaha!
SPOON!
Bread
Slartibartfast,
I’ll let Bob respond to most of your post, but I think there are two things that need immediate attention:
1. The WTCs did not exist in a closed system. Energy conservation laws do not apply.
2. The Potential Energy you presented is based on the entire building. Every floor that crashed down on to the floor below it had to burn-up some if the PE and KE in order to break the next floor free.
Although I don’t agree with the Popular Mechanics story, I would like for you to look at the photo.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=4
Judging from the angle of the top floors in the photo, how was downward force applied to the back side? The weight of the top floors was only applied to some of the floors below. If the steel was weakened, why didn’t the top section just continue to fall off?
Slartibartfast: “Are you kidding me? First when I don’t recognize a jargon term you denigrate my knowledge of science and suggest I can’t understand what you’re saying (I can and do).”
That would be the concept of the heat of fusion; something as recognizable as the sight of ice melting in a glass at room temperature.
Slartibartfast: “Then you accuse me of committing a logical fallacy when I wasn’t.”
The bandwagon fallacy? ‘Poisoning the well’ via the phrase ‘conspiracy theory?’
Slartibartfast: “Then you lecture me about Kant and the definition of truth and proceed to use that to obscure the truth by applying it narrowly.”
Seeing you accepted Kant’s definition of truth, and used it yourself in your explanation, perhaps you can how I ‘obscured the truth by applying said definition so narrowly.’
Slartibartfast: “Finally you unload two whoppers in a single post: an implication that I don’t understand energy that would get a failing grade from a bad first year physics student and an assertion that I’m not allowed to bring up CD conspiracy theories (presumably because you are embarrassed to be associated with them).”
The first alleged whopper came as a result of you confusing the term ‘heat of fusion’ (i.e. the phase change of substances between solid and liquid) with heat from ‘fusion’ i.e. the reaction found within the sun. The second alleged whopper arises from my distaste of the colloquial use of the term ‘conspiracy’ (i.e. an overly informal use of the term that is incorrect). A conspiracy is one of the three inchoate crimes at common law; the others being solicitation and attempt. Have we been discussing the elements of the crime of conspiracy? Seeing we haven’t been discussing the identities of any parties, underlying crime, agreement, objective, culpable intent or whether we’re discussing a ‘wheel’ conspiracy or a ‘chain’ conspiracy, I’ll go out on a limb and say we HAVE NOT been discussing ‘CONSPIRACY THEORIES.’ Nonetheless, should you feel inclined to continue using the term ‘conspiracy theory’ within this conversation, perhaps as some lame ass backfired attempt to ‘embarrass me’ instead of yourself, then by all means have at it sir.
Slartibartfast: “Now I’m going to have to lecture a bit here, as you need someone to instruct you. I’ll try to keep things as simple as possible so you can understand. From wikipedia:
“In physics, energy (from the Greek ἐνέργεια – energeia, “activity, operation”, from ἐνεργός – energos, “active, working”[1]) is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force, an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law. Different forms of energy include kinetic, potential, thermal, gravitational, sound, light, elastic, and electromagnetic energy. The forms of energy are often named after a related force.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
Slartibartfast: “Any form of energy can be transformed into another form, but the total energy always remains the same. This principle, the conservation of energy, was first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system.”
What was that?
Slartibartfast: “Any form of energy can be transformed into another form,”
Ah, so you’re saying that one form of energy doesn’t just magically BECOME another form of energy, but it needs to undergo some form of transformation? And if the total energy always remains the same in an isolated system, I’ll bet you’re talking about the first law of thermodynamics. But seeing the world doesn’t exist in an ‘isolated system’, any CONVERSION OF ENERGY necessitates that you can’t even break even by virtue of an increase in entropy; a/k/a the second law of thermodynamics.
Slartibartfast: “Okay, now that we know what energy is, lets talk about specific kinds.”
Deeming an amount of one form of energy as the same as an amount of another form of energy, WITHOUT ACCOUNTING FOR ANY CONVERSION WHATSOEVER, isn’t science; it’s equivocation.
Here’s how you did it:
Slartibartfast: “At 6am September 11, 2001 that GPE was stored in the WTC. Later in the day all of that GPE was pretty much gone (there was still some GPE in the rubble pile). What happened to it? Upon structural failure of the building, it was transformed into kinetic energy (energy of motion). But the rubble pile didn’t have any of that kinetic energy, so where did it go?”
Gee, if I were to accept the ‘official story’ in so much as denying the possibility of any aid from, how shall we say, highly exothermic chemical reactions, I’d be constrained to say that the potential energy, converted into kinetic energy, and the aforesaid kinetic energy from the ‘collapse’ somehow managed to shred the building into pieces.
Slartibartfast: “The answer is into pulverizing concrete (and other things) AND THERMAL ENERGY (i.e. heat).”
Whoops-a-daisy; you left out that ‘conversion’ thingy again. So, how did that kinetic energy turn to heat energy?
Slartibartfast: “There is plenty of energy here (1/20th the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb) to do both.”
Sure there’s plenty of energy, but the problem Doc, is how ya gonna convert it. Speaking of Doc, remember the movie “Back To The Future” where Doc was able to convert the mass from a banana peel and some coffee grinds into energy to drive his flying Delorean? He just dumped that crap into that converter called… “Mr. Fusion” right? Nonsensical? Perhaps. But even the writers of that film knew the importance of accounting for the conversion of one form of energy into another.
Slartibartfast: “If you don’t think that kinetic energy can be converted into thermal energy in this way,”
What way? That’s just it; simply saying you have lots of energy in one form doesn’t mean you have it in another form. You have to account for its conversion; something you haven’t done here. Thus the question; WHAT WAY?
Slartibartfast: “ask yourself what happens when a meteor hits the earth. If all of this GPE were converted into kinetic energy, it would be sufficient to melt 1,000 metric tonnes of steel.”
First of all, when we’re talking about Massive meteors whizzing around space at high Velocity, are we talking about potential or kinetic energy? Second, when we talk about Massive objects traveling at great Velocities, are we talking about heat energy or kinetic energy? (Hint, the meteor heats up in the atmosphere because of something called … ‘friction’–not impact)
Slartibartfast: “(Additionally, the kinetic energy of the faster plane on its own would have been enough to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel.”
But it punched a hole in the building instead of melting it. Why? You don’t suppose it has anything to do with the absence of a conversion of that kinetic energy into heat energy do you? And not for nothing, but Flight 175 is alleged to have been traveling far faster than its max operating speed at sea level. Another time perhaps…
Slartibartfast: “You should realize that this energy was stored in the aluminum hull of the aircraft – we’ll get back to that later.) This should convince you that GPE (and the kinetic energy of the planes) is a source of heat that must be considered.”
Sure thing; once you account for the mechanism of conversion. Anything you say.
Slartibartfast: “So we have 3 potential sources of heat for iron in the rubble: 1)Fire (both before and after the collapse); 2) GPE converted to kinetic energy and then converted to heat energy on impact;”
Number one is plausible; so long as you can identify the material burning at a temperature near or above the heat of fusion for steel.
Number two, however, is potential nothing. Why? Because once again you didn’t explain how the kinetic energy was converted to heat energy.
Slartibartfast: “and 3) exothermic reactions in the rubble pile (I’ve suggested the reaction of steam with hot iron – two substances in plentiful supply in the rubble – this reaction also gives off hydrogen, which itself undergoes an exothermic reaction in the presence of oxygen…).”
Number three is also potential nothing. Why? Because you’re begging the question of the creation of heat energy from kinetic energy sans the conversion step yet again. Where are you getting your steam an hot iron from? ‘Exothermic reactions in the rubble’ — like the kind you get from thermate — evidenced in the dust found in the rubble of the WTC?
Slartibartfast: “I think these sources can reasonably account for all of the heat seen in the debris, including all of your molten metal.”
I wonder if Byron isn’t blushing by now; he tends to get nervous when I use things like logic to analyze issues.
Slartibartfast: “From now on I will refer to IFT (impact fire theory) and CDT (controlled demolition theory), however, in the interest of truth (as you so helpfully defined) there are aspects of conspiracy that we cannot ignore.”
Sure I can.
Slartibartfast: “This is because of your clear implication that evidence for thermite is evidence of CD (otherwise it’s irrelevant) and the fact that the CDT necessitates some form of conspiracy to have taken place.”
We’re talking about whether the ‘official story’ of the collapse of three buildings on 9/11/01 is TRUTHFUL or not. If the official story is proven to be false, then we need to proceed accordingly. Truth be known, the miraculous collapse of the buildings combined with the laws of physics held in abeyance on 9/11/01; much less the whitewashing of the official story don’t bring to mind the crime of conspiracy. Actually, its the flight paths of the planes and where they turned off their transponders that brings a murky treasonable design into specific relief. As one ATC put it; “they weren’t good, they were perfect!”
Slartibartfast: “We cannot possible decide if the CDT agrees with the object (the collapse of the WTC and aftermath) without considering possible conspiracies which could have resulted in the collapse.”
One thing at a time.
Slartibartfast: “I understand your wish to narrowly focus on molten metal and possible evidence of thermite to avoid being associated with CDT conspiracy theories, but that is not the object of inquiry here, the object here is the collapse of the WTC and aftermath.”
Thus my narrow focus on the topic at hand. I could discuss how the legal maxim Uno absurdo dato, infinita sequuntur — ‘One absurdity begin allowed, an infinity follow’ applies to the chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report with regards to AAL 11, but I’m don’t. Why? To stay focused of course.
Slartibartfast: “The test of a theory is not how well it accounts for a specific fact, but how well it accounts for all of the facts.”
That’s misleading; in the sense that it inspires you skip steps in the analysis of evidence available; e.g. outcome determinism.
Slartibartfast: “Here are just a few problems that the CDT suffers from and dubious conjectures associated with it.”
Since I don’t make those conjectures, and you dismiss them, why shall we discuss them?
Slartibartfast: “These are just some of the issues were the knowledge contained in the CDT fails to match the object of the WTC collapse and aftermath. Taken as a whole, there is no CDT that agrees with the observed facts even close to as well as the IFT does.”
I smell straw.
Slartibartfast: “That being the case, my opinion that the IFT is far closer to the truth than the CDT is on very solid ground.”
Actually, seeing how you base your theory on a non-existent energy conversion mechanism, I don’t see any ground whatsoever.
Slartibartfast: “If you’re willing to admit that the twin towers (and WTC 7) were not felled by CD, I’ll take an Alford plea on thermite and we can both walk away.”
You are aware that we’re talking about the possibility of a treasonable design; aren’t you? Why so glib then?
Slartibartfast: “Kinetic energy and heat energy are two types of energy. Types of energy can be transformed into other types of energy – i.e. a meteor hitting the earth (or a building collapse) transforms much of its kinetic energy into thermal (heat) energy,”
By virtue of what method of conversion? Friction in the atmosphere?
Equivocation is not a method of energy conversion.
Robert,
You said:
“I’ll let Bob respond to most of your post, but I think there are two things that need immediate attention:
1. The WTCs did not exist in a closed system. Energy conservation laws do not apply.”
First off, the law of conservation of energy always applies – when the lawyers here cite the constitution or a judge’s opinion they feel they’re on solid ground, but when I cite a law of nature, I’ve got the universe behind me. The closed system would be the twin towers (either standing or in the rubble pile). Now any energy contained in this system (namely, 2 trillion Joules of gravitational potential energy) still exists. Therefore it must either 1) leave the system, or 2) still be in the system. I have proposed 2 different destinations for this energy: pulverization of the concrete, etc. in the debris and thermal energy (i.e. heat) in the rubble pile. I can’t think of any process that would have transferred a significant amount of energy out of the system but if you know of one, feel free to let us in on it.
You said:
“2. The Potential Energy you presented is based on the entire building. Every floor that crashed down on to the floor below it had to burn-up some if the PE and KE in order to break the next floor free.”
The potential energy (again 2,000,000,000,000 Joules) was converted into kinetic energy some of which was responsible for pulverizing the structure (by smacking it with a 20 or 30 story building, essentially) and some of which was converted to heat when it hit the ground. Understand? If you want to suggest that some of it went somewhere else, you need to tell us where it went.
You said:
“Although I don’t agree with the Popular Mechanics story, I would like for you to look at the photo.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=4
Judging from the angle of the top floors in the photo, how was downward force applied to the back side? The weight of the top floors was only applied to some of the floors below. If the steel was weakened, why didn’t the top section just continue to fall off?”
Off the top of my head, I would think that this is a picture of the South Tower (the one hit on the corner, not the middle) and that the collapse started at the impact zone causing that corner of the building to begin falling first, after which (and as a direct result) the structural failure spread to the entire building and the cohesion of the building’s structure allowed the rest of the building to ‘catch up’ to the first corner. Mind you, I’m not a structural engineer or a demolition expert and that’s just off the top of my head, but that would be my first guess at the scenario.
Byron,
Don’t worry about blushing, I’ve got your back on this one, but a better response to my “SPOON!” comment would have been “NOT IN THE FACE!”.
Slartibartfast,
The towers are not a closed (or isolated) system. You cannot impose the laws of an isolated system upon an open system. If the towers were a closed system, you would be able to account for all of the energy. You can’t.
Was energy lost? It sure was. That pyroclastic flow= lost energy. The sound emitted as the tower came down= lost energy. Those projectiles thrown great distances away= lost energy. The force used to break the floors free= lost energy.
“Mind you, I’m not a structural engineer or a demolition expert and that’s just off the top of my head, but that would be my first guess at the scenario.”
I have no doubt that you are very good at your job. What is the extent of your education in the engineering field?
Robert: “Judging from the angle of the top floors in the photo, how was downward force applied to the back side? The weight of the top floors was only applied to some of the floors below. If the steel was weakened, why didn’t the top section just continue to fall off?”
Are you asking how the ‘official’ story accounts for the reverse in angular momentum of the top of the South Tower; i.e. how did the back side collapse increase so quickly as to keep the section from toppling off?
Good question. If I were from Kansas, I’d say it smacked of intelligent design.
Slartibartfast “The closed system would be the twin towers (either standing or in the rubble pile). Now any energy contained in this system (namely, 2 trillion Joules of gravitational potential energy)”
You are aware that the NASA thermograph puts the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse; aren’t you?
BTW, didn’t it bother you at all that an engineer from NIST, sent out to give a lecture at a university on what happened to those buildings on 9/11, could be completely ignorant of any ‘molten metal’ at ground zero?
How is it that both you and I know that fact but someone from NIST ‘claimed’ to have not?
That doesn’t annoy you?
Bob,
I don’t know what led you to believe that I am a troll or uneducated in physics or science, but I think that I’ve earned some respect with many of the regulars here for demonstrating my education and intelligence. I know that you are a fine lawyer and could run circles around me in a debate on the law, but you’ve wandered over to talking about physics and you’ve BADLY mis-stepped in a discussion about basic physical concepts. Just like you wouldn’t let me get away with misquoting the constitution, I wont let you get away with trying to imply that I don’t understand what I’m talking about when you clearly don’t understand physics 101. Since you are behaving like a child, I’m going to have to get pedantic on your ass.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Are you kidding me? First when I don’t recognize a jargon term you denigrate my knowledge of science and suggest I can’t understand what you’re saying (I can and do).”
That would be the concept of the heat of fusion; something as recognizable as the sight of ice melting in a glass at room temperature.”
As I said before I always understood the concept, I had just never come across the term before. Do you know all the terms in all of the jargons in the world?
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Then you accuse me of committing a logical fallacy when I wasn’t.”
The bandwagon fallacy? ‘Poisoning the well’ via the phrase ‘conspiracy theory?’”
Yes, I used the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to refer to a theory that involved a conspiracy. How am I supposed to refer to the theory that there was a conspiracy to bring down the WTC using CD?
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Then you lecture me about Kant and the definition of truth and proceed to use that to obscure the truth by applying it narrowly.”
Seeing you accepted Kant’s definition of truth, and used it yourself in your explanation, perhaps you can how I ‘obscured the truth by applying said definition so narrowly.’”
You limited the scope of the inquiry to ‘thermic material’ found it the rubble while touting it as evidence that the IFT (impact fire theory) was wrong and the CDT (controlled demolition theory) was correct. Clearly the ‘object’ to which we are comparing ‘knowledge’ must include the WTC collapse and aftermath, the object of both the IFT and the CDT.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast [quoting wikipedia]: “Any form of energy can be transformed into another form, but the total energy always remains the same. This principle, the conservation of energy, was first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system.”
What was that?”
It says that one kind of energy can be transformed into another kind of energy, but you can’t create or destroy energy. Furthermore, we’ve know about this for about 200 years.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Any form of energy can be transformed into another form,”
Ah, so you’re saying that one form of energy doesn’t just magically BECOME another form of energy, but it needs to undergo some form of transformation? And if the total energy always remains the same in an isolated system, I’ll bet you’re talking about the first law of thermodynamics. But seeing the world doesn’t exist in an ‘isolated system’, any CONVERSION OF ENERGY necessitates that you can’t even break even by virtue of an increase in entropy; a/k/a the second law of thermodynamics.”
I’ll introduce you into a magical machine for transforming energy in a bit, but first I need to clear up a misconception. While thermodynamics is all about energy, energy is not all about thermodynamics. When I’m talking about the law of conservation of energy, I’m talking about a basic principle of physics. If you weren’t taught that in your first physics course, you should get your money back. Conservation laws are the workhorses of physics, you should really learn about them. Also, you need to be careful in applying the laws of thermodynamics to the WTC collapse as their only valid for systems near equilibrium which doesn’t always obtain in this case.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Okay, now that we know what energy is, lets talk about specific kinds.”
Deeming an amount of one form of energy as the same as an amount of another form of energy, WITHOUT ACCOUNTING FOR ANY CONVERSION WHATSOEVER, isn’t science; it’s equivocation.”
Like I said, I have a magic machine for converting energy, but don’t tell anyone, it’s a secret.
You posted:
“Here’s how you did it:
Slartibartfast: “At 6am September 11, 2001 that GPE was stored in the WTC. Later in the day all of that GPE was pretty much gone (there was still some GPE in the rubble pile). What happened to it? Upon structural failure of the building, it was transformed into kinetic energy (energy of motion). But the rubble pile didn’t have any of that kinetic energy, so where did it go?”
Gee, if I were to accept the ‘official story’ in so much as denying the possibility of any aid from, how shall we say, highly exothermic chemical reactions, I’d be constrained to say that the potential energy, converted into kinetic energy, and the aforesaid kinetic energy from the ‘collapse’ somehow managed to shred the building into pieces.”
This would be correct if it wasn’t dripping sarcasm.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The answer is into pulverizing concrete (and other things) AND THERMAL ENERGY (i.e. heat).”
Whoops-a-daisy; you left out that ‘conversion’ thingy again. So, how did that kinetic energy turn to heat energy?
Slartibartfast: “There is plenty of energy here (1/20th the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb) to do both.”
Sure there’s plenty of energy, but the problem Doc, is how ya gonna convert it. Speaking of Doc, remember the movie “Back To The Future” where Doc was able to convert the mass from a banana peel and some coffee grinds into energy to drive his flying Delorean? He just dumped that crap into that converter called… “Mr. Fusion” right? Nonsensical? Perhaps. But even the writers of that film knew the importance of accounting for the conversion of one form of energy into another.”
Are you sure you want to know about my secret energy conversion machine is?
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “If you don’t think that kinetic energy can be converted into thermal energy in this way,”
What way? That’s just it; simply saying you have lots of energy in one form doesn’t mean you have it in another form. You have to account for its conversion; something you haven’t done here. Thus the question; WHAT WAY?”
If you really want me too tell you about it…
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “ask yourself what happens when a meteor hits the earth. If all of this GPE were converted into kinetic energy, it would be sufficient to melt 1,000 metric tonnes of steel.”
First of all, when we’re talking about Massive meteors whizzing around space at high Velocity, are we talking about potential or kinetic energy? Second, when we talk about Massive objects traveling at great Velocities, are we talking about heat energy or kinetic energy? (Hint, the meteor heats up in the atmosphere because of something called … ‘friction’–not impact)”
Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s right in front of your nose (or more accurately under your feet). That’s right, it’s the Earth! Actually, any planetary or other solid gravitating body of sufficient mass will do. Planets built for order are available from Margrethea, please contact the sales office for prices and options. Let me demonstrate how a planet operates. In order to convert gravitational potential energy (GPE) into kinetic energy (KE) you merely need to select a ball (any type will do, baseball, football, bowling ball – although if you use the latter, be careful with the next part). Now simply hold the ball out in front of you and release it. Congratulations! You should have successfully converted the GPE stored in your ball into KE in the form of a downward motion (if your ball failed to drop, please contact the complaints department – average wait time: 37.25 years). And now for another round of clearing up misconceptions.
When were talking about massive meteors moving merrily (sorry, I got a little carried away with the alliteration) along in space, we would generally consider its KE, but when we’re talking about a meteor being captured by gravity and falling into the planet’s gravitational well, GPE is what you want to know. Neglecting air resistance (which is only an issue for the last 100 km) objects tend to hit the Earth at around escape velocity (about 14 km/s), thus having KE equal to their original GPE. While an object could hit the earth going faster than that, you don’t get much slower when you fall into a gravity well (the Earth’s orbital velocity – its speed around the sun – is about 30 km/s, by the way). This brings us to the another way you can use your fine new planet for energy conversion – terminal velocity impact! This technique converts GPE to KE and then to thermal energy (TE). To perform this function, simply take your ball (or meteor or asteroid – CAUTION! Using this function on larger bodies can have adverse effects on your biosphere.) and increase its GPE to as near zero as is feasible (physicists, for reasons that are more boring than I care to explain, generally measure GPE starting at 0 at infinite distance from the Earth and decreasing as you get closer). Next, as before you merely release your meteor and allow your planet to convert its GPE into KE. While your meteor should be extremely cold in space, when it reaches the atmosphere, it will have a (very small) portion of its KE converted into TE by friction (this is caused by molecules of the atmosphere rubbing against the meteor as it passes them. CAUTION! Although this is not the primary conversion of KE to TE, the meteorite (the name for it when passing through the atmosphere) will become very hot and should be allowed to cool before handling.) When the meteorite has had all of its GPE converted into KE, it will automatically convert that into TE by smashing into the ground. Note: While the meteorite itself is hot, the energy released on impact is significantly greater, please use caution. To help you gauge the size of your meteor, if an impactor approximately 10km across hit the Earth (in, say, the Yucatan peninsula), 4×10^23 joules of KE would be converted to TE – an explosion equivalent to 100,000,000 megatons of TNT, about 400 times as powerful as the largest known volcanic eruption. This could have serious consequences, such as extinction of the dinosaurs. As you can see, a hot meteor will be the least of our problems at that point…
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “(Additionally, the kinetic energy of the faster plane on its own would have been enough to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel.”
But it punched a hole in the building instead of melting it. Why? You don’t suppose it has anything to do with the absence of a conversion of that kinetic energy into heat energy do you? And not for nothing, but Flight 175 is alleged to have been traveling far faster than its max operating speed at sea level. Another time perhaps…
Yes, the plane punched into the building – at the end of the impact, the KE of the plane was gone – converted mainly into TE contained in the plane/WTC system. ‘Enough KE to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel’ comes from the estimated speed and weight of the faster of the two planes to hit the WTC. And I think you meant that it was flying slower than its max operating speed (although maybe the government black ops team installed turbo on it).
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “You should realize that this energy was stored in the aluminum hull of the aircraft – we’ll get back to that later.) This should convince you that GPE (and the kinetic energy of the planes) is a source of heat that must be considered.”
Sure thing; once you account for the mechanism of conversion. Anything you say.”
Okay, I’ve accounted for the mechanism of conversion, I’ll consider this settled.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “So we have 3 potential sources of heat for iron in the rubble: 1)Fire (both before and after the collapse); 2) GPE converted to kinetic energy and then converted to heat energy on impact;”
Number one is plausible; so long as you can identify the material burning at a temperature near or above the heat of fusion for steel.
Number two, however, is potential nothing. Why? Because once again you didn’t explain how the kinetic energy was converted to heat energy.”
No matter what temperature a fire is burning at, it is a source of heat. Your number two here is aptly named. I’m sorry that I ever assumed that you understood something about energy.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “and 3) exothermic reactions in the rubble pile (I’ve suggested the reaction of steam with hot iron – two substances in plentiful supply in the rubble – this reaction also gives off hydrogen, which itself undergoes an exothermic reaction in the presence of oxygen…).”
Number three is also potential nothing. Why? Because you’re begging the question of the creation of heat energy from kinetic energy sans the conversion step yet again. Where are you getting your steam an hot iron from? ‘Exothermic reactions in the rubble’ — like the kind you get from thermate — evidenced in the dust found in the rubble of the WTC?”
You convert KE to TE by taking a relatively immovable object (like the surface of the Earth) and placing it in front of the object who’s KE you would like to convert – be sure to stand at a safe distance. That accounts for plenty of ‘hot iron’, if you remember ground zero in the aftermath of 9/11, they were continually spraying the rubble pile with water – combining hot iron with water gives us all the steam we could need, providing us with an exothermic reaction which produces hydrogen (it used to be used as an industrial process to produce hydrogen), which itself undergoes an exothermic reaction with oxygen (which can also be assumed to be present). In case you’ve forgotten, exothermic means the reactions generate heat (i.e. thermal energy).
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “I think these sources can reasonably account for all of the heat seen in the debris, including all of your molten metal.”
I wonder if Byron isn’t blushing by now; he tends to get nervous when I use things like logic to analyze issues.”
Byron can answer this for himself, but right now I’m imagining him at his computer yelling, “BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!” Maybe you should have gotten a little nervous when I started using things like science to analyze this issue.
You said:
‘We’re talking about whether the ‘official story’ of the collapse of three buildings on 9/11/01 is TRUTHFUL or not. If the official story is proven to be false, then we need to proceed accordingly. Truth be known, the miraculous collapse of the buildings combined with the laws of physics held in abeyance on 9/11/01; much less the whitewashing of the official story don’t bring to mind the crime of conspiracy. Actually, its the flight paths of the planes and where they turned off their transponders that brings a murky treasonable design into specific relief. As one ATC put it; “they weren’t good, they were perfect!”‘
While I personally don’t believe it, a conspiracy involving flying planes into buildings (but not CD)
is consistent with the IFT. The ‘official’ statement is irrelevant to, as you say, the point at bar, with the exception that the NIST report is where the IFT appeared.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The test of a theory is not how well it accounts for a specific fact, but how well it accounts for all of the facts.”
That’s misleading; in the sense that it inspires you skip steps in the analysis of evidence available; e.g. outcome determinism.”
I wasn’t providing a step-by-step instruction manual – and my landshark with frickin’ lasers on their heads theory accounts for both the molten metal and the thermic reside (it’s projected in a particle beam to enhance the action of the laser) better than your theory.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “That being the case, my opinion that the IFT is far closer to the truth than the CDT is on very solid ground.”
Actually, seeing how you base your theory on a non-existent energy conversion mechanism, I don’t see any ground whatsoever.”
The solid ground I’m standing on is what you just got hit with.
You posted:
“Slartibartfast: “If you’re willing to admit that the twin towers (and WTC 7) were not felled by CD, I’ll take an Alford plea on thermite and we can both walk away.”
You are aware that we’re talking about the possibility of a treasonable design; aren’t you? Why so glib then?”
I’m not being glib, that was a serious offer precisely because of the gravity of possible treason. If you’re willing to admit that CD of the WTC was not a possibility and that thermitic material is not evidence of the same, I’ll not contest the evidence of thermitic material and you can go on to investigating conspiracies which are improbable instead of impossible.
You said:
“Equivocation is not a method of energy conversion.”
It’s a good thing I didn’t lie, then.
Robert said:
“The towers are not a closed (or isolated) system. You cannot impose the laws of an isolated system upon an open system. If the towers were a closed system, you would be able to account for all of the energy. You can’t.”
Take the closed system to be the universe (surely no energy from the WTC collapse could have escaped the universe?) Where did the kinetic energy of the falling WTC go? I say a good portion of it turned into thermal energy in the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“Was energy lost? It sure was. That pyroclastic flow= lost energy. The sound emitted as the tower came down= lost energy. Those projectiles thrown great distances away= lost energy. The force used to break the floors free= lost energy.”
Robert, energy is never lost – never. It can be converted into other forms or transferred out of (or into) the system. And I’ve specifically said that energy went into pulverizing materials (the pyroclastic-type flow and breaking the floors), but 2 trillion joules is a lot of energy and you think it went into the bang and flinging some girders about? You’re suggesting that removing a couple of grains of sand gets rid of the beach.
Robert said:
“I have no doubt that you are very good at your job. What is the extent of your education in the engineering field?”
Thank you. I’ve never pretended to have any training in engineering, just math, science (and critical thinking which you could use).
Bob posted:
“Robert: “Judging from the angle of the top floors in the photo, how was downward force applied to the back side? The weight of the top floors was only applied to some of the floors below. If the steel was weakened, why didn’t the top section just continue to fall off?”
Are you asking how the ‘official’ story accounts for the reverse in angular momentum of the top of the South Tower; i.e. how did the back side collapse increase so quickly as to keep the section from toppling off?
Good question. If I were from Kansas, I’d say it smacked of intelligent design.”
Wow. That’s such an apt analogy. Comparison to a theory with no scientific merit.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast “The closed system would be the twin towers (either standing or in the rubble pile). Now any energy contained in this system (namely, 2 trillion Joules of gravitational potential energy)”
You are aware that the NASA thermograph puts the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse; aren’t you?”
I am now. That’s pretty hot (not like center of the sun hot but a lot warmer than high noon in the desert (except maybe on Mercury). So what?
Bob said:
“BTW, didn’t it bother you at all that an engineer from NIST, sent out to give a lecture at a university on what happened to those buildings on 9/11, could be completely ignorant of any ‘molten metal’ at ground zero?
How is it that both you and I know that fact but someone from NIST ‘claimed’ to have not?
That doesn’t annoy you?”
Not particularly. I assume if someone from NIST saw information about molten metal, they thought that it was unremarkable for it to be there (as I do). I’m not defending NIST – I saw (on the 911research site you sent me to) that the entire ground zero cleanup/investigation was done under the auspices of FEMA which is not a body which handles investigations. If only there were some way to judge the competence of FEMA during the Bush administration… Let’s see what another city close to New York alphabetically thinks – how about New Orleans? … Oh… They don’t seem to say very nice things about FEMA at all. Never attribute to conspiracy that which is more simply explained by incompetence. Heck of a job Bobby.
Byron,
Sorry, your reply got bumped again. Take it as a sign of respect.
Slarti:
I am enjoying this, although I think Bob has some physics and calculus under his belt. Not all attorneys just studied political science or Latin.
He does make some good points that I cant answer, namely that site did stay hot for a good long time. Although I think there is a simple explanation such as all of the plastic from the thousands of computers and other flammable debris and the fact that all of that rubble would have made a good insulator and the fact that 5 sides were insulated by ground and concrete so radiation could only occur out the top for all practical purposes (isn’t there some relation between surface area and heat loss?).
But you have reinforced my belief that airplanes and fire were what killed the beauties.
After reading the last comments by Slartibartfast and Byron, I’m just left shaking my head. Science has been replaced by stories. As if gravity is a major influence on the effect of a meteor hitting the earth? Plastics burn at 1300 degrees, for five days?
Throwing scientific terms into a pile is not science.
“Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” – Jules Henri Poincare
Slartibartfast: “Yes, the plane punched into the building – at the end of the impact, the KE of the plane was gone – converted mainly into TE contained in the plane/WTC system. ‘Enough KE to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel’ comes from the estimated speed and weight of the faster of the two planes to hit the WTC.”
I’ll get back to the rest of your post later, but forgot to mention one more problem you exhibit with your analysis.
You’re not only leaving out the method of conversion, but you’re double dipping with the energy.
Let’s use the gold example. Say all my energy is stored in the form of gold. If I use ALL my gold to buy silver, then I’ve used up my ‘energy’ and it converted to silver. If I have any copper pennies laying around, it’s mere chump change as a result of the gold to silver conversion. (I just made that metaphror up and I’m on my first cup of coffee)
Likewise, if I have a shitload of kinetic energy and it slams into a building, that KE is used up as it’s converted into pure force, work energy, etc., etc. WORKING to destroy all the things necessary to punch that hole in the building, rip apart the plane and bring the plane to a stop. Once the event ends, the balance of your energy bank account per the Ke of the Plane is gone. You used it up when it did it’s WORK on the building and the plane itself. This is why your question about ‘where did the Ke in the rubble go’ sound absurd — because it was USED UP in the creation of the rubble.
The jet fuel, on the other hand, IS CONVERTED INTO HEAT ENERGY when it burns. E.g. flight 175 spent most of its fuel in a pyrotechnic display when it exited the other side of the building. Another factoid; are you aware that jet fuel doesn’t stay lit when it’s merely lying on the ground? Saw that one on Mythbusters. Requires an aerosol state to ignite and stay lit. Just like on your oil burner.
My point is this; just as your gold won’t double in amount by sitting in a vault, energy cannot be created by attempting to use it twice. Now I know you’re going to say ‘some’ of the energy was converted to heat, and I’ll say it was so minute, as in the bending of metal type friction heat as to be as negligible.
More later.
Robert:
are you a scientist or an engineer? Not that that matters but I am not a lawyer and so do not know all of the nuances of the law.
I cant speak for Slarti but what I have relayed to you is my opinion based on the facts as I know them. These facts were gleaned from sources both pro and con and watching at least a few hours of video tape on theories and the actual fall of the buildings.
My opinion was derived from my basic understanding of structural engineering and materials (I have a degree in structural engineering and I am licensed so I have a state sanctioned minimum level of knowledge) and my understanding of the facts.
Could I be wrong, yes certainly and if other facts come to me that would warrant a change in my opinion I will do so. To date I do not have sufficient evidence to change my opinion.
I can answer most of the questions I have with simple explanations that fit with my knowledge of structural engineering principles. I also have some field experience and have heard steel break under tension/compression and seen the effects.
I don’t think Slarti and I are telling stories, we are formulating an hypothesis based on our knowledge of science and engineering. Could we be wrong, most certainly but until such time as there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary I shall believe it was the force of fully loaded jet airplanes flying at over 500 mph that brought those towers down.
Bob Esq.,
Your Gold to Silver analogy adds to the confusion. I think some basic principles of physics are being misunderstood. It would probably be better to establish the basics.
What happened with the WTCs did not take place in a closed or isolated system. Conservation of energy only works in a closed system. Even the best attempts to create a closed system fail.
I think we all will agree that it requires energy converted to work to move a 20 lb box 10 feet to the east. When the box reaches the destination, it has no additional PE, and being stationary it has no KE. Where did that energy go? What happened to the conservation of energy?
Robert:
isn’t work related to raising an object of a certain mass a certain height?
A box on the floor has no Potential Energy unless the floor is above the ground. Work is the amount of energy required to raise said box off the floor. Said work is then turned into PE, once box falls it has Kinetic Energy.
Box moving in an easterly direction has a force pushing it to the east (a scalar and a vector). Friction is resisting that force, friction is a function of box mass and surface coefficients of both box and floor. Force of push must be stronger than force of friction for box to move. Excess force is heat. Once box is moving it has kinetic energy in the amount of 0.5MV^2. This is what turns into heat.
Force of planes went into cutting building skin and columns, heat energy of aviation fuel went into heating members. All of that contributed to over stressing remaining members. Once remaining members overstressed they failed and down comes towers. Potential energy in towers is converted to kinetic energy. Reason building did not topple – 2 of Sir Issac’s laws, a body will remain in motion (and same direction) unless acted upon by another force. No other force acted on building so it went straight down.
Sir Isaac very bright man.
Byron,
I have a BS in Nuclear Engineering. I’m also a certified nuclear grade welder. Energy is my game.
You should read this. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://911research.com/wtc/arch/docs/WTCtower_FloorElevatorArrangment.jpg&imgrefurl=http://911research.com/wtc/arch/plan.html&h=980&w=1306&sz=263&tbnid=B_NvsaVH7z4jOM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dworld%2Btrade%2Bcenter%2Bdesign&hl=en&usg=__Hx0vnUVYoYL4FByrUdf2f5acRiU=&ei=dLAnS_ulFNHBlAeo8KSlDQ&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=8&ct=image&ved=0CCUQ9QEwBw
Even if the floors gave way, the core would have remained. The floors may be a horizontal structure that can pancake, but the core was a vertical structure. Even if a part of the core broke loose, the most likely thing to happen is a glancing blow to the steel below it.
I would have a better chance of winning the lottery 5 times in one year than those buildings would have of coming down evenly. Failure of multiple components does not repeat evenly in nature.
Robert,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_system
The definition of conservation of energy is related to isolated systems, not closed systems. It’s an important distinction. Isolated systems do not exist in reality. They are an analytical construct. Conservation applies everywhere physics applies. Describing systems in isolation is a tool for our convenience in simplifying analysis.
Byron,
If moving a 20 lb box across the floor doesn’t require work (conversion of energy), I’ve got a summer job for you. :>)
It doesn’t pay anything, but that should be ok, because there is no work involved.
Raising the box requires more energy (you have to overcome gravity), but some of that energy is retained in the form of potential energy.
Remember, Potential Energy doesn’t necessarily have to do with height. A compressed spring or a charged battery are forms of potential energy. Force (work) is the conversion of some potential energy into kinetic energy. Friction is generally considered a loss of energy. I squared R losses (I don’t know how to type exponents) are the friction of electricity.
Buddha Is Laughing,
Thanks for the Wikipedia link. I think that’s where Slartibartfast is getting confused about the laws of conservation of energy. i.e. they only exist in theory.
In nuclear power plants we attempt to create a closed or isolated system. (We like to keep the radioactive liquid on the inside.) Even there, we accept that it is not completely isolated. Insulation is only so good. Friction fights against our pumps and piping. And the purpose of the primary side (the reactor side) is to create energy that will go out to sea, or into the atmosphere (secondary cooling).
I should have just left it as a “closed” system. We transfer heat energy (intentionally) but not mass.
Robert,
Eh, I’m going to have to disagree on your interpretation of the utility of isolation as related to conservation. It is a real phenomena. You cannot overcome E=mc^2. Conservation is a consequence of relativity. That we use an artifice to constrain analysis (isolated systems) doesn’t mitigate conservation as a natural phenomena – it just makes it practical to apply to structural analysis. As you said, you know a reactor isn’t perfectly closed. Herein lies your problem. The analysis of conservation would be a problem of infinite regression without the fiction of an isolated system telling you “STOP! Close enough to make sure things work.” Working out the actual inefficiency in a system with absolute precision (also a term you should wiki) is impossible as a practical reality. Isolated systems are simply that stop sign saying “You can go further, but why?”
Robert said:
“After reading the last comments by Slartibartfast and Byron, I’m just left shaking my head. Science has been replaced by stories. As if gravity is a major influence on the effect of a meteor hitting the earth? Plastics burn at 1300 degrees, for five days?
Throwing scientific terms into a pile is not science.
“Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.” – Jules Henri Poincare”
I thought that Byron summed up a response to this quite nicely, so I’ll just say ditto, but replace structural engineer with scientist. Then you went and tried to use a quote by one of my personal heroes (Poincare was an amazing genius – decades before computers he understood the beauty and complexity of fractals ) against me. Well, clearly you don’t understand that I’ve been building a structure stone by stone trying to teach you and Bob the basics of the physics in play here. Instead of trying to understand the two of you are choosing to be willfully ignorant. I’ll answer your question about gravity being the major influence on the SPEED at which a impactor hits the earth (by at least determining a minimum impact velocity, although I said it could be greater) by giving you the equation of motion. Consider a meteor a distance d from the earth traveling at a relative velocity v0. The velocity of the meteor as a function of time is given by the differential equation:
dx/dt = v0 + (integral from d to r0) M*G*[x(t)]^(-2) dt
where x(t) = distance from the center of the earth at time t
dx/dt = the velocity of the meteor at time t
M = the mass of the earth
G = the universal gravitational constant
r0 = the radius of the earth
You merely have to solve this equation for x(t), determine t0 such that x(t0)=r0 and then compute v(t0) (v(t) = dx/dt = velocity; v(t0) = impact velocity). This will give you impact velocity as a function of initial velocity – i.e. it will allow you to determine the significance of gravity in determining impact velocity. While this is a difficult to do analytically, it is straightforward to compute numerically, so I’ll just assume that you can do the rest yourself (sorry I don’t have the time to do it myself for at least a couple of days). I just saw Byron’s response to your other post and it is spot on – well done Byron. As for ‘Plastics burn at 1300 degrees for five days’, I’ve already told you about 3 sources of heat in the rubble and none of them required plastic burning at 1300 degrees or for five days.
Buddha,
Thanks for the assist.
Bob said:
“You’re not only leaving out the method of conversion, but you’re double dipping with the energy.
Let’s use the gold example. Say all my energy is stored in the form of gold. If I use ALL my gold to buy silver, then I’ve used up my ‘energy’ and it converted to silver. If I have any copper pennies laying around, it’s mere chump change as a result of the gold to silver conversion. (I just made that metaphror up and I’m on my first cup of coffee)”
You probably should have waited until after your second cup.
Bob continued:
“Likewise, if I have a shitload of kinetic energy and it slams into a building, that KE is used up as it’s converted into pure force, work energy, etc., etc. WORKING to destroy all the things necessary to punch that hole in the building, rip apart the plane and bring the plane to a stop. Once the event ends, the balance of your energy bank account per the Ke of the Plane is gone. You used it up when it did it’s WORK on the building and the plane itself. This is why your question about ‘where did the Ke in the rubble go’ sound absurd — because it was USED UP in the creation of the rubble.”
When you find yourself suggesting that energy was ‘USED UP’, you should probably take a step back and ask yourself where you are going wrong – energy is NEVER created or destroyed – this is natural law – you aren’t allowed to violate this any more than you can go faster than the speed of light. A little bit of thought would have told you that this argument is bunk anyway – first, where did the energy go after pulverizing the concrete and such? (hint: into the random motion of particles (i.e. heat) But let’s ignore this – say you’re right, KE was ‘used’ to break up the structure of the building and say that this took the lion’s share of the energy originally stored as GPE, what would this imply – well, if that kinetic energy was converted into something else, the collapse would have slowed down – but the collapse wasn’t much slower than free fall speed (I know, you’re going to suggest that rolling demo charges took out the structure just below the collapse allowing it to go faster – try telling that to a demolition expert sometime – do it when he’s taking a sip of coffee, it will be funny…), what you can’t deny (except by willfully ignoring facts) is that you’ve still got a large mass of rubble moving at near free-fall speeds. In other words, right before that mass of rubble slams into the ground, its still got the lion’s share of that 2 trillion joules. Upon slamming into the ground, that kinetic energy becomes random energy of motion in the particles – heat. Same deal with the airplane. Unless the fuselage exits the building (which it didn’t), all of the kinetic energy contained in the airframe has been converted to other forms – mainly heat. To use your silly analogy, if I’ve got a whole bunch of gold, I can but some sliver and copper and not significantly change the amount of gold that I have.
Bob said:
“The jet fuel, on the other hand, IS CONVERTED INTO HEAT ENERGY when it burns. E.g. flight 175 spent most of its fuel in a pyrotechnic display when it exited the other side of the building. Another factoid; are you aware that jet fuel doesn’t stay lit when it’s merely lying on the ground? Saw that one on Mythbusters. Requires an aerosol state to ignite and stay lit. Just like on your oil burner.’
Question: Does jet fuel act as an accelerant to fires which are already burning? (Like gasoline or kerosene does. Hmmm… kerosene, why does that seem familiar?) Hint: The answer is a three letter word starting with Y and ending in S.
Bob said:
“My point is this; just as your gold won’t double in amount by sitting in a vault, energy cannot be created by attempting to use it twice. Now I know you’re going to say ‘some’ of the energy was converted to heat, and I’ll say it was so minute, as in the bending of metal type friction heat as to be as negligible.”
On what grounds do you make this assertion? What happens to the NEARLY 2,000,000,000,000 joules of KE that was clearly present a millisecond before impact? In order to make my point about KE being converted into thermal energy, I would like to ask you what happens when an asteroid 10km in diameter slams into the Earth at 14 km/s? I find that extreme cases like this frequently help to clarify things, so please answer this question.
Bob said:
“More later.”
Oh boy, I can hardly wait. By the way, I’m sure you heard Isaac Newton’s quote about being able to see so far because he’s standing on the shoulders of giants – well, let me tell you, the view from his shoulders is amazing!
Buddha,
re conservation of energy and closed systems. I defined the closed system to be the universe as there are no energy flows into or out of the universe (by definition), thus it is clearly a closed system. Neither Bob nor Robert can tell me where the KE goes when the rubble hits the ground in this system either. And their appeals to inefficiency of energy transfer, while true, are like trying to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon. They’re getting nowhere fast. Thanks for trying to explain closed/isolated systems to them although I fear the attempt was in vain.
Slartibartfast: “I assume if someone from NIST saw information about molten metal, they thought that it was unremarkable for it to be there (as I do). I’m not defending NIST….”
Byron,
As an engineer responsible for keeping people from being killed in accidents resulting from shoddy design and workmanship; do you think NIST had the luxury of overlooking molten metal as something ‘unremarkable?’ Or might you, and Karl fucking Popper, consider it a major component of the evidence to be analyzed in FULLY explaining the ‘collapses?’
Byron,
If you were investigating the collapse of something you built and one of your employees told you he ignored the existence of molten metal, wouldn’t you fire that employee for complete incompetence; possibly for being a liability as well?
Buddha Is Laughing,
I agree that the laws of conservation of energy are a real phenomena, but they cannot be applied to the falling of the WTC. Energy conservation laws cannot be applied to the WTCs.
Robert,
And what is preventing the application of a physical law to a physical system? That’s prime facie illogical. You state conclusory certainty of something that is manifestly incorrect. Physics is physics. Unless you also think gravity doesn’t apply to the WTC collapse too. But I’m thinking you’ve been far too reasonable to this point to be that manifestly insane. However, that’s exactly the quality of assertion you’ve just made about conservation. I suggest you rethink that and formulate some evidence as to why a law that applies to all the visible universe yet somehow doesn’t apply to four square blocks of Manhattan. Because you simply saying it doesn’t apply does not make it so.
Slartibartfast: “When you find yourself suggesting that energy was ‘USED UP’, you should probably take a step back and ask yourself where you are going wrong – energy is NEVER created or destroyed – this is natural law – you aren’t allowed to violate this any more than you can go faster than the speed of light. A little bit of thought would have told you that this argument is bunk anyway – first, where did the energy go after pulverizing the concrete and such? (hint: into the random motion of particles (i.e. heat) But let’s ignore this –.”
That is so wrong and so misleading. Energy is a finite resource; it does not float from one event to another like a ghost.
I didn’t say the energy was destroyed, I said it was used up; as in used up in the event. Events end. Baseballs and footballs come to rest, planes running into buildings are stopped by the opposing forces of the steel and concrete they’re pushing against. The Ke was used as work to BEND AND BREAK the building. We do not ask “where did the energy go after that” because its been used up in the event.
“Where did the energy go after pulverizing the concrete and such?”
You’re asking where ALL of it went. That’s tantamount to saying that I can develop a mechanism by which I recoup all that energy used in the event and recycle it to do another one just like it.
That’s insane.
Slartibartfast,
Just to be clear, I’m not calling you insane, I’m calling your idea insane.
It’s like you’re trying to build a perpetual motion machine just to explain the existence of the molten metal.
To put it another way, it made as much sense as Bugs Bunny using an electric fan to power his sail boat.
It doesn’t work that way.
You mean the fan thing won’t work? Damn it! There goes my plans for how to get to Tahiti. Stupid ACME products . . .
Buddha Is Laughing,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
“It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time).”
An isolated system is very important to energy conservation. I don’t think you are trying to claim that the WTC existed in an isolated system.
When we say “used up”, it means that it has been distributed in such a manner as to render it not recoverable. It’s the not recoverable part that is so important.
If we lift a 10 lb box 5 ft in the air, it has potential energy directly related to its height and weight. When we drop that box onto a pile of foam rubber, the energy is transferred, but not recoverable. Therefore, it is not conserved.
Robert:
I stand corrected pushing the box is work to overcome friction.
But I think the PE/KE is correct.
BobEsq:
I would look into all possible explanations. If I saw a pool of molten metal that would certainly raise some issues. But I would probably not be thinking thermite because I just saw 2 big planes crash into the towers.
If I had no knowledge of why the building came down I would look into what was causing the molten metal as part of my investigation.
I must disagree with you and Robert on this until evidence to the contrary is submitted which does not have an explanation other than it was thermite.
BobEsq:
“To put it another way, it made as much sense as Bugs Bunny using an electric fan to power his sail boat.”
Dont you know that Bugs had special batteries and a hydromite to produce electricity to charge those batteries? He used the fan only during the doldrums having stored excess wind energy in the batteries.
Robert,
I’m exactly claiming that any analysis of the WTC that doesn’t treat it as an isolated system for the purpose of checking net joules against conservation is flawed fundamentally from a formally logical analytical standpoint. You cannot as a practical matter discuss the transfer of energy with even minimal precision, much less absolute precision, without looking at imposing that artifice/limiter of putting the system in isolation. You are still creating an infinite regression without it. Assuming infinites are a mathematical abomination to be avoided in analysis of any sort, where do you suggest you stop your analysis of the transfer? Strength of the covalent bonds holding individual molecules together? The tensile strength of spacetime? Conservation applies. That you are applying it improperly is another issue.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “I assume if someone from NIST saw information about molten metal, they thought that it was unremarkable for it to be there (as I do). I’m not defending NIST….”
Byron,
As an engineer responsible for keeping people from being killed in accidents resulting from shoddy design and workmanship; do you think NIST had the luxury of overlooking molten metal as something ‘unremarkable?’ Or might you, and Karl fucking Popper, consider it a major component of the evidence to be analyzed in FULLY explaining the ‘collapses?’”
Perhaps ‘unremarkable’ was not the best choice of words there – how about ‘not unexpected’? I’m saying that in investigating a collapse in which 2,000,000,000,000 joules of GPE was liberated, there were numerous fires burning (both before and after the collapse), and where conditions were conducive to various exothermic reactions, while the persistence of molten metal may be testimony to the magnitude of forces involved, it is a completely predictable consequence of the collapse and therefore not an anomaly requiring explanation. Just like no explanation is required (or one is immediately obvious) for tons of molten rock in a meteor impact crater.
Robert said:
“I agree that the laws of conservation of energy are a real phenomena, but they cannot be applied to the falling of the WTC. Energy conservation laws cannot be applied to the WTCs.”
So you’re saying that you can violate natural law? Take any closed system (I’ve defined several closed systems that include the WTC and rubble pile) all of the energy initially in the system either (A) remains in the system in some form, or (B) is transferred out of the system in some way (energy may also be transferred into the system (i.e. EM radiation from the sun), but that’s not relevant to this discussion). You can argue that the energy is converted differently than I suggest it is (in which case you must explain where the KE that is undeniably in the descending rubble one millisecond before impact has gone to after impact – I’m not going to let you sweep 2 trillion joules under the rug) but if you argue that something else happens to the energy, you are committing a crime against nature
and violating one of the laws of physics – which means that you’d better have your perpetual motion machine on my desk by noon tomorrow or you’re getting an F. 
Buddha said:
“Robert,
And what is preventing the application of a physical law to a physical system? That’s prime facie illogical. You state conclusory certainty of something that is manifestly incorrect. Physics is physics. Unless you also think gravity doesn’t apply to the WTC collapse too. But I’m thinking you’ve been far too reasonable to this point to be that manifestly insane. However, that’s exactly the quality of assertion you’ve just made about conservation. I suggest you rethink that and formulate some evidence as to why a law that applies to all the visible universe yet somehow doesn’t apply to four square blocks of Manhattan. Because you simply saying it doesn’t apply does not make it so.”
(r)Amen. (don’t want to offend any pastafarians who might be reading…)
Bob said:
“That is so wrong and so misleading. Energy is a finite resource; it does not float from one event to another like a ghost.”
My god man, do you ever think about things before you post them? Energy is eternal, it will continue to be present, possibly being transformed into other types of energy, forever.
Bob said:
“I didn’t say the energy was destroyed, I said it was used up; as in used up in the event. Events end. Baseballs and footballs come to rest, planes running into buildings are stopped by the opposing forces of the steel and concrete they’re pushing against. The Ke was used as work to BEND AND BREAK the building. We do not ask “where did the energy go after that” because its been used up in the event.”
Wrong again. Energy is never ‘used up’. There is a tendency for energy to ultimately reside in the random motion of particles (Damn you second law of thermodynamics!) but another name for that would be ‘heat’. It is always an appropriate question to ask ‘what happened to the energy after that?’ as one thing we know for sure is that it still exists.
Bob said:
““Where did the energy go after pulverizing the concrete and such?”
You’re asking where ALL of it went. That’s tantamount to saying that I can develop a mechanism by which I recoup all that energy used in the event and recycle it to do another one just like it.
That’s insane.
Just to be clear, I’m not calling you insane, I’m calling your idea insane.”
That’s nice – I’m not calling you an idiot, I’m calling your ideas idiotic. Converting energy from one form to another is never 100% efficient (a consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics) – the problem for you is that the ‘lost’ energy ends up as heat.
Think of it this way: You’re keeping the accounting books for the energy in the system (which is gold in your analogy, so keep close track of it). Let’s trace the entries for the 2 trillion joules of GPE. Some of it went into pulverizing the building as it fell (and hence remains in the descending rubble), some of it was ejected in the pyroclastic flow, some of it flung girders out of the debris, and some of it resided as KE in the rubble heap a millisecond before impact. Can we estimate the how much of the energy resides in each of these forms? It turns out that in the case of the KE of the descending rubble we can. Assuming that the collapse took 6.6s vs. 6s for objects in free fall we can compute that the debris hit the ground at 54 m/s (vs. 60 m/s for an object in free fall). Considering that KE is proportional to the velocity squared (KE=1/2mv^2), we estimate that 82.6% of the original GPE in the tower was tied up in KE of the descending rubble a millisecond before impact. Let’s round this down to 80%. This means that the debris of EACH tower hit the ground with something like 800 billion joules of KE. You want us to believe that it is reasonable to account for 400 billion out of 2 trillion joules and consider your account complete? That’s idiotic.
Bob said:
“It’s like you’re trying to build a perpetual motion machine just to explain the existence of the molten metal.
To put it another way, it made as much sense as Bugs Bunny using an electric fan to power his sail boat.
It doesn’t work that way.”
You’re trying to ignore 2 eight hundred billion joule gorillas in the room. It doesn’t work that way.
Buddha said:
“You mean the fan thing won’t work? Damn it! There goes my plans for how to get to Tahiti. Stupid ACME products . . .”
I’ve got a map you can borrow, just make sure to take a left turn at Albuquerque…
Robert said:
‘“It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time).” [wikipedia]
An isolated system is very important to energy conservation. I don’t think you are trying to claim that the WTC existed in an isolated system.’
We solve the ‘isolated system’ problem by taking note of energy flows into and out of the system. As long as we account for this, conservation of energy holds.
Robert said:
“When we say “used up”, it means that it has been distributed in such a manner as to render it not recoverable. It’s the not recoverable part that is so important.”
Yes, that is important. The ‘non-recoverable’ part of the energy has become randomized motion in the particles of the system (i.e. heat). You’re shooting yourself in the foot here.
Robert said:
“If we lift a 10 lb box 5 ft in the air, it has potential energy directly related to its height and weight. When we drop that box onto a pile of foam rubber, the energy is transferred, but not recoverable. Therefore, it is not conserved.”
The energy is not recoverable, but it is still there in the form of thermal energy in the foam rubber and box. Energy is ALWAYS conserved.
Buddha said:
“Robert,
I’m exactly claiming that any analysis of the WTC that doesn’t treat it as an isolated system for the purpose of checking net joules against conservation is flawed fundamentally from a formally logical analytical standpoint. You cannot as a practical matter discuss the transfer of energy with even minimal precision, much less absolute precision, without looking at imposing that artifice/limiter of putting the system in isolation. You are still creating an infinite regression without it. Assuming infinites are a mathematical abomination to be avoided in analysis of any sort, where do you suggest you stop your analysis of the transfer? Strength of the covalent bonds holding individual molecules together? The tensile strength of spacetime? Conservation applies. That you are applying it improperly is another issue.”
Right on again. Bob and Robert are trying to distract us with illogic so we don’t notice the 1.6 trillion joules that they are trying to hide (that’s 1/25th the energy released at Hiroshima for those of you scoring at home). By the way, infinities are just fine in mathematics, but any type of singularity is a problem when you’re using mathematics to describe the physical universe.
Byron: “If I had no knowledge of why the building came down I would look into what was causing the molten metal as part of my investigation.”
Which is to say that if you had competing theories, you would look to the theory that encompassed the entire event; i.e. explained the molten metal.
Now let’s say you built a very important bridge. I don’t know, a drawbridge protecting high tech planes for the DOD on the other side of a gorge surrounded by mountains; whatever. It’s a very important bridge with support columns open to passing traffic way down below on either side. You’ve designed the bridge withstand the force of impact of one of the largest trucks; maybe not one of those Caterpillar dump trucks that can flatten houses at 30mph, but the largest trucks for civilian highway use.
A truck hits one of the support columns, there’s a fire, a few hours later the bridge collapses. In the rubble you find molten steel. In your wildest dreams would you ever consider the energy released in the collapse as ALSO CONVERTED into heat energy? Or would Ockham’s razor tell you that it is now absolutely necessary to postulate the existence of another entity in the equation to account for the molten metal?
Bob,
That’s a fine straw man you’ve built.
BobEsq:
A bridge usually falls in a long line and so the energy is not concentrated in a relatively small foot print.
I think no matter how you slice it, its planes.
It sure would make a great novel though.
Slarti:
should you me and Bob write a book on this? The novel could be about thermite and planes so we cover all our basis. Lay the plot out so people can come to their own conclusion. Don’t end the book, I have a good ending in mind.
Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m doing a little research. I wanted to find an accurate calculation of GPE. According to this analysis, the GPE of WTC-1 was about half a trillion joules.
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/GUrich/MassAndPeWtc.pdf
Now I’m looking into how much energy had to transfer into kinetic energy in the earth to permit the seismic readings detected. I’m also looking for how much energy would have been required to break a floor loose.
Bob and Robert,
The two of you are arguing that there wasn’t enough energy in the collapse, requiring the addition of energy through incendiary or explosive devices while simultaneously asserting that we can ignore 800 billion joules of KE unquestionably present in the falling debris (of EACH tower) a moment before impact. You’re saying that we need more energy to make this work, but we’re ignoring 1,600,000,000,000 joules of energy in favor of explosives (you need the equivalent of 432 tons of TNT just to equal the energy you want to ignore) all placed covertly in the WTC in the days or weeks leading up to 9/11. Can you see why your argument lacks credibility?
Byron said:
“should you me and Bob write a book on this? The novel could be about thermite and planes so we cover all our basis. Lay the plot out so people can come to their own conclusion. Don’t end the book, I have a good ending in mind.”
I’m certainly writing enough for it… It could have two timelines (I’m a fan of SF) – one where the planes destroyed the towers and another where they were demolished…
Slartibartfast,
Please review the link provided in my previous post. re: joules
Again you limit the time for installation of thermite. Why? Why not permit installation to take place over a year or two?
Slartibartfast: “Perhaps ‘unremarkable’ was not the best choice of words there – how about ‘not unexpected’? I’m saying that in investigating a collapse in which 2,000,000,000,000 joules of GPE was liberated, there were numerous fires burning (both before and after the collapse), and where conditions were conducive to various exothermic reactions,”
You can’t just say ‘stuff happened.’ Come on.
Slartibartfast: “while the persistence of molten metal may be testimony to the magnitude of forces involved,”
HOW?? How is molten metal testimony to the magnitude of the forces involved. You’re a scientist; give me an explanation. Show me the math instead of laying this Indiana Jones Science rap on me.
Slartibartfast: “it is a completely predictable consequence of the collapse and therefore not an anomaly requiring explanation.”
Wrong again Mr. Popper. NIST was never even able to create a model explaining the collapse; i.e. it was ‘non-refutable’ in the BAD SCIENTIFIC METHOD WAY. Further, how can you say something is predictable when you’ve provided pure speculation and ABSOLUTELY NO EXPLANATION as to the mechanism by which the KE was converted into heat energy.
Slartibartfast: “Just like no explanation is required (or one is immediately obvious) for tons of molten rock in a meteor impact crater.”
Right, so assuming the building collapsed at free fall speed, within 8 seconds, approximately the time it took to collapse, it would have a velocity of approximately 55m/s. Compare that with a f’n meteor, which I believe you stated would be traveling at a minimum velocity equal to the escape velocity of earth, or 11,000 m/s (or 11km/s) and you are telling me that the collapse of the building, which at 8 seconds into the event is only moving at 1/2 of one percent the velocity of a meteor, is comparable to the creation of a crater from said meteor. The meteor that’s traveling so f’n fast that the rear of the object on impact is still traveling so fast that it creates heat from the compression of collapsing on itself? That meteor?
Please. Let’s get real.
Slartibartfast: “That’s a fine straw man you’ve built.”
No, it’s a process hypothetical designed to take us through the scientific method with the help of the law of parsimony.
Byron: “I think no matter how you slice it, its planes.”
Did you catch the part about NIST not being able to reproduce the event in a computer simulation; that whole non-refutability problem?
But if you think you’ve got the chops, let’s see the math.
BTW, how did those planes create the explosions in the basements of the Towers?
Slartibartfast: “Right on again. Bob and Robert are trying to distract us with illogic so we don’t notice the 1.6 trillion joules that they are trying to hide (that’s 1/25th the energy released at Hiroshima for those of you scoring at home).”
I’m illogical? You’re the one making the energy in the towers pull double duty. Not only is it used up in the shredding of the building, but it SOMEHOW sticks around, perhaps by request of Maxwell’s Demon, to create heat sufficient to melt steel!
I’m being illogical??
Robert said:
“Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m doing a little research. I wanted to find an accurate calculation of GPE. According to this analysis, the GPE of WTC-1 was about half a trillion joules.
Now I’m looking into how much energy had to transfer into kinetic energy in the earth to permit the seismic readings detected. I’m also looking for how much energy would have been required to break a floor loose.”
That’s fine, cut all of my estimates in half then. Remember, you’re trying to account for 400 billion joules of energy. I did the calculation for seismic energy (based on a magnitude 2.1 quake when one tower fell and got a number I consider ridiculously low (~0.005 tons of TNT – likely a result of a lot of loose estimates…) – looking it up in wikipedia, I find (in the article on the Richter scale) that a quake of magnitude 2.0 is the equivalent of 1 metric ton of TNT or 4.2 billion joules, so I think you’re going to come up a little short on this one…
I will congratulate you, however, as this is definitely a legitimate drain of energy from the system. Don’t forget the big kaboom, too – that might get you another megajoule or so. Unfortunately, the energy to collapse the floors (and pulverize them) remains in the rubble so this wont help you (it would still be interesting to know).
Bob said:
“You can’t just say ‘stuff happened.’ Come on.”
Well, it did, but I’m trying to be a little more precise…
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “while the persistence of molten metal may be testimony to the magnitude of forces involved,”
HOW?? How is molten metal testimony to the magnitude of the forces involved. You’re a scientist; give me an explanation. Show me the math instead of laying this Indiana Jones Science rap on me.”
I’ve been giving you numbers, equations, and computations – If you want I can ‘show you the math’ tomorrow. Below you admit that KE is converted into thermal energy in an impact – I’ll add some comments, but you have admitted to the mechanism already. (Incidentally how does me using the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to describe a theory which alleges the twin towers were brought down by a conspiracy using CD compare with you calling my comments ‘Indiana Jones Science’ in terms of poisoning the well? You ‘Nuked the Fridge’ a ways back…)
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Just like no explanation is required (or one is immediately obvious) for tons of molten rock in a meteor impact crater.”
Right, so assuming the building collapsed at free fall speed, within 8 seconds, approximately the time it took to collapse, it would have a velocity of approximately 55m/s. Compare that with a f’n meteor, which I believe you stated would be traveling at a minimum velocity equal to the escape velocity of earth, or 11,000 m/s (or 11km/s) and you are telling me that the collapse of the building, which at 8 seconds into the event is only moving at 1/2 of one percent the velocity of a meteor, is comparable to the creation of a crater from said meteor.”
Yes, I am saying that the difference between these two phenomena is scale – just like the difference between a firecracker and a nuclear weapon (both impacts, both explosions). I’ve quantified the energies involved here (an impactor 10km in diameter yields 4 x 10^23 joules vs. 4 x 10^11 joules (per tower) you refuse to account for in the WTC collapse) all you’ve done is say ‘but that doesn’t matter’ in violation of conservation of energy.
Bob said:
“The meteor that’s traveling so f’n fast that the rear of the object on impact is still traveling so fast that it creates heat from the compression of collapsing on itself? That meteor?
Please. Let’s get real.”
Yes, the kinetic energy of the metorite is converted into thermal energy (a big explosion) via impact with the earth. Exactly the same thing that happened when the debris of each of the towers slammed into the ground (albeit on a much smaller, but still very big, scale). I’m being real and you keep losing credibility when you make my arguments for me while refusing to account for 400 billion joules of kinetic energy present in the rubble the moment before impact. It was unquestionably there, I’ve estimated its magnitude, and it went somewhere. I think it turned into heat in the rubble pile via exactly the same mechanism seen when an impactor hits the earth (or the moon or any other solid (remember Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Jupiter) planetary body). If you have any explanation of where this energy might have gone I’ll gladly listen, but all you have done so far is throw a tantrum about having to obey the laws of nature. Do you think that what happened to 80% of the gravitational potential energy of the WTC is unimportant? When you are arguing for the need for thermite to account for molten metal representing a tiny fraction of the energy that I’m talking about? Can I please have some of what you’re smoking?
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Right on again. Bob and Robert are trying to distract us with illogic so we don’t notice the 1.6 trillion joules that they are trying to hide (that’s 1/25th the energy released at Hiroshima for those of you scoring at home).”
I’m illogical? You’re the one making the energy in the towers pull double duty. Not only is it used up in the shredding of the building, but it SOMEHOW sticks around, perhaps by request of Maxwell’s Demon, to create heat sufficient to melt steel!
I’m being illogical??”
Yes, you’re being illogical. I’m the one insisting that energy is neither created or destroyed but may change into other forms. Maxwell’s Demon would be the best explanation you’ve provided so far of what happened to the equivalent of 100 metric tons of TNT (per tower) that you refuse to consider. If you just tell me what happened to the kinetic energy of the rubble and convince me (or Buddha, Robert, and Byron) that you’re correct, I’ll let this drop. I think this energy turned into a seismic shock, a big kaboom, and heat in the rubble pile. What have you got?
Byron: “I think no matter how you slice it, its planes.”
Just one more problem with that theory, as I stated before …
The NASA thermograph puts the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse.
No planes Byron.
Bob posted:
“Byron: “I think no matter how you slice it, its planes.”
Just one more problem with that theory, as I stated before …
The NASA thermograph puts the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse.
No planes Byron.”
Nice try Bob. WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed as a result of damage suffered in the plane strikes. WTC 7 collapsed as a result of (massive) damage sustained when WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed. And you still haven’t let us in on where you stashed 800,000,000,000 joules of kinetic energy (not including WTC 7).
Slartibartfast: “If you just tell me what happened to the kinetic energy of the rubble and convince me (or Buddha, Robert, and Byron) that you’re correct, I’ll let this drop. I think this energy turned into a seismic shock, a big kaboom, and heat in the rubble pile. What have you got?”
What happens to the kinetic energy of a bullet when it hits a deer? Answer, (assuming soft point) part of it makes the bullet mushroom and the rest goes into shredding the vital organs of the deer (assuming a well placed shot.)
You don’t look at the dead deer and ask “where’s the kinetic energy now?” The only way that question would be applicable is if you missed the f’n deer.
Likewise, if a structure falls, THROUGH THE PATH OF GREATEST RESISTANCE, and the kinetic energy from the collapse goes into shredding the building, making noise, pulverizing concrete and all that jazz, when the event is over, you don’t look at the pile of rubble and ask “where did the kinetic energy go?” You’re looking at it in the rubble. What goes up must come down. Your 1.6 million joules were deposited during the building the towers and they were withdrawn upon collapse. You learned that in the seventh f’n grade. But instead of conceding the point, you hit me with this cosmik debris theory and these metaphysical claims of ‘energy is eternal’ so eternal it sounds like your next step is to create a car that never runs out of fuel.
The closest kinetic energy comes to heat energy is through the mechanism of FRICTION. But you don’t even attempt to account for that conversion either.
Slartibartfast: “Nice try Bob. WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed as a result of damage suffered in the plane strikes. WTC 7 collapsed as a result of (massive) damage sustained when WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed.”
Actually, according to FEMA, there was no structural damage from the collapse of the North Tower. They said that a piece of debris from that collapse breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. That piece of debris had to travel across WTC6 and Vesey St., penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of WTC 7, including a concrete masonry wall.
And it was all that ‘burning fuel oil’ that not only managed to completely bring down a steel building for the first time in history, but its collapse was explained by the BBC 20 minutes before it ever happened.
Slartibartfast: “And you still haven’t let us in on where you stashed 800,000,000,000 joules of kinetic energy (not including WTC 7).”
Of course you wouldn’t want to include the hottest spot in the NASA thermograph; i.e. the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse. Ain’t it amazing how WTC 7 was able to mimic the miracle of physics performed by its brothers WTC 1 & WTC 2; when it’s not even 1/3 its size & mass?
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “If you just tell me what happened to the kinetic energy of the rubble and convince me (or Buddha, Robert, and Byron) that you’re correct, I’ll let this drop. I think this energy turned into a seismic shock, a big kaboom, and heat in the rubble pile. What have you got?”
What happens to the kinetic energy of a bullet when it hits a deer? Answer, (assuming soft point) part of it makes the bullet mushroom and the rest goes into shredding the vital organs of the deer (assuming a well placed shot.)”
Incorrect. The kinetic energy of the bullet has become thermal energy in the deer/bullet system – not a lot (compared to the heat capacity of the system, but that’s where the kinetic energy of the bullet went.
Bob said:
“You don’t look at the dead deer and ask “where’s the kinetic energy now?” The only way that question would be applicable is if you missed the f’n deer.”
It is always reasonable to ask ‘Where’s the energy now?’ since energy is neither created or destroyed. Let’s try a thought experiment, okay. Get your favorite gun and a steel wall thick enough to stop the bullet. Fire the gun at the wall and pick up the bullet. After you stop screaming and treat the burns on your fingers (I recommend aloe), ask yourself, “Where did this heat come from?” Did it come from the chemical propellant? Not if your gun and bullet were of an efficient design (any energy heating the bullet here is not going in to speeding the bullet up). Did it come from friction? Maybe a little bit, but do you think the temperature of the bullet will be effected by halving or doubling the distance to the wall? No? Well then, friction must have been a minor component of the heat. What’s left? The kinetic energy of the bullet transformed into heat. By exactly the same process which occurred when the rubble pile slammed into the ground. Don’t believe me? Go get a gun and try it yourself.
Bob said:
“Likewise, if a structure falls, THROUGH THE PATH OF GREATEST RESISTANCE, and the kinetic energy from the collapse goes into shredding the building, making noise, pulverizing concrete and all that jazz, when the event is over, you don’t look at the pile of rubble and ask “where did the kinetic energy go?” You’re looking at it in the rubble. What goes up must come down. Your 1.6 million joules were deposited during the building the towers and they were withdrawn upon collapse. You learned that in the seventh f’n grade. But instead of conceding the point, you hit me with this cosmik debris theory and these metaphysical claims of ‘energy is eternal’ so eternal it sounds like your next step is to create a car that never runs out of fuel.”
This is equally daft, but I need to finish this off for the night, so I’ll just note that I’m talking about trillion, not million – i.e. 1,600,000,000,000 joules, not 1,600,000 joules – this is not a small amount of energy to misplace. Robert’s bought you 5 to 10,000,000,000 joules and I’m sure you can get a megajoule or two out of the kaboom and a bit more from flying debris, but you’ve got a long way to go and you’re running out of options…
Bob said:
“The closest kinetic energy comes to heat energy is through the mechanism of FRICTION. But you don’t even attempt to account for that conversion either.”
Friction is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy, but (in my opinion) this effect is many orders of magnitude less significant.
Bob,
WTC 7 had a hole 20 stories tall (in a 40 story building) torn in it by debris and thick smoke billowing out of it from fires that the NYFD couldn’t fight. I call that massive damage.
Bob,
In regard to errors in reporting on 9/11, look up the term ‘fog of war’ and ask yourself if you think that everyone was 100% accurate in obtaining and relaying information on 9/11.
WTC 7 had a hole 20 stories tall (in a 40 story building)
you bumped your head, apply an ice pack and go lie down before you have a meltdown.
For the Record said:
“WTC 7 had a hole 20 stories tall (in a 40 story building)
you bumped your head, apply an ice pack and go lie down before you have a meltdown.”
Bob,
See, this is the problem with you posting your pseudo-scientific sounding ignorance – it breeds this kind of crap.
From http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
As for Building 7 and the evidence for Controlled Demolition, let’s review the evidence…
What we do have for sure.
1) Fireman saying there was “a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors.” “I would say it was probably about a third of it”.
2) A laymen officer the fireman was standing next to said, “that building doesn’t look straight.” He then says “It didn’t look right”.
3) They put a transit on it and afterward were “pretty sure she was going to collapse.”
4) They “saw a bulge in the southwest corner between floors 10 and 13″.
5) Photographic evidence of a fire directly under the penthouse which collapsed first.
6) The penthouse fell first, followed by the rest of the building shortly after.
7) The collapse happened from the bottom.
8) Photographic evidence of large smoke plumes against the back of B7. Plumes of smoke so large you can’t see the entire rear of the 47 story office building.
[...]
What we don’t have…
1) Clear view of the large hole
2) Number of columns and location of columns taken out by the tower impact
3) Clear view of all the fires seen on the south side
4) Any sign of an actual explosive.
Slartibartfast: “Incorrect. The kinetic energy of the bullet has become thermal energy in the deer/bullet system – not a lot (compared to the heat capacity of the system, but that’s where the kinetic energy of the bullet went.”
If energy is defined as the capacity of an object for doing work, is it your contention that the bullet merely kept the fucking deer warm? The bullet did no WORK on the internal organs of the deer? SERIOUSLY?
Slartibartfast: “It is always reasonable to ask ‘Where’s the energy now?’ since energy is neither created or destroyed.”
Of course, but once an event has completed, or once the capacity of an object for doing work has been EXPENDED, we observe the actual work product.
You on the other hand engage in the fallacy of ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy (‘after this then therefore because of this’) when it comes to the energy stored in the towers. “There was molten metal in the debris after the collapses, therefore the collapses must have caused (created) the molten metal.”
Slartibartfast: “Let’s try a thought experiment, okay.”
And people accuse me of getting lost in inner space…
Slartibartfast: “Get your favorite gun and a steel wall thick enough to stop the bullet. Fire the gun at the wall and pick up the bullet. After you stop screaming and treat the burns on your fingers (I recommend aloe), ask yourself, “Where did this heat come from?”
I place a .243 cartridge in my model 70. The firing pin ignites the powder in the cartridge; the burning powder converts chemically into hot gas; the hot gas propels the bullet down the rifle barrel; in order for the bullet to follow the rifling groove there must be FRICTION; that friction of the bullet against the barrel adds to the heat created by the hot gas leaving us with a hot bullet and a hot barrel — thus the reason high powered rifles use metal jacketed bullets; i.e. to keep the bullet from melting due to the friction and hot gas within the barrel.
And not for nothing, but if you’re looking to bark up that meteor tree again, the average speed of a high powered bullet, (with a high ballistic coefficient) is in the neighborhood of 3,000 feet per second, or about .95 km/sec. One eleventh the minimum speed of a meteor. Where does the majority of the kinetic energy go when that hot bullet hits the steel plate? Flattening it. Might the friction of the bullet compressing against itself as THE ENERGY OF THE PROPELLANT “WORKS” IT WAY TO FLATTEN THE BULLET upon impact create some heat? Maybe. But seeing the bullet is already hot enough to burn my fingers once it leaves the barrel, I’ll go out on limb and say the heat generated from compression is negligible in comparison–something tantamount to the heat created by bending a wire coat hanger back and forth–warm but not BURNING HOT.
There’s a finite amount of energy in the powder and when we ignite the powder, releasing its energy, most, BUT NOT ALL, of the energy is transformed into the bullet’s motion. The remainder, i.e accounting for the ‘energy is neither created nor destroyed’ factor, takes the form of barrel heat & wear, unburned powder, etc. IOW, ALL THE ENERGY IS ACCOUNTED FOR.
How am I doing so far?
Slartibartfast: “Did it come from the chemical propellant?”
See above.
Slartibartfast: “Not if your gun and bullet were of an efficient design (any energy heating the bullet here is not going in to speeding the bullet up).”
I’ll have you know it’s a mint condition Pre-64 Winchester Model 70 heavy barrel fitted with a Leopuld Vari-XIII … oh wait, you’re talking about one of dem der magically efficient imaginary guns; ain’t ya? Yeah, well we don’t see many of them round these parts…
Slartibartfast: “Did it come from friction? Maybe a little bit, but do you think the temperature of the bullet will be effected by halving or doubling the distance to the wall?”
Shoot much? Byron does; ask him what he thinks.
Slartibartfast: “No? Well then, friction must have been a minor component of the heat.”
Don’t believe what I said before about the reasoning for copper jacketed bullets on high power rifle cartridges? Try typing the words ‘copper jacket lead would melt’ into google and see what comes up on the first hit.
Slartibartfast: “What’s left? The kinetic energy of the bullet transformed into heat. By exactly the same process which occurred when the rubble pile slammed into the ground. Don’t believe me? Go get a gun and try it yourself.”
Wasn’t this exercise fun?
Slarti/Bob:
I think you both are right on the bullet. Think depleted Uranium shape sabot and then down size to steel jacketed bullet.
Some heat is from barrel, some heat from impact.
I know a 303 British steel jacketed bullet puts about a quarter size hole in 1/2″ steel plate and it looks melted but that may just be coincidence.
Bob,
You raise valid points which can’t be settled without actually doing the experiment (and I lack equipment to accurately measure the temperature of a bullet), so I’ll let it drop. I think Byron gets the gold star on this one – we’re both identifying valid sources of heat. I’ve gathered some additional evidence for my case – I’ll post it later this afternoon (don’t have time until then).
The core? Where did the core go?
Bullet:
The heat transfer coeeficient of the bullet would prevent it from getting that hot, that fast, just from bring fired. Though I have not performed any scientific research on the subject, I would suspect that much of the heat is the result of energy released during deformation. Plasticity
Robert:
So what? That isn’t exactly incontrovertible proof.
I have seen wood smolder for days and upon exposure to air burst into flame. Fire needs fuel and oxygen.
How do those fire fighters know that what they saw dripping down those beams wasn’t molten glass or plastic or a combination?
You just could not keep something like controlled demolition quiet, too many people would know and someone would spill the beans at some point.
None of what I saw surprises me, there is no smoking gun in that video.
Why are you so sure that Thermite was used? I know why Bob is sure. Same equation?
Why are you so hell bent on believing the towers were destroyed by a cabal of government agencies?
Do you have an axe to grind, know something the rest of us don’t? Especially in light of the fact that you saw 2 large planes fly into them or do you believe that was just special effects like the moon landing?
Slartibartfast,
Can you explain the molten metal before the collapse?
Slartibartfast: “This is equally daft, but I need to finish this off for the night, so I’ll just note that I’m talking about trillion, not million – i.e. 1,600,000,000,000 joules, not 1,600,000 joules”
That was an obvious typo.
Slartibartfast: Bob said:
“The closest kinetic energy comes to heat energy is through the mechanism of FRICTION. But you don’t even attempt to account for that conversion either.”
Friction is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy, but (in my opinion) this effect is many orders of magnitude less significant.”
At least you named the mechanism of conversion.
Byron: “I think you both are right on the bullet. Think depleted Uranium shape sabot and then down size to steel jacketed bullet.
Some heat is from barrel, some heat from impact.”
First, you damn well that most if not all of the heat comes from inside the barrel; e.g. if you fired a plain lead bullet from a 7mm casing, nothing but goo would come out the end of the barrel.
Second, are you really comparing the collapse of a building, which somehow occurred at free fall speed (about 8 seconds for the towers and 6.5 seconds for WTC 7) with the dynamics of a bullet; just for the rhetorical bridge of saying “hey, it could be?” Seriously?
Robert/BobEsq:
Maybe these will help:
http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml
“It is known that structural steel begins to soften around 425°C and loses about half of its strength at 650°C.”
The fires may have reached a 1,000 C but probably 700 to 800 C.
Bob Esq:
A lead bullet doesn’t melt in a barrel of a rifle but some leading will occur so it isn’t advisable to use solid lead bullets. Although you can use bullets that have a small copper cap at the base but otherwise are lead.
If a bullet strikes a plate some energy is dissipated as heat. I don’t know how much the contribution is.
When you hit a tank with a sabot it turns the armour plating to molten metal. These are called kinetic energy rounds. They don’t use explosives. So I think my point is valid on the smaller scale.
Even Prof. Kant would agree that a matter of scale does not impact the truth of an axiom. A bb falls at the same speed as a bowling ball. But the energy upon impact is much less due to differences in mass.
Byron,
You’re not paying attention. If you remember, I believe the mechanism for demolition was installed to prevent the building from falling over.
Slartibartfast: “You raise valid points which can’t be settled without actually doing the experiment (and I lack equipment to accurately measure the temperature of a bullet), so I’ll let it drop”
Everything I said about the firing of a bullet through a rifle would come in as evidence via the court simply taking judicial notice. It’s common knowledge. As to the the amount of heat produced by the friction of a bullet flattening upon impact, I’m sure someone in some field felt compelled at one time to do the research on that one as well.
Byron: “A lead bullet doesn’t melt in a barrel of a rifle but some leading will occur so it isn’t advisable to use solid lead bullets. Although you can use bullets that have a small copper cap at the base but otherwise are lead.”
Excuse my previous hyperbole. Here’s what (everyone’s favorite fun source) wikipedia says:
“The surface of lead bullets fired at high velocity may melt due to hot gases behind and friction with the bore. Because copper has a higher melting point, and greater specific heat capacity and hardness, copper jacketed bullets allow greater muzzle velocities.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet
Byron: “If a bullet strikes a plate some energy is dissipated as heat. I don’t know how much the contribution is.”
Lead grinding (i.e. rubbing and compressing) against lead would create friction heat; anything close to being forced down a 24 inch barrel by hot gas? I’d calculate not.
Byron: “When you hit a tank with a sabot it turns the armour plating to molten metal. These are called kinetic energy rounds. They don’t use explosives. So I think my point is valid on the smaller scale.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but armor piercing bullets are a function of immense muzzle velocity and a highly dense projectile.
Byron: “Even Prof. Kant would agree that a matter of scale does not impact the truth of an axiom. A bb falls at the same speed as a bowling ball. But the energy upon impact is much less due to differences in mass.”
But if you got those two items traveling at 11km/sec, I’m sure they’d be pretty hot upon impact.
Thus the reason the average terminal velocity of objects falling to earth precludes such phenomena.
Speaking of terminal velocity, building 7 fell within 6.5 seconds. Makes ya wonder if there was any resistance at all.
PROOF THAT THE THERMAL AND GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY
AVAILABLE WERE INSUFFICIENT TO MELT STEEL IN THE TWIN
TOWERS AND 7 WORLD TRADE CENTER ON 9/11/01
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/ProfMorroneOnMeltingWTCsteel.pdf
Robert:
I read a portion of that and will comment later, but there are inconsistencies in the first couple of pages that I need to check out.
A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero.
Hudson New York reported:
An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques.
At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.
The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times — which put the story on its front page Wednesday — that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into ‘’an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.’’
The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million for it — in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said, akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.
The origins of such monies are unexplained; neither are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World TradeCenter belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.
Robert:
can you explain to me how it takes 270,000 joules of energy to melt 1 kg of steel but 478,400 joules to raise the temperature of 1 kg of steel from 800 C to 1536 (the melting point) C.?
Is the first one wrong or the second? And why do you have to add the 2 together? If steel was already hot wouldn’t it take less energy to get it to the melting point.
If water is at 180 F do you need more energy to get it to 212 F than you do from 75 F? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Kinetic Energy is 0.5MV^2 not MGH which is Potential Energy.
And sulfur occurs in many hydro-carbon based products and it occurs in steel. He did not say what % of sulfur was found. Was it 0.5% or 15%.
Personally if he is so sloppy on these simple facts how could you take him seriously on anything else.
Try again and give me a paper that has some real credibility, not some ersatz science dufus.
Byron,
It takes more energy to undergo the phase change.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/phase.html
Robert:
total energy is total energy. It may take a certain amount of energy at each point but total energy should be sum of all energy at each phase.
That guy is wrong.
Byron,
Why attempt to beat up on a scientist who gives you more than what was really there? Using the GPE instead of estimating the KE available for transfer on impact is being generous. The GPE is the most energy available.
Byron,
Have at it.
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
Byron,
Thought you (& Gyges) might enjoy this.
http://i.imgur.com/dRMby.png
Byron,
You going to have to do better than “That guy is wrong”. I understand that in your line of work you would have no need to ever consider the energy required to change the physical state of a material, but that doesn’t grant you permission to ignore the energy required to make it happen.
212 degree steam contains much more energy than 212 degree water. It requires 2260 kJ/kg to convert water to steam. That has nothing to do with heating the water to 212 degrees, or superheating the steam afterwards.
Byron,
You’re on fire today! (I’m still laughing about the moon landing comment.) Or maybe you just got so hot by slamming into the ground at high speed.
You are exactly on point with the depleted uranium shells – on impact their kinetic energy becomes heat and melts through a tank’s armor.
Bob,
I’m going to take some time and lay out my argument for you (and everyone else). I would also like to ‘do the math’ and figure out the kinetic energy of a bullet and what the delta T (change in temperature) would be if all of that energy were converted to heat. You suggested that a high powered bullet had an average speed of 0.95 km/sec. To do the calculation I want to I also need the weight and composition (or I could just assume that lead is the major component) If you can provide estimates of these quantities, I’ll work out the numbers to give our discussion more focus.
Can you imagine taking college chem with something like this at your disposal?
http://www.ptable.com/
Now I think I know what the slide rule generation felt like.
Slartibartfast,
Why so eager to do all that work on the fallacy of a false analogy?
1. It’s bad enough that you don’t see a problem with the rate of fall of the building.
2. It’s even worse that you’re completely ignoring the anomaly known as WTC 7; i.e. that building with the more than 1,300 degree hot spot on the thermograph five days after 9/11.
By anomaly I mean an event that shatters your previous theory about all those joules pent up in the two towers being responsible for the heat energy. WTC 7 falls outside of your explanation; thus refuting it.
Robert,
Byron is absolutely right, the energy required to melt room temperature steel (or anything) is equal to the amount of energy required to heat the steel to (say) 800 degrees plus the energy required to melt steel at 800 degrees. This is basic energy conservation and a failure to understand it certainly reflects poorly on the scientific credibility of the author (even if he is just explaining it badly it calls his work into doubt – good scientific writing goes to great lengths to make sure that the ideas are communicated clearly to the intended audience (having been spending much time lately in the editing process, I am hyperaware of this – no scientist that I know (or at least that I work with) would let their name be associated with something so poorly written).
Bob,
You said:
“Slartibartfast,
Why so eager to do all that work on the fallacy of a false analogy?
1. It’s bad enough that you don’t see a problem with the rate of fall of the building.
2. It’s even worse that you’re completely ignoring the anomaly known as WTC 7; i.e. that building with the more than 1,300 degree hot spot on the thermograph five days after 9/11.
By anomaly I mean an event that shatters your previous theory about all those joules pent up in the two towers being responsible for the heat energy. WTC 7 falls outside of your explanation; thus refuting it.”
It’s not a false analogy, nor is it work – I’m a scientist, doing this sort of thing is fun for me (yes, I’m a very sick puppy
). And it’s not a waste of time to try and educate people about science. Do you ever consider that you might be wrong? (And before you ask, I constantly consider the possibility that I’m wrong, it’s (in my opinion, at least) a necessary form of introspection for a scientist.
A question about your anomaly: What, exactly, do you contend was the origin of hot spot? Thermite reacting for 5 days? If so, is there any evidence that a thermite reaction can proceed so slowly or last so long? You’re citing a couple of observations, claiming that they are inconsistent with the IFT, and asserting that CD with thermite best satisfies all of the observations, even though no building has ever been brought down with thermite before. In my opinion, you’re reaching and your goal is far from your grasp.
Slartibartfast,
“Byron is absolutely right, the energy required to melt room temperature steel (or anything) is equal to the amount of energy required to heat the steel to (say) 800 degrees plus the energy required to melt steel at 800 degrees.”
Steel doesn’t melt at 800 degrees (F or C). The statement is that it requires 478,400 joules to heat an 800 degree C kilogram of steel to 1536 degrees C. And it requires an additional 272,000 joules just to convert it from a solid to a liquid.
The author is giving you another gift. She is letting you start with 800 degree C steel, even though the likely starting point is probably closer to 250 degree C.
You said to Bob. “even though no building has ever been brought down with thermite before.”
The “first time” assertion is kind of funny when you consider your claim that though no steel building has ever collapsed due to fire, and the type of uniform failure required to have the WTCs collapse like they did had never happened before, but on this occasion it didn’t just happen once, it happened three times. PFM
Slarti, since you are claiming that the GPE of WTC 7 was enough to create molten steel, what is the minimum required GPE to do so?
Slartibartfast: “It’s not a false analogy,”
If you offered evidence of your ‘potential energy in the building being so enormous as to rip apart the building upon conversion to kinetic energy AND still having so much surplus potential energy, i.e from which the Ke must come from, left over as to melt the very steel with which it was built; fine. But showing me what happens when a speeding bullet hits a metal plate tells me nothing about a building alleged to have collapsed at free fall speed.
Slartibartfast: “Do you ever consider that you might be wrong?
All the time Socrates. Why do you think I tend to ground all my arguments on certainties; certainties like Q=mcΔT?
Slartibartfast: “A question about your anomaly: What, exactly, do you contend was the origin of hot spot?”
What I reject is the implicit assumption that Q=mcΔT, the law of thermal equilibrium, etc., were in abeyance on 9/11/01 and nearly six months thereafter.
‘Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat’ – the burden of the proof lies upon him who affirms, not he who denies
Further, since ‘we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so’, I merely contend that Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of the existence of another entity so as to arrive at the truth in this matter. Anything less is simply incomplete and unacceptable at best.
Slartibartfast: “In my opinion, you’re reaching and your goal is far from your grasp.”
I assure you I’ve hit my target. While you’re out looking for meteors and speeding bullet analogies; I’m looking at a pile of rubble and repeating the question “show me how it happened in the classic Karl Popper form.”
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/12/canadian-cbc-covers-911-commission.html
“Most of the 9/11 Commissioners no longer believe their own accuracy any more either, now that new evidence and facts have developed.”
Robert,
I read the paper and you were correct about 272,000 joule thing, but I still don’t think the paper’s conclusion is credible (especially since the author commits a logical fallacy in their conclusion). For an explanation of why, see my next post. I used the numbers on specific heat and heat of fusion from the paper you posted.
Bob (and everyone else, too),
The laws of physics operate independent of scale. Unless we are dealing with processes in the realms of quantum mechanics and/or relativity – which is to say really big (massive), really small (sub-atomic), or really fast (near the speed of light) – physics are governed by classic Newtonian mechanics. Nothing that we’re dealing with here moves into these realms – even an impactor 10 km in diameter striking at escape velocity is neither big nor fast in this sense). The same principles apply if you’re talking about a toy rocket powered by compressed air and water (one of my favorite childhood toys), a jetliner, or a Saturn V rocket. All of these behave according to Newton’s law of motion. Similarly, the same physics are in play whenever a moving mass strikes an immovable object (an object which wont be appreciably moved by the collision). The same physics are in operation when an impactor hits the earth at escape velocity, a bullet strikes a metal plate at 1 km/s, or a pile of rubble slams into the ground at 54 m/s. The details differ, but the physics are the same regardless of scale.
(All of the dimensions and estimates come from Wikipedia unless otherwise noted.)
Let us consider an impactor striking the earth. (I have to apologize, as I spoke incorrectly in earlier posts, an object is an asteroid or a comet or whatever when it is moving through space, a meteor when moving through the atmosphere, and a meteorite after it hits the earth – I’m just sticking to impactor from now on…) To provide a focus, I’ll discuss the impactor which created Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. This impactor is estimated to have been at least 10 km in diameter and struck the earth 65 million years ago. Scientists like this rock for whacking the dinosaurs. An estimated 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy were released on impact, the equivalent of 100 million megatons of TNT. This caused a massive explosion and instantly liquified enough solid rock to form a crater 180 km in diameter. Could frictional heating as the impactor passed through the atmosphere and oxygen reactions after impact have played a role in these effects? If so, then crater formation would be different on the moon. The craters on the moon tell us that even in the absence of atmospheric friction and oxygen reactions, impacts are sufficient to liquify solid rock. The Chicxulub impactor was able to convert enough kinetic energy into thermal energy to instantly liquify (I really like that word) over 25,000 square kilometers of solid rock. The impact of the falling rubble on the earth is much smaller in scale but operates on exactly the same principles.
Now let’s take a look at the physics involved. These types of collisions are referred to as inelastic collisions. This essentially means that there was no ‘bounce’ – the particles stuck together after the impact. In such a collision, wikipedia says:
“The reduction of total kinetic energy is equal to the total kinetic energy before the collision in a center of momentum frame with respect to the system of two particles, because in such a frame the kinetic energy after the collision is zero. In this frame most of the kinetic energy before the collision is that of the particle with the smaller mass.”
What does this mean? Since our system in this case is the WTC rubble and the Earth, the center of momentum frame of reference is essentially just the center of the Earth frame of reference, thus the reduction of total kinetic energy is equal to the total kinetic energy before the collision i.e. all of the kinetic energy of the falling rubble has been transformed into another kind of energy (since energy is neither created nor destroyed).
(WTC numbers from various sources – I stand by the calculations and will correct the numbers as needed.)
So how much kinetic energy was in the rubble the instant before impact? The gravitational potential energy of one of the twin towers is estimated at 500 billion joules. If the towers had fallen at free fall speed, all of this gravitational energy would have been converted into kinetic energy. Assuming that the towers fell in 6.6 seconds and free fall took 6 seconds gives us a free fall speed of 60 m/s and a terminal velocity of 54 m/s for the rubble. Using the fact that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity (KE = 1/2 m v^2), we calculate that the rubble retained 82.6% of the original gravitational potential energy as kinetic energy the moment before impact. This implies that 400 billion joules of kinetic energy were transformed into other types of energy at the moment of impact.
We have already seen above that kinetic energy may be transformed into thermal energy by impact, but what other forms of energy were produced? The collapse registered on seismic monitors and there was a big kaboom, so we need to consider both the seismic and sonic energy produced by the impact.
The collapse of one of the towers registered as a magnitude of 2.1 on the Richter scale. For comparison, the energy released in a seismic event of magnitude 2.0 is roughly 4.2 billion joules (the equivalent of a metric ton of TNT or a late WWII conventional bomb). By the relevant calculation we compute that the seismic event caused by the collapse of one of the WTC towers required roughly 5.9 billion joules.
Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the decibel level of the WTC collapse was, but it requires one megawatt of power to produce a 180dB sound. This is the sound of a rocket engine or the sound of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption as heard from 100 miles away. Given that 1 million joules per second produces this volume of sound, the sonic energy produced by the collapse is negligible in this calculation.
This leaves us with over 490 billion joules of heat generated by the collapse of one of the towers or the equivalent of about 120 metric tons of TNT. Using the heat of fusion and specific heat of iron from the article Robert linked to, this is enough energy to melt over 500 metric tons of iron at room temperature.
Based on this analysis, I conclude that there was sufficient heat generated by the collapse of the WTC to account for the observations at ground zero. The difference between you and me Bob, is that you may know the terms, but I understand the concepts and, more importantly, can do the calculations. If I sometimes seem curt and dismissive of you, it is because it’s annoying to have someone call you a liar when you know what you’re talking about.
If you care to disagree with any of this analysis, bring it on! I’ll provide any details of my calculations if asked.
“The Unofficial Story
Aired Fri 27, 2009
Eight years after 9/11, why are doubts growing about the official record of that day?
On September 11, 2001 the world watched in shock and disbelief as planes flew in to New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, and Americans realized they were under attack. But by whom? What really happened? In The Unofficial Story, the fifth estate’s Bob McKeown introduces us to people who believe the real force behind the attacks was not Osama Bin Laden, but the U.S. government itself.
Emerging from the dust and debris that day was a movement, known these days as 9/11 Truth or “truthers” – people who believe that 9/11 was part of a vast conspiracy and cover-up by a criminal faction within the U.S. government. As the fifth estate reports, public opinion polls now show that the majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks and somehow allowed them to happen and that one-third of Canadians share the same belief.
In The Unofficial Story, Bob McKeown explores why these questions and theories are growing in popularity.
You’ll meet some of the leading proponents of “truther” theories: Richard Gage, an American architect, explains how the WTC twin towers and the lesser known ‘Tower #7’ could only have crumbled as they did due to explosive charges placed inside the buildings. Others, including Canadian professor Kee Dewdney, insist that the story of the brave fight by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 must have been a hoax. But, you’ll also hear from others who dispel “truther” theories and try to understand why, from JFK’s assassination to the moon landing to 9/11, a culture of conspiracy springs up around certain historic events.
Despite the difference of opinion between those who blame the hijackers and those who blame their own government, the real importance of the fight over 9/11 truth is that it may have less to do with the past than the future.”
They won’t even let us view it in the U.S.
You can try. Go here http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/the_unofficial_story/
Click on the play button.
Slartibartfast: “The laws of physics operate independent of scale.”
I don’t object to your use of scale, I object to your comparison of events.
Slartibartfast: “Since our system in this case is the WTC rubble and the Earth, the center of momentum frame of reference is essentially just the center of the Earth frame of reference, thus the reduction of total kinetic energy is equal to the total kinetic energy before the collision i.e. all of the kinetic energy of the falling rubble has been transformed into another kind of energy (since energy is neither created nor destroyed).
(WTC numbers from various sources – I stand by the calculations and will correct the numbers as needed.)
So how much kinetic energy was in the rubble the instant before impact?”
Instant before impact?? WTF are you talking about? A structure at rest on planet earth which thence collapses is not said to have ‘IMPACTED’ the earth. It’s already ON EARTH and the collapse is a decay of its previous higher ordered structure. Without getting into the Ship of Theseus puzzle, suffice to say that parts of the building impacting the earth does not mean the building impacted earth.
The meteor example necessitates a velocity so fucking high that the rear of the meteor, upon IMPACT, is traveling so fucking fast that it compresses against the front of the meteor–i.e. one source of heat from impact.
In what way shape or form does the collapse of a steel building contain that type of event??!!
SHOW ME.
Again,
Bob,
I’ve been using that periodic table you lined to for reference for some time now. I know what you mean about the slide rule generation (and this is coming from someone who can use a slide rule). There are several interactive periodic tables out on the net, but that is one of the better ones. There are also some interesting open source chemistry programs that have similar functions.
Man do I love a good toy.
P.S. I may have a way to get my hands on that CBC documentary. I’ll keep you posted. I’d like to see that. The CBC does some solid reporting.
After my last post, I thought that I should clarify exactly what my position is vis-a-vis conspiracies theories of 9/11. From my last post, you can see that I believe that enough heat to liquify over 500 metric tons of iron (assuming the iron is at room temperature) was generated in the collapse of each tower. Furthermore, it should be clear exactly were I got that number from.
Given the magnitude of the forces involved, I believe that enough heat was generated in the collapse (along with fires [which can be documented] and exothermic reactions [I've suggested 3Fe_s + 4H20_g -> Fe3O4_s + 4H2_g and 2H2 + O2 -> 2H20] in the pile of rubble) to account for the observed heat at ground zero. I also believe that suggesting that the observed effects required the addition of energy in the form of explosives is laughable given the the amount of explosives that would have been required to produce more energy that was ‘naturally’ present. (For comparison, look at the TNT equivalents that I gave in my analysis. If you think that modern explosives are more powerful, consider that C4 is 1.34 times as explosive as TNT – you’re not going to get a lot out of that argument.) I believe that the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 was a direct result of the impact of the 2 Boeing 767 jetliners and that the collapse of WTC7 was a direct result of damage sustained in the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. I believe that any evidence of of explosives in the collapse is either not credible or better explained by ‘natural’ causes. I believe that conspiracy theories involving the government crashing planes into buildings, while highly unlikely, are not impossible. I believe that the reliability of eye-wittness accounts and the accuracy of media reports were both substantially lower than would normally be expected (and Bob, as a lawyer, you should know how reliable eye-wittness accounts are in general). The investigation and cleanup of ground zero were run by FEMA, an organization with no prior investigatory experience. Additionally, in light of their response to hurricane Katrina and the general incompetence of the Bush administration, I believe incompetence is a better explanation of the actions people involved in the investigation than conspiracy is. I hope this helps.
p.s. to Buddha: Kudos on the ability to use a slide rule, do you have one? (I do.)
Slartibartfast,
Arrogance is the downfall of many a scientist.
Was this energy directed at a 1″ x 1 ” area, or was the area of impact 500 sq. miles? You don’t say.
Do you think the same amount of energy spread out over 500 sq. miles would produce the same molten steel?
According to your theory, if I used a crane to put every piece of the WTC on the ground, the crane would either burst into flames from doing so, or the pieces on the ground would melt steel simply because they had the potential for doing so at some point in time.
This is not an isolated system. By treating it as one, you completely forget about any work performed. You fail to account for how the floors were broke loose. You don’t account for any of the energy used to trun the concrete into rubble.
If you use energy to break the floors loose, you can’t also include it as kinetic energy. If you use energy to turn the cement into rubble, you can’t include it as kinetic energy involved with the impact.
In an open system, energy expended must be considered lost energy.
Slarti,
I have a 50′s model metal slide rule. It was originally used to design many of the bridges in rural Western Kansas and was a gift from a family member. Has a nice leather case and everything. Although I haven’t used it in many years other than as a conversation piece, it’s nice to know if the EMPs eat all our electronics, I’ll still be able to to calculations without resorting to long hand.
Buddha,
Very cool to know the history of your slide rule (and a noble history it is). Mine came from the widow of a parishioner of my parent’s church along with a bunch of old math books. I just hope I have it with me if I’m ever stranded on a desert island. I’d hate to have to reproduce the log tables by hand. It’s just plastic, but it does have a leather belt holster. (Is there anything geekier than that?)
Slarti,
“Is there anything geekier than that?”
rofl
I’m going to have to say “no”.
I think we’ve just been geek outed!
Although I’m thinking neither of us was fooling anyone.
Buddha,
Yeah. I think the post on the physics of the collapse that I worked on all afternoon was a clue.
Bob,
I’m working on a response to your last post.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The laws of physics operate independent of scale.”
I don’t object to your use of scale, I object to your comparison of events.”
All three events are inelastic collisions, I used the physics of inelastic collisions to perform my calculations. That being said, do you concede the point on the bullet? I’ll defend my assumptions about the WTC collapse below. I am assuming the that the collapse was ‘natural’ (as was the assumption in my analysis).
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “So how much kinetic energy was in the rubble the instant before impact?”
Instant before impact?? WTF are you talking about? A structure at rest on planet earth which thence collapses is not said to have ‘IMPACTED’ the earth. It’s already ON EARTH and the collapse is a decay of its previous higher ordered structure. Without getting into the Ship of Theseus puzzle, suffice to say that parts of the building impacting the earth does not mean the building impacted earth.”
(I had to look up the ‘Ship of Theseus puzzle’. Nice reference, let’s just stick to the physics.)
The collapse started at the impact zone and proceeded downward. Imagine a surface above which the structure had begun to fail and below which the structure is still intact. Define the speed of this surface as the speed of collapse. I estimated that speed by using 6.6 seconds (and constant acceleration) for the collapse and 6 seconds for free fall. Above this surface is a mass of debris descending at the speed of collapse (remember, the portion of the building above the impact zone acted as a giant piston, pulverizing the building into debris and accelerating it*). Call the time that this surface passed ground level t0. Now, a moment before t0, there are debris with the mass of the building moving at the speed of collapse. A short time later, there is a pile of debris that is stationary, having undergone an inelastic (non-bouncy) collision with the Earth. Using this model, I calculated the kinetic energy which existed before t0 and didn’t exist (because it had primarily been changed into thermal energy) a short time after t0. Now I make several simplifying assumptions – that the impact takes place when the surface of collapse reaches ground level, that the ground is a solid plane (no basements, etc), that the rubble doesn’t pile up (leaving remaining gravitational potential energy), that the building collapses into its own footprint, and so on**. In science, in order to deal with complex systems, these sorts of simplifying assumptions are necessary. In my judgement*** the assumptions that are made are reasonable for the analysis I did. This sort of ‘back of the envelope’ calculation is not to precisely determine the quantities involved, but instead get an idea of the general size of the forces involved. I wouldn’t be surprised to find my calculation accurate within an order of magnitude or less and I would be surprised if it wasn’t accurate within 2 orders of magnitude. Using this sort of analysis provides a context in which to interpret evidence. This analysis implying that enough heat was created to liquify 500 metric tons of iron suggests to me that molten iron would be expected at ground zero. Given that there was additional heat from fires (observed) and exothermic reactions (the reaction I suggested between hot iron and steam is highly likely), it seems reasonable to expect that high temperatures would persist for quite a while in the rubble.
*The 17.4% drop from the gravitational potential energy to the kinetic energy before impact is the energy that went into pulverizing and accelerating the debris, it remained in the debris as thermal energy. This source of heat is neglected in the analysis.
**If we look at an individual piece of rubble, it’s moving at somewhere near the speed of collapse and at some point has an inelastic collision with the earth. My simplifying assumptions enable me to estimate what we get when we add the effect of this collision for each piece of rubble.
***When I say my judgement, I mean my professional judgment. My research involves making assumptions to simplify complex systems in order to create useful models. I am currently near submitting two research articles for publication. In order to establish my bona fides I will post links to these articles once they are accepted, effectively revealing my identity (I’m the first author on both papers). I’m willing to stand behind what I say.
Bob said:
“The meteor example necessitates a velocity so fucking high that the rear of the meteor, upon IMPACT, is traveling so fucking fast that it compresses against the front of the meteor–i.e. one source of heat from impact.
In what way shape or form does the collapse of a steel building contain that type of event??!!
SHOW ME.
Again,”
What you describe is one way in which the kinetic energy of the impactor is being transformed into thermal energy. It accounts or a very small fraction of the total kinetic energy of the impactor prior to impact (my guess is that it is less (possibly significantly less) than the 17.4% lost in my analysis of the WTC collapse). I have done my best to show you how the countless (actually, a very large but finite number of) inelastic collisions involved in the WTC collapse are a lot of smaller versions of impactors hitting the earth or bullets hitting a metal plate. Again.
I admit that I may have taken a disrespectful tone in this discussion and for that, I apologize. But please acknowledge that I’m not making this stuff up, and give me a little respect, too.
Your arguments have been cogent and well-articulated and although I also believe that they show some fundamental misunderstandings of physics, they have forced me to go back to something I had looked at years ago and prove to myself that the educated guess I had made then was correct. Before this discussion I had faith that I was correct, now I am certain of it. For that, I sincerely thank you.
Slart,
Not to butt in, but perhaps it is time for the old “skeptic vs denier” test be applied to Bob.
Gyges,
Feel free to butt in, but that’s sort of what I thought I was doing. I explained myself as clearly and completely as possible and stated exactly what my position was and why. I apologized for the tone I had taken in the discussion. I promised to reveal my identity (something I had been thinking about for a while). Bob will reply how he wants. The rest of you can judge the two of us based on our words. I’m content with that.
Robert,
My response to Bob answered some of your questions, hopefully this will clear up the rest.
You said:
“Arrogance is the downfall of many a scientist.”
And it may be mine, but I’m right this time.
You said:
“Was this energy directed at a 1″ x 1 ” area, or was the area of impact 500 sq. miles? You don’t say.”
I would assume that this energy was spread out over the 300 to 400 meters that the debris fell, fairly heavily concentrated in the footprint of the building. If the energy were spread out over just the footprint of the building, it would result in an energy density of over 10,000 joules/cm^2. I would take this as a very rough estimate of the energy density at the center of the footprint.
You said:
“According to your theory, if I used a crane to put every piece of the WTC on the ground, the crane would either burst into flames from doing so, or the pieces on the ground would melt steel simply because they had the potential for doing so at some point in time.”
No. The gravitational potential energy would be converted into other forms of energy slowly and harmlessly (well, some additional wear and tear on the crane).
You said:
“This is not an isolated system. By treating it as one, you completely forget about any work performed. You fail to account for how the floors were broke loose. You don’t account for any of the energy used to trun the concrete into rubble.”
I calculated that 17.4% of the original gravitational potential energy went into collapsing and pulverizing the building. Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow. The rest of it remained in the debris as heat (I didn’t include this energy in my analysis – effectively assuming that all of this energy left in the pyroclastic flow). Consider an imaginary box that completely contains the WTC (from the subbasement to the tip of the radio masts). Initially, this box contains approximately one trillion joules of gravitational potential energy. All of this energy either remains in the box or is transferred out of the box – I have kept track of the energy that stayed in the box and estimated that enough of it was converted into heat to liquify approximately 1,000 metric tons of iron at room temperature. I have not in any way violated the law of conservation of energy.
You said:
“If you use energy to break the floors loose, you can’t also include it as kinetic energy. If you use energy to turn the cement into rubble, you can’t include it as kinetic energy involved with the impact. In an open system, energy expended must be considered lost energy.”
I didn’t include it. Although a portion of the kinetic energy used to break the floors loose ultimately remains in the rubble as heat, since there’s no way to quantify this portion (which didn’t leave via pyroclastic flow or other mechanism) I excluded it all. I have very carefully and clearly explained my process, please don’t accuse me of doing something that I explicitly indicated that I did not do.
Robert: “You fail to account for how the floors were broke loose. You don’t account for any of the energy used to trun the concrete into rubble.
If you use energy to break the floors loose, you can’t also include it as kinetic energy. If you use energy to turn the cement into rubble, you can’t include it as kinetic energy involved with the impact.”
You do understand that this has been my complaint all along; right?
Energy, by definition, is the capacity of an object for doing work; normally measured in joules.
A joule is the amount of work done by a force of one newton moving an object through a distance of one meter.
1 Newton = 1 kg m/s^2
1 Joule = 1 kg m/s^2 x 1m or 1 kg m^2/s^2
If the majority of the potential energy of an object (Oh, say the WTC Towers) is used in the creation of Work, (Force and movement in the direction of said force), i.e. that which is (allegedly) shredding the building, it cannot ALSO be counted as pure kinetic energy. Assuming a pure unassisted collapse, whatever PE wasn’t converted into work to break apart the Towers exists as a small remainder of Ke following the path of work on the way down.
Finally Robert, there is no ‘impact’ event; the analogy is false. A building existing on earth and collapsing on earth is not said to ‘impact’ the earth — because you can’t GET THERE from here. And with the building being on earth, you sure as shit can’t raise the velocity component of Ke, for any debris not involved in the work of tearing the building apart, any higher than terminal velocity will allow–thus making the meteor analogy completely inapplicable.
Got to go with Bob on that one. Astronomical impact events are a totally different creature than a building collapse. For one, you are talking about differences in KE that are off by huge orders of magnitude even if you discount the differences that would occur due to angular momentum. Asteroids and comets move A LOT faster than planes do. There is also the disparity in average mass issue. Many meteors are small. Some are as big as mountains. Some are as big as states. Big ones. Not Rhode Island. That makes it apples and oranges too. Had they flown the jets in a parabolic arc and dropped into the towers nose to roof or at a steeper angle? It might be a more appropriate analogy but even then it wouldn’t be exact or particularly helpful since even the Vomit Comet maneuver wouldn’t impart enough KE to makes those differences in scale negligible.
Slarti/Robert:
“The energy required to change steel from solid to liquid is called the heat
of fusion and it’s about 272,000 joules per kilogram. (5)”
I read that wrong, Robert is right. I did my own calc and came up with about 683,000 joules to totally melt 1 kg steel from room temperature.
Slartibartfast: “All three events are inelastic collisions, I used the physics of inelastic collisions to perform my calculations. That being said, do you concede the point on the bullet? I’ll defend my assumptions about the WTC collapse below. I am assuming the that the collapse was ‘natural’ (as was the assumption in my analysis).”
A (high velocity) bullet impact is not comparable to a building collapse. As I stated above just a few minutes ago “there is no ‘impact’ event; the analogy is false. A building existing on earth and collapsing on earth is not said to ‘impact’ the earth — because you can’t GET THERE from here. And with the building being on earth, you sure as shit can’t raise the velocity component of Ke, for any debris not involved in the work of tearing the building apart, any higher than terminal velocity will allow–thus making the meteor analogy completely inapplicable.”
Slartibartfast: “The collapse started at the impact zone and proceeded downward.”
So you say; however there are eyewitness accounts of civilians, cops, firemen AS WELL AS VIDEO AND AUDIO FOOTAGE providing clear and convincing evidence of massive explosions within the Towers before they fell.
Slartibartfast: “Imagine a surface above which the structure had begun to fail and below which the structure is still intact. Define the speed of this surface as the speed of collapse. I estimated that speed by using 6.6 seconds (and constant acceleration) for the collapse and 6 seconds for free fall. Above this surface is a mass of debris descending at the speed of collapse (remember, the portion of the building above the impact zone acted as a giant piston, pulverizing the building into debris and accelerating it*).”
That is your theory, it’s not a point of fact; but continue.
Slartibartfast: “Call the time that this surface passed ground level t0.”
What are you saying; that the basements had enough empty space to accommodate all the debris? Because that’s not true.
Slartibartfast: Now, a moment before t0, there are debris with the mass of the building moving at the speed of collapse. A short time later, there is a pile of debris that is stationary, having undergone an inelastic (non-bouncy) collision with the Earth. Using this model, I calculated the kinetic energy which existed before t0 and didn’t exist (because it had primarily been changed into thermal energy) a short time after t0.”
Here are just a few problems with this theory already. First, by what mechanism are you allowing for the possibility of a building to fall at free fall speed, for your alleged six seconds, through the path of greatest resistence; i.e. the structure of the building itself? IOW, your hypothetical demands the assumption that everything that the architects, engineers and construction workers put in place to support the building on its way up has completely VANISHED during your scenario. Further, as Buddha is so keen to point out, a free fall collapse, beginning with asymmetrical damage, like the one you’re suggesting, necessitates some form of magic in the form of a spontaneous symmetrical removal of all previous support structure BEFORE your falling debris reached each successive level of support. IOW, the path of greatest resistance, i.e. each level of the structure holding up the building, must magically disappear before the object in your inelastic collision scenario reaches it; otherwise the resistance would preclude free fall speed. This scenario also necessitates an architecture more simplistic than a child stacking boxes.
Slartibartfast: “Now I make several simplifying assumptions – that the impact takes place when the surface of collapse reaches ground level, that the ground is a solid plane (no basements, etc), that the rubble doesn’t pile up (leaving remaining gravitational potential energy), that the building collapses into its own footprint, and so on**.”
Sine I am making an incredible effort at suspending disbelief for all the impossible premises which your theory relies upon — if only to fully comprehend what you’re saying; may I ask how the hell you can make some ‘simplifying’ assumptions when you in fact know they are wrong? For instance, how do you give yourself license to assume the rubble is not piling up? That’s part of the reason your theory fails; seeing it’s the result of increased resistance slowing down the collapse and expending the PE in the form of work to create said rubble.
Slartibartfast: “In science, in order to deal with complex systems, these sorts of simplifying assumptions are necessary.”
No, that type of simplifying assumption is an attempt to justify jury rigging to arrive at your pre-determined outcome. “A man’s got to know his limitations” and your sweeping generalization about science does not give you license to ignore facts that preclude your theory of being true.
Slartibartfast: “In my judgement*** the assumptions that are made are reasonable for the analysis I did. This sort of ‘back of the envelope’ calculation is not to precisely determine the quantities involved, but instead get an idea of the general size of the forces involved.”
The main force involved here has to do with PE being converted to WORK; i.e. the Work required to direct Newtons against Newtons of resistance, i.e. the Newtons pushing back against the Work in the form of the structure, design & material, which you implicitly claim do not exist for purposes of your hypothetical.
Slartibartfast: “This analysis implying that enough heat was created to liquify 500 metric tons of iron suggests to me that molten iron would be expected at ground zero.”
Sure there’s plenty of energy to go around; especially if your hypothetical is getting its work for free and converting Ke to heat energy by ignoring the factual scenario of the building design and purpose itself and without so much as hinting at a plausible mechanism of converting said Ke into heat for the event. No matter how much you may hypothesize, there is no component of the collapse containing a velocity component of the magnitude you need to make your meteor analogy stick–i.e. none of the steel is moving so fast as to collapse on itself and create the type of heat created by a meteor impact; and which you claim a bullet traveling at 1/11th the velocity does as well.
Slartibartfast: “Given that there was additional heat from fires (observed) and exothermic reactions (the reaction I suggested between hot iron and steam is highly likely),”
As reported from the fire fighters by radio just before they were crushed to death, the fires were essential out. Furthermore, these ‘exothermic reactions’ you talk about are not ‘given’ — they are the subject of discussion–especially in light the evidence of active thermitic material found in the dust of ground zero.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13049
Slartibartfast: “it seems reasonable to expect that high temperatures would persist for quite a while in the rubble.”
Predicating that which has not been established is tantamount to predicating non-existence. By begging the question of the creation of heat energy from kinetic energy sans the conversion step, I ask yet again where are you getting your steam, hot iron from? “‘Exothermic reactions in the rubble’ — like the kind you get from thermate — evidenced in the dust found in the rubble of the WTC?” (See my previous objection to this leap in logic above.)
Slartibartfast: “**If we look at an individual piece of rubble, it’s moving at somewhere near the speed of collapse and at some point has an inelastic collision with the earth. My simplifying assumptions enable me to estimate what we get when we add the effect of this collision for each piece of rubble.”
No, it ignores the loss of energy when Pe is converted to the Work required to CREATE the rubble. (See my reply to Robert earlier today)
Slartibartfast: “***When I say my judgement, I mean my professional judgment. My research involves making assumptions to simplify complex systems in order to create useful models.”
I am not questioning your professional ability or scientific acumen in general, I’m simply saying your haste in making your argument here is blinding you to some basic axioms, that cannot be overcome by any assumptions.
Slartibartfast: “What you describe is one way in which the kinetic energy of the impactor is being transformed into thermal energy. It accounts or a very small fraction of the total kinetic energy of the impactor prior to impact (my guess is that it is less (possibly significantly less) than the 17.4% lost in my analysis of the WTC collapse).”
There’s no impact, there’s no high velocity component and you’re ignoring the Work factor.
Slartibartfast: I admit that I may have taken a disrespectful tone in this discussion and for that, I apologize.”
You can take any fucking tone you like; I’ll still be looking for the sound argument no matter what. And what’s wrong with a little spice in life?
Slartibartfast: “But please acknowledge that I’m not making this stuff up, and give me a little respect, too.”
If I didn’t respect you I wouldn’t fucking bother arguing with you. Remember what I said earlier about my lack of respect for the Birthers?
Slartibartfast: Your arguments have been cogent and well-articulated and although I also believe that they show some fundamental misunderstandings of physics, they have forced me to go back to something I had looked at years ago and prove to myself that the educated guess I had made then was correct.”
Careful; when you wake up and smell the Work you’ve been sweeping under the rug, you’ll have second thoughts about my misunderstanding of physics.
Slartibartfast: “Before this discussion I had faith that I was correct, now I am certain of it. For that, I sincerely thank you.”
If you’re certain you’re correct, then Socrates says you’ve put yourself outside the purview of meaningful argumentation.
Buddha,
There were a few posts of yours I’ve been meaning to address, but I got caught up as you can see.
Keep an eye on your email.
Bob,
I am in complete agreement with you. Don’t read more into the word “impact” than its definition. It refers to the collision of two objects.
The major flaw in Slarti’s conclusion is that he considers this to be an isolated system, which causes his calculations to ignore all interactions with the environment (interaction with the environment is scientifically impossible in an isolated system). The pulverizing of cement into rubble expends a lot of energy in the form of work. The ejection of metal girders 600 ft expends a lot of energy in the form of work.
Heat (what we measure as temperature) is thermal energy in transfer. Friction is a very inefficient method of energy transfer. In an open system, most of that energy is transferred to the atmosphere.
Another major flaw is the complete disregard for impact angle. What are the chances that most of the falling material hit the material at the bottom (earth and rubble) at a 90 degree angle (the angle most efficient for energy transfer), and why/how did it convert to thermal energy? Why didn’t it perform work by moving earth or rubble? Slarti assumes that all of it hit at a 90 degree angle, and most of the energy was retained in the rubble instead of being dispersed into the surrounding earth. The majority of energy left in the falling material was transferred into the earth. Early realization that this is not an isolated system would have made that easier to acknowledge.
Heat does not transfer instantaneously. The rate of heat transfer is directly related to the specific heat transfer coefficient of the material. i.e. a butane lighter burns at approximately 2000 degrees. Yet, you can pass your finger thru the flame without getting burnt.
In my lighter analogy, I should have stated that the butane lighter flame is measured in degrees C.
Bob posted:
“Robert: “You fail to account for how the floors were broke loose. You don’t account for any of the energy used to trun the concrete into rubble.
If you use energy to break the floors loose, you can’t also include it as kinetic energy. If you use energy to turn the cement into rubble, you can’t include it as kinetic energy involved with the impact.”
You do understand that this has been my complaint all along; right?”
I have said repeatedly that 17.4% of the gravitation potential energy of the WTC went into breaking the structure of the building and pulverizing the rubble. Since energy is neither created or destroyed, a good portion of this energy ends up where most (all?) energy ultimately ends up (in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics) as randomized motion of particles – i.e. heat. However, I have repeatedly said that I DID NOT INCLUDE THIS ENERGY IN MY CALCULATION OF THE HEAT GENERATED! In other words, you have no legitimate complaint here, since even if your argument was correct (which it is not since it violates conservation of energy, which is a pretty serious flaw in a physics argument), it’s still irrelevant since I excluded this energy from my heat calculation.
Bob said:
“Energy, by definition, is the capacity of an object for doing work; normally measured in joules.
A joule is the amount of work done by a force of one newton moving an object through a distance of one meter.
1 Newton = 1 kg m/s^2
1 Joule = 1 kg m/s^2 x 1m or 1 kg m^2/s^2
If the majority of the potential energy of an object (Oh, say the WTC Towers) is used in the creation of Work, (Force and movement in the direction of said force), i.e. that which is (allegedly) shredding the building, it cannot ALSO be counted as pure kinetic energy. Assuming a pure unassisted collapse, whatever PE wasn’t converted into work to break apart the Towers exists as a small remainder of Ke following the path of work on the way down.”
By what argument do you claim that the ‘majority’ of the potential energy went into shredding the building? There was clearly an enormous amount of kinetic energy present in the rubble before it slammed into the ground (in many inelastic collisions). By estimating the speed of collapse vs. free fall, I was able to calculate that 82.6% of the gravitational potential energy was present in the form of kinetic energy, leaving 17.4% of the gravitational potential energy (100,000,000,000 joules) for destroying the structure of the building. These percentages change if you change the collapse time vs. free fall time, but the calculation is correct. In science, we don’t get to say things that we can’t back up with evidence of one sort or another (well, we can say things, but no one gives them credibility). It is indisputable that there was something like 1,000,000,000,000 joules of GPE stored in the towers. It is indisputable that the falling debris contained kinetic energy. It is indisputable that the rubble pile did not contain this kinetic energy. It is indisputable that this energy was not destroyed. You don’t have to take my word for any of these things, this is what physics says – contradict them and you loose all scientific credibility. I have done a calculation (which I clearly laid out) to estimate what portion of the GPE went into KE in the descending rubble pile and what portion of the GPE went into to destroying the building as it fell (I found that this was roughly the same energy found in 24 metric tons of TNT – are you saying the 24 metric tons of TNT are not enough to bring the building down? Are you saying that tons of explosives were covertly placed in the towers?) Show me the calculation that justifies that the majority of potential energy went into destroying the building. Make an argument as to why this required more than 24 metric tons of TNT. But just realize that this is a trade-off, the closer to free-fall speed the building fell, the more of the original GPE was kinetic energy in the descending rubble. (If the building fell at free fall speed all of the GPE would have been present as KE.)
Bob said:
“Finally Robert, there is no ‘impact’ event; the analogy is false. A building existing on earth and collapsing on earth is not said to ‘impact’ the earth — because you can’t GET THERE from here. And with the building being on earth, you sure as shit can’t raise the velocity component of Ke, for any debris not involved in the work of tearing the building apart, any higher than terminal velocity will allow–thus making the meteor analogy completely inapplicable.”
I’m assuming you meant Slart, not Robert. Terminal velocity is when the force of atmospheric drag (friction) is balances the force of gravity and a falling body stops accelerating. It is not in play in ANY of the situations we’ve been discussing. I’ll discuss why I can treat the WTC collapse the same way as a meteor in my response to Buddha’s post.
Slart,
Nah I meant the standby “What would convince you?” test. The danger in that tactic is it switches the burden of proof. However since you just spent the past few days giving a refresher course on physics 201, I think the burden already got switched early in the conversation. Bob’s a brilliant debater, and while you are schooling him on actual science and math, he wins for style. His greatest strength comes in never acknowledging that simply pointing out errors in others arguments in no way proves he’s correct. That’s why the obsession over a bad analogy on your part. That’s why the nit picking over what you’ve already admitted are generalizations without any attempt to prove that they would effect the equations enough to reduce your hundreds of billions of Jules enough to remove the ability to reach the threshold for melting steel.
Bob,
So how about it, what would convince you?
Bob,
Will do. If you don’t still have my proper gmail address, use my new blind @ buddha.is.laughing.ril@gmail.com.
Robert,
You’re still wrong about isolated systems as related to analysis of conservation. Again, where do you plan to stop your infinite regression? No one is arguing there is such a thing as a closed system in nature (unless you count this entire membrane as a closed system and even it isn’t closed within the context of M-theory). But the contention is that looking at conservation without using defining an isolated system as a limiter is a formally flawed analysis. You still haven’t explained why a property of all the visible universe doesn’t apply to an isolated or evan an open system covering a small segment of NYC real estate. You’ve ignored it quite well, but you haven’t addressed that point. If you don’t like the artifice math requires for us to make analyzing conservation questions, you’ll need a better alternative than “it doesn’t apply because I don’t like isolated systems”. You disliking a tool and a tool’s utility/function are different things. I think friction is a drag. Doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It’s also looked at an isolated system but just not in a formal way like isolation is applied to conservation. If you look beyond air friction and drag relative to local resistance related phenomena (air density, etc.), you’re no longer looking at a friction problem. Your data set has moved to the tangential and is defeating the purpose of analysis in the first place. You must know when to stop analysis. Too much data past a point is counter productive to getting answers. Until you address the infinite regression problem with analyzing conservation without isolation, you’re falling into a rabbit hole that ends with the nature of spacetime/reality. Without isolated systems, every conservation problem comes down to the tensile strength of local spacetime – are energy and matter in balance as physical properties of the membrane. You don’t need to go that far unless your contention is that the 9/11 criminals some how have developed a bomb or impact scenario capable of rupturing spacetime. You only need to be concerned with 1) the buildings, 2) their stored energy, 3) the planes and 4) their potential energy. That’s the system in isolation. If you look “further down” than that? You are not only misapplying conservation analysis, but wasting your time as well. The analysis of conservation as related to the WTC collapse need not be made with absolute precision and as a matter of fact cannot be known with absolute precision. But leaving infinities in the analysis will not help move toward even reasonable precision much less absolute precision.
“System identification
The process of determining the equations that govern the model’s dynamics is called system identification. This can be done off-line: for example, executing a series of measures from which to calculate an approximated mathematical model, typically its transfer function or matrix. Such identification from the output, however, cannot take account of unobservable dynamics. Sometimes the model is built directly starting from known physical equations: for example, in the case of a mass-spring-damper system we know that . Even assuming that a “complete” model is used in designing the controller, all the parameters included in these equations (called “nominal parameters”) are never known with absolute precision; the control system will have to behave correctly even when connected to physical system with true parameter values away from nominal.”
Look into control theory.
You’re wrong about isolated systems and their utility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory
You seem to want absolute precision here, Robert. That’s not going to happen. Nature won’t allow it.
Slartibartfast,
Read this real slowly: The law of conservation of energy is an empirical law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time).
No isolated system, no conservation of energy. An isolated system does not interact with the environment.
How much work (energy expended) is required to break a floor of the WTC loose? If a single floor breaks loose, and lands on the floor below it, but that floor does not give way; the floor is no longer at the same height, so the PE has decreased. Where is the energy now? (please accept that the energy was transmitted into the environment and for all purposes it must be considered to be lost (non recoverable) (not conserved for later application)
Buddha is Laughing,
“Again, where do you plan to stop your infinite regression?”
Infinite regression is reality. Sound, friction, shock waves, heat all play into this infinite regression. Look at the Second Law of Thermodynamics. http://www.ftexploring.com/energy/2nd_Law.html
As you can see, in the real world energy cannot be considered to be conserved.
BobEsq:
why do you think thermite would retain heat any longer than anything else? And why do you think it keeps on putting off heat after the reaction is complete?
The thermite reactions I have seen end quickly and the heat dissapates quickly as well at least in the open. If thermite is responsible for the heat at the site why wouldnt it dissapate at the same rate as any other heat source? If something is a 1000 degrees C it cools at a set rate depending on insulation, ambient air temperature, material, etc. Are you saying that the thermite kept reacting for the duration of the time the site was hot?
So what you are saying is that not all the thermite was used up in the initial reaction at the columns and that excess thermite fed the “flames” so to speak. Wouldnt someone have taken notice as they were moving debris from the site?
Gyges,
You said:
“Nah I meant the standby “What would convince you?” test. The danger in that tactic is it switches the burden of proof. However since you just spent the past few days giving a refresher course on physics 201, I think the burden already got switched early in the conversation. Bob’s a brilliant debater, and while you are schooling him on actual science and math, he wins for style.”
I agree with this analysis and it actually lies at the root of why I’m spending so much time on this debate. It’s actually the one I’ve been looking for since I found this blog. Bob could run circles around me in a courtroom. When it comes to debate I’m hardly even a novice and he is a master. His rhetorical skills are immense (he convinced Buddha and its probably going to take me better than an hour to write a post to persuade him that I’m right again). On my side, I’ve got my own meager writing skills (which are improved by this exercise
), but I’ve also got science on my side (if I didn’t Bob would have destroyed me days ago). Bob is adept at finding the most difficult concepts where my explanations are least clear and attacking them – he’s identifying where my arguments need to be improved, forcing me to do just that – like I said, good exercise. If Bob wasn’t as formidable an opponent as he is (and I wasn’t as solid on the science as I am) this wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining (or frustrating…)
In an unexpected segue, I’ve decided that this isn’t an off-topic digression after all – it’s relevant to the climate change debate because it illustrates the difficulties inherent in scientists and non-scientists discussing science. We’re just doing a re-write of Scopes v. The State of Tennessee. (Bob, can I refer to you as William Jennings Bryan for the rest of this discussion?
Don’t think of me as Clarence Darrow, think of me as Darrow’s expert witness.) Sometimes these things go like Scopes, sometimes they don’t (like Kitzmiller v. Dover) I think the result says more about the ability of the audience to understand science (and the scientist’s to communicate it), than it does about the merits of the science in question. In any case, I’ll keep this up at least a while longer…
Gyges: “Bob’s a brilliant debater, and while you are schooling him on actual science and math, he wins for style. His greatest strength comes in never acknowledging that simply pointing out errors in others arguments in no way proves he’s correct.”
Gyges,
Exactly how would I be capable of pointing out errors in a physics problem if I needed to be schooled in the topic by the person I’m ‘nit picking?’ Why would Byron say “I am enjoying this, although I think Bob has some physics and calculus under his belt. Not all attorneys just studied political science or Latin.”
You don’t suppose I started out in college majoring in physics for two years, before switching to philosophy, because I missed a perfect score on my high school physics regents exam by two points simply because I was so jacked up on caffeine that I forgot to re-invert my calculations from a lens formula; do you?
All style, no substance; that’s me.
Robert,
I said nice things about Bob’s debating skills (which I meant), but yours are not on the same level. While Bob has some fundamental flaws in his understanding of physics, his arguments are extremely well crafted (like fine British humor). Your arguments are not nearly as well crafted and show huge gaping wounds in your understanding of physics. This being the case, I’m going to spend my time on refuting Bob’s arguments rather than yours. I’ll let others clear up your misunderstandings if they choose to (as Buddha has been ably demonstrating), but for the most part I’m going to ignore them. I’m sorry, but I don’t have unlimited time to do this and it’s not a trivial exercise to answer even ignorant questions (in fact it’s harder since you have to alleviate the ignorance before you can address the question).
Bob said:
“You don’t suppose I started out in college majoring in physics for two years, before switching to philosophy, because I missed a perfect score on my high school physics regents exam by two points simply because I was so jacked up on caffeine that I forgot to re-invert my calculations from a lens formula; do you?”
You don’t suppose I started out in college majoring in physics for two years before the funding for the research project on high-temperature superconductors that I was conducting was cut off, killing the project and sending me into mathematics where I earned a BS and MS in mathematics from Michigan State University and an MA and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Duke University after which I spent 5 years as a post-doc at the Lineberger Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina, do you?
(Go Spartans! Go Devils! Go to hell Carolina!)
Now back to answering Buddha…
Robert,
Again, see control theory. Your analysis isn’t reality. Neither is mine, Slarti’s or Bob’s. Or Hawking’s or Penrose’s either for that matter. It’s all models. We “decode” what reality we are capable of rationally understanding but we do not make the reality other than operating as points of observation – observation that as a matter of operations set a reality ONLY AS RELATIVE TO THE POSITION OF THE OBSERVER. Even then you can only know position or momentum, but not both. Or you can take it up with Heisenberg and Bohr if you disagree. As a model, it is incapable of absolute precision and certain assumptions must be made to make any model work: see the Incompleteness Theorems of Gödel. Law may be the shadow of justice but science is the shadow of nature. Models are called models because they are not the real thing. And that is that. Your infinite regressions, real or not, are an anathema to getting a usable answer.
Go Buddha Go!
And you even got the umlaut in Gödel’s name!
Bob,
There’s errors and there’s errors. I could play a wrong note during a song and it’d be an error, or I could play the wrong song and it’d still be an error. Thus the “nit pick,” to show what class of error I think you’ve been pointing out.
Also, I never said that you were all style an no substance. Just that in this debate your style was better, and Slart’s substance was better. I don’t know what accounts for what I consider an intellectual blind spot for you on this subject, but I still think it’s there. Your test score adds no more proof to your theory than Slart’s papers add to his (assuming they’re not on subjects relevant to the discussion). You should know by now that appeals to authority don’t really impress me as much as facts.
Gyges,
My papers (one of them, anyway) is relevant only in that it shows that I make simplifying assumptions in order to analyze complex systems (and that I have scientific credentials in general – Bob goes as Bob, esq., I just wanted to make it clear that it’s Dr. Slartibartfast). I don’t believe that I have represented any more than this.
Slart,
Thank you for emphasizing the point I was trying to make. I was pointing out that I don’t think they add any actual proof to your argument. They add weight to your ability to argue the subject (as does Bob’s test scores), but none to the argument itself. It’s a fine distinction, and my wording’s been a bit off of late so perhaps it wasn’t all that clear.
For those who care, the World’s Happiest Toddler is on the road to recovery.
Gyges,
I think you’ve probably been the clearest of all of us.
I don’t know who the ‘World’s Happiest Toddler’ is and I don’t want to make any more assumptions that I have to defend, but that sounds like good news.
Slart,
My son’s been sick the past few days, and having a snot leaking toddler on my lap has taken away my drive to edit for clarity.
Gyges,
Second on the good news in re WHT. No one likes having a sick baby and I have it on good authority the babies aren’t crazy about it either.
Slartibatfast,
If you cannot calculate how much energy had to be expended to break a floor loose, you cannot calculate the remaining energy available to perform other work.
Try this. Drop a one lb book from a height of 6 ft on to a chair.
The height of the chair is 18 inches. Since the chair didn’t break, and the one lb book is now sitting on the seat of the chair, 4.5 ft of PE is lost. Where did it go? Are you claiming that it was converted to thermal energy? Other than the one lb of mass by which the chairs mass increased, and the negligible temperature increase in the temp of the seat, where did that energy go?
Gyges: “There’s errors and there’s errors. I could play a wrong note during a song and it’d be an error, or I could play the wrong song and it’d still be an error. Thus the “nit pick,” to show what class of error I think you’ve been pointing out.”
Gyges, Ignoring the fact that the change in the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the net work done on the object is not a ‘wrong note’ on a piano; it’s feedback and distortion without a harmony.
Slartibartfast has been arguing that he can have the PE of the building converted to Ke (and thence into heat energy by a conversion mechanism he’s yet to reveal) to create the molten metal in the debris. In making his assertions using “all that energy in the towers,” he never accounts for the net Work necessary to shred the building into said rubble; as if it were a free lunch. Furthermore, he doesn’t account for the disparity between the conditions of Towers 1 & 2 collapsing and the collapse of WTC 7. All three had molten metal and WTC 7′s debris pile, NOT CREATED BY 1.6 BILLION JOULES OF ENERGY, etc., was shown in the NASA thermograph as being the second highest hot spot in all of ground zero (more than 1300 degrees Fahrenheit)
This sounds like ‘nitpicking’ to you?
Gyges: “You should know by now that appeals to authority don’t really impress me as much as facts.”
My apologies, it wasn’t an appeal to authority but simply an explanation as to why I find physics to be intuitive and why I initially chose it as my major.
Robert,
You said:
“If you cannot calculate how much energy had to be expended to break a floor loose, you cannot calculate the remaining energy available to perform other work.”
I calculated that 100 billion joules was expended in each building to collapse and pulverize its structure (17.4% of its total GPE). Even though this energy ultimately becomes heat in the rubble, I did not include this energy in my heat calculation. The rest of the energy (400 billion joules, was tied up in kinetic energy of the rubble.
Bob said:
” he [Slartibartfast] never accounts for the net Work necessary to shred the building into said rubble”
17.4% of the GPE or 100,000,000,000 joules went into shredding the building into rubble.
Bob said:
“Slartibartfast has been arguing that he can have the PE of the building converted to Ke (and thence into heat energy by a conversion mechanism he’s yet to reveal)”
The mechanism is inelastic collision. Wikipedia says:
“In inelastic collisions, kinetic energy is dissipated as: heat, sound, binding energy (breaking bound structures), or other kinds of energy.”
Do you think that they listed heat first because its insignificant? Do you think that the rubble bounced?
Bob said:
“My apologies, it wasn’t an appeal to authority but simply an explanation as to why I find physics to be intuitive and why I initially chose it as my major.”
I have to say that you made a good decision changing majors – I don’t think you would have made a very good physicist and you are clearly a brilliant lawyer.
Bob said:
“Furthermore, he doesn’t account for the disparity between the conditions of Towers 1 & 2 collapsing and the collapse of WTC 7. All three had molten metal and WTC 7′s debris pile, NOT CREATED BY 1.6 BILLION JOULES OF ENERGY, etc., was shown in the NASA thermograph as being the second highest hot spot in all of ground zero (more than 1300 degrees Fahrenheit)”
It’s a big enough pain to make this argument for WTC1 and WTC2. The symmetry of the buildings (and the collapses) is a big plus, modeling-wise. WTC7 had significant differences in dimensions, damage, and collapse – I would have to make an entirely new model to consider it. I’m not willing to do that unless you pay me for it.
Bob,
I’d say that,
“I have said repeatedly that 17.4% of the gravitation potential energy of the WTC went into breaking the structure of the building and pulverizing the rubble… I have repeatedly said that I DID NOT INCLUDE THIS ENERGY IN MY CALCULATION OF THE HEAT GENERATED,”
addresses “the net Work necessary to shred the building into said rubble.”
I’m not going to argue the physics with you, Slart is handling that much more ably than I ever could. I will however point out that you’re flat out ignoring Slart accounting for something you say he doesn’t account for.
It’s pretty obvious which side of this debate I’m on. Since I’m adding nothing of substance, I’ll go back to the sidelines. I stand by my analysis of the debate, and will gladly defend it, but I won’t be dragged into a rehash of the old arguments.
Slartibartfast,
You concluded that 17.4% of the total energy was used to collapse and pulverize the structure based on the time it took to collapse. You made your numbers fit the outcome. You performed the work of a mathematician brilliantly, but completely ignored the what energy should have been required to collapse and pulverize the structure.
If it takes 2 million joules to sheer the rivets/bolts/welds to free the floor, and 2 million joules to pulverize the concrete, and you only had 3 million joules of PE to start with, you can’t get the job done. If the job did get done, it would indicate that the floor took less than 2 million joules to break loose, or that it took less than 2 million joules to pulverize the concrete.
Robert,
Go watch a building being brought down by controlled demolition. Where does the energy to destroy the building’s structure come from?
Incidentally, 100 billion joules is the equivalent of 24 metric tons of TNT. If you need significantly more energy for your theory, please explain how 50 tons of explosives were placed covertly into each of the twin towers and precision detonated after a jetliner impact.
Slartibartfast,
Other than the fact that the buildings did hit the ground, what did you use to calculate the amount of energy required to break the floors loose, and pulverize the concrete? You math simply states that this is the amount of energy that was used, not that is it the amount of energy that SHOULD HAVE been required to make it happen. Your stating what it did take, but ignore what it should have taken.
http://9eleven.info/HSPhysics.html
Robert said:
“Other than the fact that the buildings did hit the ground, what did you use to calculate the amount of energy required to break the floors loose, and pulverize the concrete? You math simply states that this is the amount of energy that was used, not that is it the amount of energy that SHOULD HAVE been required to make it happen. Your stating what it did take, but ignore what it should have taken.”
I said that 100 billion joules (24 metric tons of TNT) was available to destroy the structure of the building. If you are suggesting this was not sufficient, show evidence. The answer to my previous question: “Go watch a building being brought down by controlled demolition. Where does the energy to destroy the building’s structure come from?” is gravitational potential energy. The twin towers (being more that 4 times taller than any building brought down by controlled demolition) had a lot more GPE that you see in any CD.
Slartibartfast,
Each floor required 14 billion joules of energy to break it loose.
Robert,
Re: high school physics test link
I’ve shown you how to use the difference between collapse time a free fall time to estimate the energy available for demolishing the building. Your test is to use the times given in your link (9.2s free-fall vs. 10-13s collapse – the values I used were 6s vs. 6.6s*) to determine this available energy. Good luck! You may start working… now.
*obviously the numbers that I used were from the WTC7 collapse, not one of the twin tower collapses. Bob, I am now estimating that 82.6% of the GPE of WTC7 went into thermal energy – you’re welcome. The calculations for WTC1 and WTC2 are still valid, and I’m sure Robert will tell us what the exact numbers are shortly.
Robert said:
“Each floor required 14 billion joules of energy to break it loose.”
Show your work.
Slartibartfast,
“The answer to my previous question: “Go watch a building being brought down by controlled demolition. Where does the energy to destroy the building’s structure come from?” [it]is gravitational potential energy.”
Then how was it that the building was standing prior to the event? The GPE has been there since the building was completed, but it didn’t fall. The opposing force (the structural support) was removed. That’s why it falls. If you remove enough of the structural support (take away resistance) and it will free fall.
Robert,
The analysis you linked is far less sophisticated than what I have done here (although it is done along the same lines). It also leaves you with half a trillion joules of heat in the basement. Ouch.
Robert,
I suggest you get working on your test.
Robert: “The major flaw in Slarti’s conclusion is that he considers this to be an isolated system, which causes his calculations to ignore all interactions with the environment (interaction with the environment is scientifically impossible in an isolated system).”
Yes, but he’s doing so only as part of his hypothetical. We know the event is not an isolated system, and we know it’s not even a closed system since, I argue, you have to account for the lack of thermal equilibrium; i.e. the failure of the rubble to cool down to surrounding temperature. It is technically an open system as soon as so much as the sound echoes out in all directions.
Robert: “The pulverizing of cement into rubble expends a lot of energy in the form of work. The ejection of metal girders 600 ft expends a lot of energy in the form of work.”
No argument here. And once the Pe is used to do work, it can’t be used again to create pure Ke and then heat. You’re now forced to account for the Work creating heat; which is another reason his meteor analogy falls short.
Robert: “Another major flaw is the complete disregard for impact angle. What are the chances that most of the falling material hit the material at the bottom (earth and rubble) at a 90 degree angle (the angle most efficient for energy transfer), and why/how did it convert to thermal energy?”
Even more troublesome is begging the question that buildings are capable of collapsing at near free-fall speed without any ‘help.’
Robert: “Why didn’t it perform work by moving earth or rubble? Slarti assumes that all of it hit at a 90 degree angle, and most of the energy was retained in the rubble instead of being dispersed into the surrounding earth.”
It’s the free lunch problem; the problem is begging the question of the work required to create rubble in order to hypothesize about this ‘extra energy’ available to make such an impact.
Robert: “The majority of energy left in the falling material was transferred into the earth.”
That’s a fair statement.
Robert: “Early realization that this is not an isolated system would have made that easier to acknowledge.”
True enough. Then again, in the interest of argumentation, you have to give him room to make his point. However, to content or imply that the thought experiment is as good as an explanation as to what happened per the actual conditions of the event, i.e. which are incomparable to the conditions of the thought experiment, is simply unacceptable.
Bob,
Go back to school.
You said:
“You’re now forced to account for the Work creating heat”
I’m not in violation of the law of conservation of energy, you are. You don’t ‘create heat’ by ‘doing work’, you obtain heat by converting it from other forms (e.g. when you lie in the sun electromagnetic energy is converted into thermal energy – there’s also quite a bit of DNA damage, so wear sunscreen).
You all might want to check into the Charpy impact test. This measures the energy a piece of steel is able to absorb.
There is also something called “carbon embrittlement” of steel which may or may not have any bearing on the discussion. If it did, it would be at the floors impacted by the fires.
Also Robert should be aware of the problems with Nuclear Waste canisters and thermal embrittlement of low alloy steels, which I assume the WTC was constructed of.
So the connections may have a reduced ability to resist fracture under elevated temperatures at the floors the planes hit.
There are not only Newtonian mechanics at work in this collapse. Chemistry (other than thermite) and material science are also playing a role.
Robert said:
“Another major flaw is the complete disregard for impact angle. What are the chances that most of the falling material hit the material at the bottom (earth and rubble) at a 90 degree angle (the angle most efficient for energy transfer), and why/how did it convert to thermal energy?”
Did the rubble bounce? If not, I correctly applied the physics of inelastic collisions. Trying to sound like you know what you’re talking about by saying things like ‘the angle most efficient for energy transfer’ is cute. Prove it. I have provided extensive explanation and example of kinetic energy being converted into thermal energy and will add another substantial post shortly.
Buddha,
You said:
“Got to go with Bob on that one. Astronomical impact events are a totally different creature than a building collapse.”
No, both of these events are inelastic collisions. If we exclude the quantum mechanical and relativistic realms (i.e. consider Newtonian mechanics valid), then the laws of physics are the same at every scale. The laws of physics (well, actually they’re the laws of the universe, physics just figured out what some of them are
) determine what the change in kinetic energy in an inelastic collision is. An impactor striking the earth does not bounce, therefore it is an example of an inelastic collision – the calculations would be exactly the same (although the fraction of the KE required to destroy the structure of the meteor is much smaller). The WTC collapse was also an inelastic collision – the rubble didn’t bounce. More accurately, it was many individual inelastic (and some elastic) collisions which I’m treating in aggregate. I do this according to the same principle that lets us calculate the gravitation effect of the earth as a whole rather than each individual molecule individually and recognizing that the rubble as a whole had a quantifiable amount of kinetic energy which, after a collision in which the rubble (taken as a whole) did not bounce, was no longer there. While it can be argued that this was not an inelastic collision, I’m on solid ground here, assuming that I’m the assumption that the collision is inelastic is a reasonable one to make, my analysis is unassailable (provided one understands the physics I have described). The purpose of the calculation that I made was to determine how much energy was involved in the WTC collapse and get a ballpark idea of how much heat was generated by impact ASSUMING that the collapse was unassisted by additional explosives. The point of doing this was to provide a scientific basis for judging if the impact-fire theory is capable of explaining the observed heat at ground zero*. Within that context, the assumptions I’ve made are entirely reasonable. I’ve been doing these sorts of calculations since an astrophysics course my junior year (within one order of magnitude was considered exact, within two was acceptable) and its often surprising just how accurate these calculations turn out to be. On the whole, conservation of energy demands that we account for all of the 1 trillion joules of gravitational potential energy contained in the WTC. I’ve done that. I’ve accounted for kinetic energy, seismic energy, sonic energy, energy to destroy the structure of the buildings (even though this remains as heat) and generate the pyroclastic flow, and thermal energy. I did not account for the gravitational potential energy of the rubble heap (on the assumption that GPE rubble << GPE WTC). No other destinations for the energy involved have been suggested. I stand by my analysis.
*The only evidence I've seen for POOLS of molten metal, is a picture of workers clustered around a glow. Since one of the workers was standing in the light of this glow and his legs were not on fire, I don't give it a whole lot of credibility. I think there is a big difference between blobs of molten iron dripping down a beam and pools of molten metal.
Buddha said:
"For one, you are talking about differences in KE that are off by huge orders of magnitude even if you discount the differences that would occur due to angular momentum."
Yes, they are events of vastly different scales, which is why one created a crater 180km in diameter instantly liquifying 25,000 square kilometers of rock and killed off the dinosaurs and one merely melted some metal. They are both inelastic collisions. I'm not sure what angular momentum you're talking about.
Buddha said:
"Asteroids and comets move A LOT faster than planes do. There is also the disparity in average mass issue. Many meteors are small. Some are as big as mountains. Some are as big as states. Big ones. Not Rhode Island. That makes it apples and oranges too. Had they flown the jets in a parabolic arc and dropped into the towers nose to roof or at a steeper angle? It might be a more appropriate analogy but even then it wouldn't be exact or particularly helpful since even the Vomit Comet maneuver wouldn't impart enough KE to makes those differences in scale negligible."
My energy analysis was not of the plane strikes, but of the building collapses, but the plane strikes are inelastic collisions as well (the planes don't bounce). Although, for various reasons, this is a more difficult collision to model, the end result is that the planes had a large amount of kinetic energy the instant before the crash and a short time later it was gone. Angles of attack and relative speeds are irrelevant – there was kinetic energy and after a collision which didn't include bouncing, it was gone. I'm justified in applying the physics that govern these types of collisions.
I think that once the buildings came down it was a partially isolated system as you had 5 sides of solid concrete around and below the debris. As you all know your basement has a fairly constant temperature. So I think Slarti’s contention of a closed system is not that far out of line. It certainly wasn’t a 100% open system because of the constraints given by the foundation and surrounding soil.
Bob said:
“Even more troublesome is begging the question that buildings are capable of collapsing at near free-fall speed without any ‘help.’”
I did a calculation showing the distribution of energy involved in the collapse so we could have a scientific discussion about the collapse being natural vs. explosive assisted. You’ve provided zero evidence that explosives could compare to the energy naturally present. The speed of collapse tells us how the ‘natural’ energy is distributed between kinetic and building-shredding energy – if the building-shredding energy is not sufficient, please give evidence that it is not along with an estimated amount of explosives that would be required to add to it. With numbers.
BTW: Someone was asking “how much sulfur”. U.S.G.S analysis is available here. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/
Sulfur% MIN 0.87 MAX 5.77 AVG 3.11
Robert said:
“Each floor required 14 billion joules of energy to break it loose.”
Slartibartfast said “Show your work.”
Why? Your the one claiming that the building had enough GPE to break loose the floors and pulverize the concrete, and sustain near free fall speed. You allotted roughly 17,400,000,000 joules to break loose the floors and pulverize the concrete. That’s 160 million joules per floor. There were approximate 2500 ruptures/cuts (whatever you want to call them) leaving about 64,000 joules to cut each section of steel beam. Witnesses noted that the beams were cut on 45 degree angles (hmmm?). A diagonal cut would require more energy. The average steel beam is 2″ thick, and 24″ x 10″.
Byron,
An open system can exchange mass and energy with the environment. This meets the very definition of an open system.
Byron said:
“I think that once the buildings came down it was a partially isolated system as you had 5 sides of solid concrete around and below the debris. As you all know your basement has a fairly constant temperature. So I think Slarti’s contention of a closed system is not that far out of line. It certainly wasn’t a 100% open system because of the constraints given by the foundation and surrounding soil.”
I think you guys are getting too hung up on the closed system thing. Try this:
1) Take the universe as your closed system.
2) This system includes 1 trillion joules of GPE stored in the WTC.
3) Since energy is conserved, this energy remains in the system for all time.
4) Account for that energy.
This is exactly what I did.
Slarti:
we engineers look at things in terms of free body diagrams. The WTC site would be isolated from the rest of the world to determine energy state changes, etc. We try to overly simplify things so we can solve them.
Byron,
I am intimately familiar with the Charpy V-notch test. Brittle fracture (or the prevention thereof) is very important to the design and operation of a nuclear power plant.
Byron,
I’m just making simplifications for different goals – and taking the system to be the universe is about as simple as you can get! Don’t worry, I wont make you account for every sirocco in Cairo or every supernova in Alpha Centauri, just the GPE of the WTC. You know what comes next, don’t you?
Slartibartfast,
Did the WTC interact with the environment during collapse? YES
Did the WTC transfer energy to the environment during collapse? YES
Did the WTC transfer mass to the environment during collapse? YES
The only thing that makes the WTC collapse take place in an isolated system is your claim that it did. It’s hogwash.
You would claim that everything in the world exists in an isolated system. That’s bullcrap.
The majority of energy that interacted with the ground was transferred to the earth. The material that landed on the ground in the beginning was struck by the material that landed later. They transferred their energy to the earth. It caused a minute ripple in the sea. That’s what happens when energy is dissipated.
I have an admission to make – I made an error in my calculation. Instead of enough heat generated in the collapse to liquify just over 500 metric tons of iron at room temperature, there is only enough to liquify just over 300 metric tons of iron at room temperature.
You might ask why I posted this. I didn’t have to – no one would have found my mistake (unless someone tried to reproduce my results). But I would have known that the mistake was out there uncorrected, so I fixed it. At one point in the calculation I made an error and got a very disappointing result. As you can expect, I was disappointed – not because I then couldn’t use the calculation, but because I would have to post it and admit Bob was right (that would have stung). This is the appropriate ethical standard for scientists. While not all live up to this, most of us do.
The numbers above are incorrect in any case, since I took the collapse vs. free-fall times from WTC7 instead of WTC1 or WTC2. Since I don’t really expect Robert to be able to do this, I’ll work the numbers again (with the correct times) and let everybody know what I find.
Slartibartfast: “I have said repeatedly that 17.4% of the gravitation potential energy of the WTC went into breaking the structure of the building and pulverizing the rubble.”
Slartibartfast: (from an earlier post) “I calculated that 17.4% of the original gravitational potential energy went into collapsing and pulverizing the building.”
How? By working backwards in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion?
Slartibartfast: “Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow. The rest of it remained in the debris as heat (I didn’t include this energy in my analysis – effectively assuming that all of this energy left in the pyroclastic flow). Consider an imaginary box that completely contains the WTC (from the subbasement to the tip of the radio masts).”
Would this be a closed system or an isolated system?
Slartibartfast: “Initially, this box contains approximately one trillion joules of gravitational potential energy. All of this energy either remains in the box or is transferred out of the box”
All or nothing?? Whatever, since you’re allowing for energy & work to permeate the barrier of your system, your talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system.
Slartibartfast: “I have kept track of the energy that stayed in the box and estimated that enough of it was converted into heat to liquify approximately 1,000 metric tons of iron at room temperature. I have not in any way violated the law of conservation of energy.”
And here we are again with you invoking the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc and further begging the question of that which you’re allegedly setting out to prove. From what you’ve said, you’re getting your 17.4% by assuming the collapse liquified “approximately 1,000 metric tons of iron at room temperature.” I ask you to show me the mechanism by which the steel was liquified, or how the Pe was converted to Ke and thence heat, and you give me hypotheticals about meteors and speeding bullets –attempting to build an analogy that is ultimately false. False because you ignore the work involved in creating the rubble and false because you ignore the ‘want of velocity’ far in excess of the highest terminal velocity allowed on planet Earth.
Slartibartfast: “Since energy is neither created or destroyed, a good portion of this energy ends up where most (all?) energy ultimately ends up (in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics) as randomized motion of particles – i.e. heat.”
Not all randomized particles generate heat. Dust clouds don’t necessitate heat; shattered glass doesn’t necessitate heat. Who are you kidding?
Slartibartfast: “However, I have repeatedly said that I DID NOT INCLUDE THIS ENERGY IN MY CALCULATION OF THE HEAT GENERATED! In other words, you have no legitimate complaint here, since even if your argument was correct (which it is not since it violates conservation of energy, which is a pretty serious flaw in a physics argument), it’s still irrelevant since I excluded this energy from my heat calculation.”
Yet your ‘heat calculation’ begs the question that falling steel from a collapsing building generates enough heat energy to create a furnace to melt the steel; for reasons that have something to do with speeding meteors and bullets… somehow.
Slartibartfast:
Bob said:
“Energy, by definition, is the capacity of an object for doing work; normally measured in joules.
A joule is the amount of work done by a force of one newton moving an object through a distance of one meter.
1 Newton = 1 kg m/s^2
1 Joule = 1 kg m/s^2 x 1m or 1 kg m^2/s^2
If the majority of the potential energy of an object (Oh, say the WTC Towers) is used in the creation of Work, (Force and movement in the direction of said force), i.e. that which is (allegedly) shredding the building, it cannot ALSO be counted as pure kinetic energy. Assuming a pure unassisted collapse, whatever PE wasn’t converted into work to break apart the Towers exists as a small remainder of Ke following the path of work on the way down.”
By what argument do you claim that the ‘majority’ of the potential energy went into shredding the building?”
Me talking now:
Gee, you don’t suppose that the building was designed to provide more than sufficient opposing forces (Newtons) to keep all that
potential energy from converting to Ke and just falling down; do you? You don’t suppose that those opposing supporting forces, expressed in the design of the buildings, were meant to be far greater than those resulting in the height and mass of the completed structure? Seriously??
Slartibartfast: “There was clearly an enormous amount of kinetic energy present in the rubble before it slammed into the ground (in many inelastic collisions).”
Did you check the seismogram?
Slartibartfast: “By estimating the speed of collapse vs. free fall, I was able to calculate that 82.6% of the gravitational potential energy was present in the form of kinetic energy, leaving 17.4% of the gravitational potential energy (100,000,000,000 joules) for destroying the structure of the building. These percentages change if you change the collapse time vs. free fall time, but the calculation is correct.”
So 17.4% of the total GPE, i.e. that representing the existence (mass, height (& g)) of the entire building, was capable of shredding said entire building? That’s all the Work that was required to create the pile of rubble? Tell me, other than wishful thinking, what forces were holding up the building for the thirty years of its existence and where did they go on 9/11? And given this oddly excessive amount of free Ke, why don’t your calculations support the theory of controlled demolition? If demolition devices weren’t removing the supports (i.e. forces opposing collapse) of the building, then how did it fall at near free fall speed?
Slartibartfast: “In science, we don’t get to say things that we can’t back up with evidence of one sort or another (well, we can say things, but no one gives them credibility). It is indisputable that there was something like 1,000,000,000,000 joules of GPE stored in the towers. It is indisputable that the falling debris contained kinetic energy. It is indisputable that the rubble pile did not contain this kinetic energy. It is indisputable that this energy was not destroyed.”
It’s that last part where you confuse your thought experiment and the actual expenditure of energy during the event.
Slartibartfast: “You don’t have to take my word for any of these things, this is what physics says – contradict them and you loose all scientific credibility. I have done a calculation (which I clearly laid out) to estimate what portion of the GPE went into KE in the descending rubble pile”
Yes, the ‘descending pile of rubble’ — existing in free fall before it’s even created by the destruction of the building below. Uh huh.
Slartibartfast: Are you saying that tons of explosives were covertly placed in the towers?) Show me the calculation that justifies that the majority of potential energy went into destroying the building.”
How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’
Seriously; tell me.
Slartibartfast:
Bob said:
“Finally Robert, there is no ‘impact’ event; the analogy is false. A building existing on earth and collapsing on earth is not said to ‘impact’ the earth — because you can’t GET THERE from here. And with the building being on earth, you sure as shit can’t raise the velocity component of Ke, for any debris not involved in the work of tearing the building apart, any higher than terminal velocity will allow–thus making the meteor analogy completely inapplicable.”
I’m assuming you meant Slart, not Robert.”
No, I was talking to Robert.
Slartibartfast: “Terminal velocity is when the force of atmospheric drag (friction) is balances the force of gravity and a falling body stops accelerating. It is not in play in ANY of the situations we’ve been discussing.”
Actually, terminal velocity is reserved for the phenomena of free fall; you’re not even discussing the opposing forces involved in the net work product required to shred the building. Tends to slow things down and use up more energy.
Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’
Slartibartfast,
How could you tell the difference between a building that was taken down by controlled demolition and one that was the result of structural failure? What part of your math would indicate the difference?
Bob said to Slarti “All or nothing?? Whatever, since you’re allowing for energy & work to permeate the barrier of your system, your talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system.”
Bob, You don’t understand. Slarti’s system is the universe. Energy and mass can do whatever it needs to, and mass can go wherever it wants.
Tomorrow I can open the coolant relief for testing and be comfortable in knowing that it should have remained in a closed system, but a mathematical biologist told me how to make it an isolated system. Now we don’t need to worry about the environment. We just expand it to the universe.
I wish Slarti would have gone to Copenhagen. No need to worry about global warming, we have a whole universe to maintain.
Slartibartfast: Bob, Go back to school.
You said:
“You’re now forced to account for the Work creating heat”
I’m not in violation of the law of conservation of energy, you are. You don’t ‘create heat’ by ‘doing work’, you obtain heat by converting it from other forms (e.g. when you lie in the sun electromagnetic energy is converted into thermal energy – there’s also quite a bit of DNA damage, so wear sunscreen).”
Actually, I was replying to a comment by Robert, to wit:
Robert: “The pulverizing of cement into rubble expends a lot of energy in the form of work. The ejection of metal girders 600 ft expends a lot of energy in the form of work.”
My comment: “No argument here. And once the Pe is used to do work, it can’t be used again to create pure Ke and then heat. You’re now forced to account for the Work creating heat; which is another reason his meteor analogy falls short.”
This comment is based on the premise that far more than 17% of the PE would be required to be converted into work to shred the building; seeing the mere design and construction of said building would require far more commanding opposing forces (Newtons) to keep it standing in the first place.
Per your comment “You don’t ‘create heat’ by ‘doing work’,”
Let’s review: work = the force of one newton acting over a distance of one meter; i.e. one Newton meter. And since we’re dealing with metal against metal, what’s that other implicit element in the equation called?
Friction?
That doesn’t create heat; it just pisses people off man.
I found a real world application for Slarti’s math.
Robert said:
“Did the WTC interact with the environment during collapse? YES
Did the WTC transfer energy to the environment during collapse? YES”
So you think the sonic energy was important. Was it as loud as a rocket up close and personal? Was it as loud as the Krakatoa eruption from 100 miles away? Did it last for 50 seconds? If so, congratulations, you’ve just bought yourself 50 megajoules. You’re 0.01% of the way there – only 499,950 megajoules to go…
Robert said:
“Did the WTC transfer mass to the environment during collapse? YES”
I neglected this and I mentioned it as well. It’s reasonable to assume that apart from the pyroclastic flow (which I’ve repeatedly mentioned) most of the debris came down within 300 meters or so of the towers. My assumptions are reasonable and I’ve specified them clearly.
Robert said:
“The only thing that makes the WTC collapse take place in an isolated system is your claim that it did. It’s hogwash.
You would claim that everything in the world exists in an isolated system. That’s bullcrap.”
I’ve defined my system as the entire universe. Are you saying that the WTC collapse did not occur in the universe or that the universe is not a closed system?
Robert said:
“The majority of energy that interacted with the ground was transferred to the earth. The material that landed on the ground in the beginning was struck by the material that landed later. They transferred their energy to the earth. It caused a minute ripple in the sea. That’s what happens when energy is dissipated.”
Energy was transferred into the ground, this is seismic energy and is possibly the most accurately specified quantity in the collapse. A seismic event of magnitude 2.1 requires 5.9 gigajoules of energy – that’s better out of 500 gigajoules, unfortunately I’ve already accounted for it. The first ‘layer’ of rubble transferred energy to the earth (as heat), subsequent ‘layers’ transferred energy at heat to the layer beneath them.
Slarti:
how are you accounting for the energy required to separate the floors from the main structural members?
A 3/4″ diameter A36 steel rod/bolt fails at a force of around 43,000 lbs give or take.
I am guessing the concrete was only 3″ possibly 4″ thick.
There is so much going on when a building collapses like that. I think it would be near impossible to model exactly what is happening. Your model is probably as good as anything in that you are just looking at GPE and KE.
I don’t agree with Bob and Robert and I agree with you but this exercise has shown how complicated this actually is, and I think that is part of the problem. The simple answer is Controlled Demolition. And so I think people that think it was planes are at a bit of a disadvantage unless they have a PhD in math or science.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “I have said repeatedly that 17.4% of the gravitation potential energy of the WTC went into breaking the structure of the building and pulverizing the rubble.”
Slartibartfast: (from an earlier post) “I calculated that 17.4% of the original gravitational potential energy went into collapsing and pulverizing the building.”
How? By working backwards in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion?”
More carefully I should have said that assuming a ‘natural’ collapse with the times given 17.4% of the GPE was available for collapsing and pulverizing the structure of the building and generating the pyroclastic flow and 82.6% was tied up in kinetic energy. This calculation is factual and relevant to the question of explosives being necessary to assist the collapse.
Just to be sure, I called a fellow engineer. He’s the senior engineer at a firm that specializes in product failure testing. He agrees that when analyzing the WTC you cannot consider it to be anything but an open system. That which you cannot account for is lost. I also pointed out how Slarti came up with his 17.4%. He laughed.
He did point out that in building construction floors are considered to support static weight, and that a floor is designed to withstand 5 times the designated load.
If I take the floor weight and then double the design load (rather than multiply by 5) to be conservative, I should be able to represent the amount of force needed to break the floor free.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “Initially, this box contains approximately one trillion joules of gravitational potential energy. All of this energy either remains in the box or is transferred out of the box”
All or nothing?? Whatever, since you’re allowing for energy & work to permeate the barrier of your system, your talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system.”
I’m sorry, I thought that you would understand that each bit of energy would be required to either stay in the box or exit the box. The important thing is that we keep track of it, as it is neither created nor destroyed.
Okay Byron,
Clarify it for me.
How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’
That’s the gist of Slarti’s argument.
Perhaps you can better explain this phenomena.
Slartibartfast: “I’m sorry, I thought that you would understand that each bit of energy would be required to either stay in the box or exit the box. The important thing is that we keep track of it, as it is neither created nor destroyed.”
Isolated, closed or open?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_system#Overview
Byron,
I get what you mean, but here’s what I want everyone to think about.
Which is in fact simpler: having a conspiracy well coordinated enough to place explosive charges without detection in several buildings that I assume had good security, highjack several planes, fly them into said buildings (making sure to crash one to make it look more realistic?) then detonate the charges, all with ONLY revealing the parts of the plan they wanted public to law enforcement and intelligence personnel (unless of course you assume that everyone involved investigating the events was in on it).
Or: a conspiracy well coordinated enough to highjack several planes, and crash most of them into their intended target buildings, some of which then collapsed and caused damage to another building.
Of course there are unexplained elements, nothing like this has happened before. Can you name a single thing that science has witnessed for the first time that someone was able to say “well that’s exactly what I expected, we learned nothing from this other than that our theory was 100% correct?”
Slarti, (I’m tired of writing the whole name)
The energy of an earthquake is estimated from an event that takes place in the bedrock, not on the much softer surface of the earth.
How did the KE convert to thermal energy? What is the method of conversion? Bob has asked you this a number of times.
Why didn’t the KE of the WTC transfer into KE in the earth? If you want to claim that some if it was transfered to the earth or WTC remains via friction, I’ll but that, but what percentage and how did you come up with that?
Slarti,
I have only one problem with what you are saying.
The Moon. Oh, and the assumption the mantle acts like a solid all the time.
You are incorrect about inelastic explosions and extraterrestrial impacts. At those masses and speeds, there is most certainly bounce. The Earth’s mantle acts like a fluid under those conditions. And if you doubt asteroid strikes are elastic? I wouldn’t bother looking up at the Moon tonight. It was created by an impact of a body slightly smaller than Mars. Bloooop! Whether the Earth is solid or not is a matter of perspective in time (over short time spans, the mantle acts like a solid hence activities like mining – over the long term it acts like a liquid as it does with tectonic drift) and relative energy in the system at any given time (it acts like a liquid past X threshold of KE and/or heat). Ejectamenta, just as the glass spherules found from the Chixalub crater are exactly bounce related phenomena. It’s glassine material that precipitated back to Earth after impact threw it into the air – a mixture of molten rock and gasses from both the mantle and the impactor. Like all that iridium.
This is an aside but I’m getting back to bouncing so bear with me. You should also know there is division in the geological community about whether the KT boundary is one impact (Chixalub – leaving both spherules and the iridium layer) or two impacts (one for each phenomena with one unidentified crater) and that both theories now contend that the dinosaur population had been under pressure for some time before the impact(s) due to naturally occurring changes in sea level wiping out their environments. Big animals need LOTS of food. Absent the impacts, they may have survived the downturn, but the theory is the impact(s) was the tipping point now, not so much the direct cause of the extinction. It ruined the environments capable of feeding such large creatures and ergo their chance of surviving the natural downturn in populations.
It’s unlikely Chixalub killed all the dinosaurs for another reason: the mechanics for that scenario call for global fire or global winter – both of which would have killed off both amphibians and crocodilians. There is also a lack of uniform evidence of either carbon deposits or crystalline structures fire or freezing would cause. There’s evidence there were some big fires. Just not global. There is also the fossil record. Statistical surveys of KT contemporaneous life showed there was a lot of life that survived. Just none of it big. I’m in Louisiana right now. I guarantee you both crocs cousins the alligator and frogs are still around just like they were in the time of the dinosaur. This rules out the acid rain scenario too.
I see the point you are making. Within the gravity well and with smaller energies, you are correct. The WTC is an inelastic explosion and rock is a solid. From an astronomical and physical geography standpoint regarding asteroids, it’s incorrect.
I’m not saying the WTC wasn’t an inelastic explosion. It was.
But asteroids most certainly can be.
It’s apples and oranges. They are both edible, but they are very different.
I did mention that I used to tutor astronomy, right? In another dimension, I’m probably gunning for Geoff Marcy’s or Roger Penrose’s job. This isn’t idyll speculation. Large rocks can and do bounce because past certain energy thresholds they behave as a liquid. We have a bounced rock orbiting us right now. Planes? Not so much bouncing. They don’t generate enough energy to create the reflexive shock waves needed to make an elastic explosion in stone: either from lack of mass or lack of momentum. They behave like those pictures of bullets flattening out. But asteroids? It’s more like dropping something in a pool. The waves radiate out and as they rebound through the liquid back to the point of impact they create ejectamenta. This clip illustrates my point about the difference between the propagation of energy through a liquid vs. a solid.
The Moon would be the single red drop. It was just thrown high enough to reach orbit. You are indeed correct about the WTC’s inelastic nature. You are not correct about asteroids though. I think these pictures speak as to why. Well, that and the Moon.
Byron:
You said:
“how are you accounting for the energy required to separate the floors from the main structural members?
A 3/4″ diameter A36 steel rod/bolt fails at a force of around 43,000 lbs give or take.
I am guessing the concrete was only 3″ possibly 4″ thick.”
What my analysis shows is the energy available building demolition given the ‘natural collapse’ hypothesis. My analysis said this was on the order of 100 gigajoules. Byron said that it required 14 gigajoules to break loose each floor. Therefore we have 154 vs. 100 gigajoules much closer than the order of magnitude I said was excellent agreement for this type of calculation. I’m pretty pleased with my analysis.
And Slarti,
Not for nothing, but your reluctance to apply your theory to WTC 7 is proof positive that you’ve set forth an ‘irrefutable theory’ making it untestable anywhere but your thought experiment with the two towers and therefore unscientific.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable
Gyges,
Unfortunately, I’m not a liberty to say, but I can assure you that many things that you would not expect to take place do actually take place.
If, after the 1993 attempt to take down the WTC, you realized what would happen if a 1400 ft. tall building was to fall over in downtown Manhattan, what would be your course of action? How would your course of action impact operation?
Robert:
for example A36 steel has an ultimate strength of 58 ksi +/- and the yield strength is 36 ksi and we design around 24 ksi. I doubt the WTC is any different.
Design is about 0.42 of ultimate or 0.66 of yield which is what we usually talk about when we design something. So if the floors were designed for a factor of safety of 5 against yield it would be around 7 ksi. Those buildings would be incredibly heavy and they are actually very economical structures.
I think your friend needs to explain where he is getting a factor of safety of 5.
Buddha,
You are correct, impactors bounce. However, given the tremendous kinetic energies involved and the fact that the coefficient of restitution is nearly one, the kinetic energy retained by the impactor is effectively nil. When the land around you for 90 kilometers liquifies, you’re not worrying about the rock that did it. I excluded many such nuances from my analysis – you can’t say everything, and I stand by all of the assumptions I made.
Slarti,
I’d also like to take a minute and say you have once again displayed honor in brining your corrected calculations to the table. That certainly earns style points with me. Uncle Albert would be proud. You put accurate in front of ego. That’s good science.
Robert,
“Unfortunately, I’m not a liberty to say, but I can assure you that many things that you would not expect to take place do actually take place.”
You owe me a new keyboard. I just spit up coffee all over mine.
So, do they often give double secret information to people who can’t even be trusted to keep it’s existence a secret? Does your Engineer friend know about these secrets, or do you only blab about them on the internet?
I know there’s more under the stars than my philosophy can account for. Luckily my philosophy is pretty flexible in what it can absorb, you just have to be able to PROVE things for them to fit in.
Slarti,
That’s why I was so careful to point out the differences in magnitude that first time. We are both right, but we are at such disparate ends of the PE transfer scale that we are not dealing with events that have uniform effects on materials – such high energy levels as to actually change the behavior of solid rock to liquid. Phase changes carry consequences. I’m was only challenging that part of your characterization.
Slart,
What Buddha said, Good on ya.
Buddha,
Check your email.
Byron,
You’re including the weight of the floor itself. I’m talking about the load of personnel and equipment. The floors were designed to support 1300 tons beyond their own weight.
Bob said:
“Not for nothing, but your reluctance to apply your theory to WTC 7 is proof positive that you’ve set forth an ‘irrefutable theory’ making it untestable anywhere but your thought experiment with the two towers and therefore unscientific.”
My theory predicted that 100 gigaJoules was available for demolition work, Robert’s estimate given 154 gigaJoules required. This is excellent agreement for this sort of model (As I’ve said I have to rerun the numbers, but I’ll be more precise about it later). I said that I wouldn’t be surprised if my numbers were within an order of magnitude and I would be surprised if they weren’t within two. Right now I’m sitting at 0.19 orders of magnitude – I’m pretty pleased with myself.
Buddha,
I agree with the rest of the stuff you said asteroids (at least, what I know about agrees with what you said and I trust you on the rest). In my research I saw that there may have been 3 major impacts 65 million years ago, the result of a collision over 160 million years ago far out in space. This stuff is cool.
Thanks for the compliment in your latest post. If I can stop posting for a bit, I’ll run the real numbers so we can use them in the discussion.
“My theory predicted that 100 gigaJoules was available for demolition work, Robert’s estimate given 154 gigaJoules required. This is excellent agreement for this sort of model”.
Not so fast. You completely forgot about pulverizing the concrete. (or did you conserve that energy for later re-use?) :>)
Gyges: “Which is in fact simpler: having a conspiracy well coordinated enough to place explosive charges without detection in several buildings that I assume had good security, highjack several planes, fly them into said buildings (making sure to crash one to make it look more realistic?) then detonate the charges, all with ONLY revealing the parts of the plan they wanted public to law enforcement and intelligence personnel (unless of course you assume that everyone involved investigating the events was in on it).
Or: a conspiracy well coordinated enough to highjack several planes, and crash most of them into their intended target buildings, some of which then collapsed and caused damage to another building.”
If you’re going to apply Ockham’s razor to a problem it would be greatly appreciated if you did so properly.
“Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” ["It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less"]. Thus, according to Ockham, we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so.
Your confusing of simplicity with truth has nothing to do with the law of parsimony.
Thus the question is never “which is in fact simpler” but “what must be true;” and given that ‘we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so,’ the negative implication of the law of parsimony is that we must postulate the existence of another entity when it is logically necessary to do so. And when might that be? How about when the explanation offered reveals a gap between knowledge and its object? IOW when said explanation is, how shall we say, untrue?
And the math for WTC 7?
Robert said:
“If, after the 1993 attempt to take down the WTC, you realized what would happen if a 1400 ft. tall building was to fall over in downtown Manhattan, what would be your course of action? How would your course of action impact operation?”
Please enlighten me by what theory of structural collapse would a 1400 ft. tall building ‘fall over’? (By which I assume you mean topple to one side like a tree being felled.)
Bob said:
“Not for nothing, but your reluctance to apply your theory to WTC 7 is proof positive that you’ve set forth an ‘irrefutable theory’ making it untestable anywhere but your thought experiment with the two towers and therefore unscientific.”
I’m perfectly willing to say that I believe that WTC 7 died of wounds sustained in the collapse of the twin towers. I’m not going to take the time to make a model of it. I said that I would be willing to do it if you paid me – I’ll do it for $50/hr and it will take at least 5-10 hours.
Here’s one for ya.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/implosion-goes-wrong-buil_n_249940.html
Arent we all forgetting there were cut gas lines as well and large electric cables that also contributed to the heat prior to being turned off. As well as hundreds of tons of paper and other inflammables.
What about those items? Electricity is used to melt steel when welding.
I guess I am moving away from Slarti’s PE/KE proposition. That point that Bob made about how far does a kg of steel have to fall before it melts made me stop and think. Intuitively it would have to fall a hell of a long way, certainly more than a few thousand feet.
The other question is why don’t other controlled demolition sites have hot areas? Is it because the gas and electric are turned off which is probably the case, so there should be some heat but I don’t think anyone ever talks about that.
I still think that Slarti is correct, just maybe not about the heat coming from the collapse.
I said:
“My theory predicted that 100 gigaJoules was available for demolition work, Robert’s estimate given 154 gigaJoules required. This is excellent agreement for this sort of model”.
Robert replied:
“Not so fast. You completely forgot about pulverizing the concrete. (or did you conserve that energy for later re-use?) :>)”
I’m tabling this until I’ve had a chance to fix the numbers. Nothing useful is gained by this discussion until then.
Bob,
This goes for you, too. I’ll be back tomorrow with new numbers to provide focus for you yelling about how I’m incompetent. If you’d like me to do the math on WTC7, I’ll need $250 up front and it will require from 5-10 hours at $50/hr to do. I’m serious about this.
Slarti,
Please finish this statement:
An object in motion ______ __ ____ __ _______. IF the WTC started to fall over, it would continue until it impacted something else. That would be the path of least resistance.
Bob,
So what makes the existence of a wider conspiracy any more logically necessary than the existence of a gap in our knowledge about the behavior of a collection of materials that was once a huge building being hit by an airliner?
Byron,
A kg of steel (at room temperature) would have to impact at about 1.45 km/s to have kinetic energy equal to the energy required to melt it. It would have to drop from a height of about 105km (neglecting air resistance) to attain this velocity. There was a lot of mass besides steel in the rubble. I made an estimate of the energy density earlier and will repeat it when I fix the numbers, but all I said was that KE was one source of heat in the rubble. I also specified fire (both before and after the collapse) and exothermic reactions (hot iron and steam undergo an exothermic reaction which results in hydrogen gas which reacts with oxygen. My assertion is just that these causes are sufficient to account for observations of heat at ground zero and my computation gives a rough idea what the forces involved were. Unless your saying that no heat came from KE, I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me at all.
The last should read: “… what the MAGNITUDE of the forces involved were.
Robert,
You said:
“If the WTC started to fall over…”
How?
Robert,
“Godzilla” is not a credible answer.
Slartibartfast: “I’m perfectly willing to say that I believe that WTC 7 died of wounds sustained in the collapse of the twin towers. I’m not going to take the time to make a model of it. I said that I would be willing to do it if you paid me – I’ll do it for $50/hr and it will take at least 5-10 hours.”
But if your theory behind the creation of molten metal at the footprints of the twin towers is correct, and ALL THAT POTENTIAL ENERGY is true source of heat, then surely you’ll have no problem applying the same reasoning to WTC 7. After all, you wouldn’t proffer a ‘scientific model’ that was irrefutable; would you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable
Excuse me:
“…AFTER being hit…”
Gyges: “So what makes the existence of a wider conspiracy any more logically necessary than the existence of a gap in our knowledge about the behavior of a collection of materials that was once a huge building being hit by an airliner?”
That’s your false dichotomy; not mine. First step is to figure out what’s true and what’s not true or not even remotely plausible.
Example, from the story of AAL 11 in the 9/11 Commission Report: “At 8:41, Sweeney told Woodward that passengers in coach were under the impression that there was a routine medical emergency in first class.”
Assuming you read the first chapter of 9/11 Commission Report, did you deem that portion true or plausible?
Uno absurdo dato, infinita sequuntur — ‘One absurdity begin allowed, an infinity follow’
Care to guess what’s absurd about the official story of AAL11 five minutes before impact? Mind you we’re talking about absurdity based upon the premises of the report itself.
Bonus points if you can reference Helen Keller in your answer.
“If the WTC started to fall over…”
“How?”
Uneven removal of the lower support structure. You know, like the top of WTC #2 did.
Bob,
All I’m asserting is that GPE -> KE -> TE is a source of heat (and that ‘natural’ forces are sufficient to account for observations). The contributions of the various factors are different with WTC7 – much less GPE, fires burning much longer before collapse, fuel/industrial electrical equipment throughout the building, etc. I’m not willing to do the work to make a model of it. Unless I’m being paid to do it.
Me: “If the WTC started to fall over…”
Me: “How?”
Robert:
“Uneven removal of the lower support structure. You know, like the top of WTC #2 did.”
Observational evidence seems to contradict this.
”
Me: “If the WTC started to fall over…”
Me: “How?”
Robert:
“Uneven removal of the lower support structure. You know, like the top of WTC #2 did.”
Observational evidence seems to contradict this.”
WTF? What are you talking about? Are you claiming that the top of WTC-2 did not fall over? Or are you claiming that removal of the lower support would not result in tipping?
WTC 2 did not topple over.
Slartibartfast: All I’m asserting is that GPE -> KE -> TE is a source of heat (and that ‘natural’ forces are sufficient to account for observations). The contributions of the various factors are different with WTC7 – much less GPE, fires burning much longer before collapse, fuel/industrial electrical equipment throughout the building, etc. I’m not willing to do the work to make a model of it. Unless I’m being paid to do it.”
You can charge me $50/hr and I’ll charge you $200; why don’t we just call it even.
Besides; we don’t need a model. You already conceded that WTC 7 had much less GPE; and that was your star player in your inelastic collision model for the towers.
Yet a building of less than 1/3 the mass and height of the Towers creates the same phenomena; i.e. molten metal and temperatures on the NASA thermograph in excess of 1,300 Fahrenheit. That’s amazing; each one of the first three steel buildings to ever collapse as a result of fire (on the same day no less) all left debris with molten metal lasting for six months.
Crazy world we live in; huh?
Slartibartfast: “Observational evidence seems to contradict this.”
Actually, there’s a clear shift in angular momentum in Tower 2; halting what is clearly a toppling of the tower.
Bob,
I’m not asking for your professional services, you are asking for mine.
Bob,
That’s a nice dodge, but the question isn’t “is the 9/11 Commission Report accurate?” The question is “what makes the existence of X more logically necessary than Y?”
The first step in “figuring out what’s true” is coming up with a theory. The second is testing the theory against reality. Then you make the changes necessary to make the theory mesh with reality. If you’re correct you should be able to come up with an answer as to why the presence of a conspiracy (I’m using the term conspiracy as short hand for an intentional placing, for the reason of demolishing the building, the other factor(s) you think are responsible for the destruction of the buildings in question. If you feel that the collapse was caused by an unintentional act, then I apologize for my assumption) is a better fit against reality than a theory without one. With one caveat, better fit doesn’t mean fits better with some things and worse with others, it means fits better with some thing and just as well with the others. Thus what makes a conspiracy more logically necessary to a complete theory than a non-conspiracy?
Okay. I’m finished. The model could be made more specific, but I think that this gives a good general idea of the various energies involved.
First, take a minute to think of the heroes of 9/11 – the men and women of NYPD and NYFD and the passengers on United Flight 93.
Assumptions:
GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)
Dimensions of WTC: 421m x 64m x 64m
The collapse of WTC did not involve added explosives
All of the simplifying assumptions that I have previously specified
The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale
The collapse of WTC was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption from 100 milies away
The sound of the collapse lasted for 1 minute
The thermal characteristics of iron (specific heat and heat of fusion) from the paper that Robert linked to are correct
A metric ton of TNT is equivalent to 4.6 MJ (megaJoules)
It requires 1.21 gigawatts to power the flux capacitor (I have no idea what this translates into in terms of years traveled in time
‘Little Boy’ had a yield of 13-18 kilotons
room temperature is 68 F
I am happy to change any of these assumptions for justified reasons.
I accounted for energy in the following forms:
GPE
KE
thermal energy in the rubble
seismic energy
sonic energy
energy to reduce the building to rubble and create the pyroclastic flow
I assert that the amount of other forms of energy present in the collapse of WTC are much smaller than any of these forms (except sonic energy, it’s a wuss). If you feel otherwise, please explain what form of energy I’m neglecting and why that energy is relevant on a scale measured in GJ.
Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change. I used a range of 10s to 13s for these calculations – longer time means more energy went into collapsing the building and shorter time means more energy went into heat in the rubble.
On the morning of September 11, there was half a terrajoule of gravitational potential energy in the WTC, the equivalent of over 100 kilotons of TNT (5 – 10 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima) or enough energy to power the flux capacitor for nearly seven seconds (Doc Brown only needed the duration of a lightning strike to send Marty forward 30 years). This energy exists to this day, this is my best guess as to where it went.
Somewhere between 80 to 250 GJ went in to collapsing the building, pulverizing debris, and the pyroclastic flow. This is the equivalent of 18 – 55 kilotons of TNT or somewhere between one and five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Right before the descending rubble of the WTC impacted the Earth it had about 250 to 420 GJ of kinetic energy. As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute. The rest of the kinetic energy was converted into about 240 – 415 GJ of energy, the equivalent of 50 – 90 kilotons of TNT and enough energy to liquify 270 to 455 metric tons of iron at room temperature. The debris landed mainly in a cross-shaped pattern centered on the footprint of the WTC and extending 300 to 400 meters from the footprint. If this thermal energy were distributed uniformly over a 300 meter square region, it would have a density of 270 – 460 Joules per square centimeter. If this region were covered by a solid plate of iron 79 cm thick (weighing one kilogram per square centimeter), it would raise the temperature between 0.6 and 1 C. If it were distributed over the footprint of the building, it would yield 6 – 10,000 J/cm^2, enough to raise the temperature of our block of iron by 13 – 23 C. I think these are reasonable guesses as to upper and lower bounds of energy density, with the proviso that I wouldn’t be surprised in the distribution was very non-uniform (and highest) at the center of the footprint.
Given these numbers, the fact that there were multi-fuel fires both before and after the collapse, and that post-collapse conditions make exothermic reactions extremely likely in the rubble heap it seems reasonable to conclude that there was sufficient energy to account for the observed facts of the collapse as well as the heat and molten metal present for some time after 9/11.
Okay Bob and Robert, go ahead and tell me how stupid I am and how I have absolutely no understanding of the physics of the situation. Everyone else: What do you think?
The conversion factor for Joules to tons of TNT is wrong, so ignore the TNT or Hiroshima equivalents. Nothing else is effected.
I accidentally used ‘kiloton’ instead of ‘metric ton’ – sorry, it’s been a long day. I should really know better when I’m getting 5-10 times the energy of Little Boy…
I also meant to say that the flux capacitor could be powered for nearly 7 MINUTES, not seconds. Now I’m starting to get annoyed with myself…
Slarti:
you are my hero:-)
Great synopsis, I am convinced. Planes brought the towers down and controlled demolition is out of the question.
I have to say a couple of things.
Good work fellas.
and
Sequence.
None of these analyses have answered the improbability of a symmetrical result of a random event.
Even if every joule is accounted for (not possible), time is still my issue. The hook on which hangs the hat of probability (that’s NOT a D&D treasure item for you gamers reading this).
Until either someone shows me the work or unless I suddenly get the urge to spend a day or two working out the compound probability, you’ll still have to file me under “skeptic”. I admit it’s a gut feeling. I admit this may be because I’m equation lazy. Skepticism is like agnosticism. I think I’ll retain mine. And for these reasons:
Not all opinions are binary. 1/0/N. Or in the parlance of game theory 1/-1/0.
The multiverse is one giant probability engine. All outcomes are possible and according to Everett and Schrödinger all outcomes happen. As important as Newtonian physics is to checking if there was sufficient energy to cause collapse, it doesn’t address likelihood. Time and probability has always been my grind.
Physics, despite appearances and being a contender to the throne, is not really the King of Nature. (Yes, I know both Slarti and Bob will be taking exception to this.) Physics is the Prince. And physics as we understand it is only the Prince on this membrane. He’s a powerful prince. Prince-Regent but technically not the King everywhere. In his realm, this universe, he is all powerful as constrained by the nature of spacetime on this membrane. But he is not all powerful in the context of M-theory. Probability can be applied to any data set – even a data set from a universe operating under a different physics provided we have enough context to gauge those alien probabilities.
Probability is the true King of Nature. From the probability of uneven initial matter distribution creating the universe shaped as we currently see it to the probability that two gametes will join to form a new and distinctly different creature from the parents. When everything is possible? Probability is King in ALL universes.
Einstein was wrong and Heisenberg and Everett showed it. God not only plays dice with the universe, He plays dice with all universes. I’ve still seen nothing that convinces me the dice in this instant are not peculiar. Possibly loaded. But when one cannot have certainty one way or the other, I’ve found skepticism the best retreat until all pertinent questions are answered.
So I’ll sit over here in the Skeptics Corner until someone proves a symmetrical outcome from a asymmetrical event is more likely than an asymmetrical outcome. I’ve said all along I’m just not interested enough to invest the time in the math work and that I’m working on instinct. Part of that disinterest comes from my earlier Christ analogy (What difference does it make?). My instinct still says “possible but not probable”. While you both (Bob and Slarti) shined quite a bit of physics light on the subject (thank you both for doing so much “grunt” work) and as a consequence made this one of the more interesting threads in a long time, I’m still going to play Switzerland based on what I have just said about the nature of probability as it apples to the multiverse.
A couple of notes on my analysis:
From Wikipedia:
“At 439 feet (134 m) and 2,200,000 square feet (204,000 m2), the J. L. Hudson Department Store and Addition is the tallest steel framed building and largest single structure ever imploded.[4]
It takes several weeks or months to prepare a building for implosion. All items of value, such as copper wiring, are stripped from a building. Some materials must be removed, such as glass that can form deadly projectiles, and insulation that can scatter over a wide area. Non-load bearing partitions and drywall are removed.[5] Selected columns on floors where explosives will be set are drilled and nitroglycerin and TNT are placed in the holes. Smaller columns and walls are wrapped in detonating cord. The goal is to use as little explosive as possible; only a few floors are rigged with explosives, so that it is safer (fewer explosives) and less costly. The areas with explosives are covered in thick geotextile fabric and fencing to absorb flying debris.[5] Far more time-consuming than the demolition itself is the clean-up of the site, as the debris is loaded into trucks and hauled away.”
I have done another rough calculation and determined that powering the flux capacitor for seven minutes would be capable of sending the DeLorean 15,000 years into the future (or the past) – be sure to remember your Morlock repellent or extra fuel (depending on your direction of travel).
Byron,
Yesterday, you posted that you had calculated it would take 683,000 Joules to melt 1 kg of steel at room temperature. I was using a figure of around 900,000 Joules and I thought you might like to know how I got that number. The paper Robert posted gave the specific heat of iron as 450 Joules per kg C at room temperature and 720 at 1400 C. I assumed this was a linear function and integrated it from room temp to 1535 to determine the energy needed to heat a block of iron from room temp to the melting point and added on the 272,000 Joule heat of fusion.
Buddha,
I’m not offended by your skepticism (although I don’t share it). No analysis can rule out controlled demolition, I just showed that there is enough energy involved to account for observed effects without controlled demolition. And I’m not going to calculate the odds for you (at least until Fineous Fingers returns from stealing the hat of probability for me
).
Gyges: “That’s a nice dodge, but the question isn’t “is the 9/11 Commission Report accurate?” The question is “what makes the existence of X more logically necessary than Y?”
I’m not dodging anything Gyges.
Gyges: “The first step in “figuring out what’s true” is coming up with a theory. The second is testing the theory against reality. Then you make the changes necessary to make the theory mesh with reality.”
Not when you’re faced with an existing theory that’s been accepted at face value without question. In that instance you first check whether the theory is refutable/falsifiable, and then you set out to do just that. If the theory is falsifiable and therefore testable, and it does all as promised, then the theory stands; if not, well…
Gyges: “If you’re correct you should be able to come up with an answer as to why the presence of a conspiracy (I’m using the term conspiracy as short hand for an intentional placing, for the reason of demolishing the building, the other factor(s) you think are responsible for the destruction of the buildings in question. If you feel that the collapse was caused by an unintentional act, then I apologize for my assumption)” is a better fit against reality than a theory without one.
Investigation into the crime of conspiracy is a different process than checking the validity of a scientific theory. Once again, according to the law of parsimony, should the proving false of a scientific theory of the collapses require other investigations, such as the investigation into a possible conspiracy, then so be it. There’s something to be said about not getting ahead of yourself.
Gyges: With one caveat, better fit doesn’t mean fits better with some things and worse with others, it means fits better with some thing and just as well with the others. Thus what makes a conspiracy more logically necessary to a complete theory than a non-conspiracy?
Once again, you could make speculation upon speculation based on hunches, but without starting with a foundation as to why ‘the official story doesn’t fit,’ what’s the point?
Bob,
I showed that the ‘natural collapse’ theory is plausible. The next step would be to show that it is plausible that the plane impacts were the sole cause of the collapse. (I’m not going to do it, I’ve got other plans once I get my hands on Buddha’s hat of probability. Bwa Ha Ha Ha!) And don’t give me ‘It was designed to withstand such an impact’. That design was never tested before 9/11. Remember, the Titanic was designed to be unsinkable and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge wasn’t exactly functioning within design specs on November 7, 1940…
From Wikipedia:
“Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering generally accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives.[8][62][page needed] Northwestern University Professor of Civil Engineering Zdeněk Bažant, who was the first to offer a published peer reviewed theory of the collapses, wrote “a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives” as an exception.[63] Bažant and Verdure trace such “strange ideas” to a “mistaken impression” that safety margins in design would make the collapses impossible. One of the effects of a more detailed modeling of the progressive collapse, they say, could be to “dispel the myth of planted explosives”. Indeed, Bažant and Verdure have proposed examining data from controlled demolitions in order to better model the progressive-collapse of the towers, suggesting that progressive collapse and controlled demolition are not two separate modes of failure (as the controlled demolition conspiracy theory assumes).[8]
Thomas Eagar, a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also dismissed the controlled demolition conspiracy theory.[9] Eagar remarked, “These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the ‘reverse scientific method.’ They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn’t fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion.”[64]
Preparing a building for a controlled demolition takes considerable time and effort.[65] The tower walls would have have to be opened on dozens of floors.[3] Thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms would need to be snuck past security and placed in the towers[3][66] without the tens of thousands of people working in the World Trade Center noticing.[65][41][67][66][68][1] Referring to a conversation with Stuart Vyse, a professor of psychology, an article in the Hartford Advocate asks, “How many hundreds of people would you need to acquire the explosives, plant them in the buildings, arrange for the airplanes to crash [...] and, perhaps most implausibly of all, never breathe a single word of this conspiracy?”[69]“
The total potential energy above grade is 3.98 x 10^11 J. Here’s where I get my numbers. http://www.journalof911studies.com/letters/wtc_mass_and_energy.pdf
Why is this calculation of GPE so important? It demonstrates the problems associated with making the math fit the outcome, rather than seeing if the outcome complies with the math. When we remove 20% of the GPE it leaves no energy available to break the floors free or to pulverize the concrete (unless we remove energy at some other stage). I’m sure Slarti won’t mind if I take it out of the rubble.
The size of the rubble is very important. It takes much more energy to turn concrete into 10-100 micron pieces than it does to split a 1 cu. ft. piece into two pieces. It is estimated that it would take about 17% of the GPE to perform this task. Don’t worry, we still have .4% of the GPE available to break the floors loose.
Byron said “Design is about 0.42 of ultimate or 0.66 of yield which is what we usually talk about when we design something.” Let’s use that number. The greatest design load would be the live load. To calculate this we take the dead load and add it to the service live load. The average is 331,000,000 kg. The average floor size is 320,000 square meters. That results in 1034 kg/m^2 or 212 psf. Let’s not forget about that safety margin. 1034 x .66 = 682.44 (we’ll just call it 682 to keep the numbers whole). We add the safety margin to the live total to get 1716 kg/m^2.
We know that some of the floors were damaged, but we also know that most were not. Our ultimate goal is to determine how much energy was used to break the floors loose. I’m going to consider that 10% of the load bearing capacity (including the safety margin) was lost; leaving us with 90%= 1544 kg/m^2.
To calculate the amount of work (energy expended) we need to estimate how long it took to break each floor loose.
(I’m not finished. I know wordpress kills posts that are too long. I’ll continue in another post)
(Continued)
We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.
Before I continue, what is the general consensus as to the actual time it took for the building to collapse?
Robert,
Using 398 GJ of GPE we find that there was 65-200 GJ available for the collapse (the equivalent of 15-45 metric tons of TNT) and 190 – 330 GJ of thermal heating, enough to liquify 210 – 360 metric tons of iron.
Robert,
I used a range of 10-13s for the collapse in my calculations. It is not correct to say, “We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.”. Free fall from the height of the WTC takes 9.18s.
Robert,
You’re nowhere near the size limit of posts on this site (if there is one). I’ve written posts 10 times as long as yours on this thread.
“I used a range of 10-13s for the collapse in my calculations. It is not correct to say, “We know that gravity would have taken the building down in about 9.2 seconds.”. Free fall from the height of the WTC takes 9.18s.”
Slarti, I don’t want to be accused of not giving you all the benefit I can. I’ll use 13 seconds for the time it took the building to collapse, and 9.2 seconds for free fall. I’ll completely ignore any drag by the air.
13 – 9.2 = 3.8 seconds to break the floors free.
Slartibartfast: “First, take a minute to think of the heroes of 9/11 – the men and women of NYPD and NYFD and the passengers on United Flight 93.”
Spare me the appeal to emotion; why not regale us with song and poem? (See Rheinquist’s dissent in Texas v. Johnson — pathetic)
Slartibartfast: Assumptions: GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)”
Yet the entire event included WTC 7; the collapse of which left and even hotter pile of rubble than one of the Towers and just as much molten metal. Accordingly your theory fails to account for the molten metal at ground zero and is therefore incomplete and incorrect.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC did not involve added explosives”
That’s a conclusory assertion, not a fact.
Slartibartfast: “All of the simplifying assumptions that I have previously specified”
Most of which were also conclusory assertions.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale”
Sure did, but since you’re using the conclusory assertion that there were no explosives involved, you’re using the seismic evidence to bolster your fallacy.
Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption from 100 milies away”
All that represents is energy unavailable for conversion into heat. Or… so what?
Slartibartfast: “The sound of the collapse lasted for 1 minute”
Relevance counselor?
Slartibartfast: “The thermal characteristics of iron (specific heat and heat of fusion) from the paper that Robert linked to are correct”
Wow; relevance to this alleged point you’re building?
Slartibartfast: “A metric ton of TNT is equivalent to 4.6 MJ (megaJoules)”
And how many joules of energy represent all the dripping faucets in the country?
Slartibartfast: “‘Little Boy’ had a yield of 13-18 kilotons”
Okay
Slartibartfast: “room temperature is 68 F”
And there are four pecks in a bushel…
Slartibartfast: I accounted for energy in the following forms:
GPE
KE
thermal energy in the rubble
seismic energy
sonic energy
energy to reduce the building to rubble and create the pyroclastic flow”
No you didn’t. You argued in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion based on bare assumptions targeted at a specific outcome. Your 17.4% GPE argument assumed the very conclusion which you were supposed to prove; namely that the collapse created the molten metal. Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-98758
The aforesaid fallicious reasoning poisoned every other calculation in your process.
Slartibartfast: “I assert that the amount of other forms of energy present in the collapse of WTC are much smaller than any of these forms (except sonic energy, it’s a wuss). If you feel otherwise, please explain what form of energy I’m neglecting and why that energy is relevant on a scale measured in GJ.”
You do a hell of a lot of asserting; you’re just tad light on forming so much as a syllogism or proving anything.
Slartibartfast: “Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change.”
Do you also assert that buildings falling at free fall speed is an everyday natural phenomena? Sorry, but it seems a bit fucking silly to me.
Slartibartfast: “On the morning of September 11, there was half a terrajoule of gravitational potential energy in the WTC, the equivalent of over 100 kilotons of TNT (5 – 10 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima) or enough energy to power the flux capacitor for nearly seven seconds (Doc Brown only needed the duration of a lightning strike to send Marty forward 30 years).”
And the energy in WTC 7? And the length of the time of collapse, what was that 6.5 seconds? The height? The velocity of the collapse?
Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Slartibartfast: “This energy exists to this day, this is my best guess as to where it went.”
I’ve never seen anyone use the law of conservation of energy as a fucking Hallmark card.
Slartibartfast: Somewhere between 80 to 250 GJ went in to collapsing the building, pulverizing debris, and the pyroclastic flow.”
What happened to the 17.4% GPE? You know, the figure you got from assuming the conclusion you were allegedly going to prove?
Slartibartfast: “This is the equivalent of 18 – 55 kilotons of TNT or somewhere between one and five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Right before the descending rubble of the WTC impacted the Earth it had about 250 to 420 GJ of kinetic energy.”
Because the rubble wasn’t being created by the Work of the collapse; the rubble was created by the Work of God; right?
Slartibartfast: “As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute.”
And you precluded the use of explosives in the basements of the buildings causing the 2.1 Richter how? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t exclude the possibility; you just threw that assumption on top of your 17.4% assumption.
You’re just the logic maven; aren’t you?
Slartibartfast: “The rest of the kinetic energy was converted into about 240 – 415 GJ of energy, the equivalent of 50 – 90 kilotons of TNT and enough energy to liquify 270 to 455 metric tons of iron at room temperature.”
Thanks for the equivalent alert; but still waiting on that assumed conversion mechanism of yours.
Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Slartibartfast: “The debris landed mainly in a cross-shaped pattern centered on the footprint of the WTC and extending 300 to 400 meters from the footprint. If this thermal energy were
Seeing you YET AGAIN failed to account for the method of conversion of your miraculous amount of Ke available into heat, after your deus ex machina explanation of the Work required for shredding the building, I’ll have to end my little trip down the rabbit hole with you here.
Most of the top section of the building did not collapse on itself until it hit the ground. I’ll leave it out and start the collapse at the 77th floor.
Any objections?
Robert,
Under those assumptions you have 200 GJ to play with (45 metric tons of TNT). Be careful. Just as a side note, since gravity is the energy source for breaking floors loose in CD, if your estimate comes in too high you will have proved that CD is impossible – now that’s a conspiracy!
Robert,
Actually, you are assuming 13s for the collapse of the entire building – all of the floors are broken loose in that period of time – use the whole building (otherwise you are implying that the 78th-110th floors remained intact.
Robert,
I should mention that I support your attempting this calculation – my tongue is firmly in my cheek on any gibes and I’ll provide any info you ask for if I know it.
Slarti,
“Under those assumptions you have 200 GJ to play with (45 metric tons of TNT). Be careful. Just as a side note, since gravity is the energy source for breaking floors loose in CD, if your estimate comes in too high you will have proved that CD is impossible – now that’s a conspiracy!”
Spare us your TNT reference. Are you a scientist or a salesman?
Yes! Gravity does all of the final work in a controlled demolition, but only after the major supports that have been fighting against the forces of gravity for years have been removed.
“Actually, you are assuming 13s for the collapse of the entire building – all of the floors are broken loose in that period of time – use the whole building (otherwise you are implying that the 78th-110th floors remained intact.”
To do so would be forensically dishonest. Video evidence clearly establishes that the collapse started just below the point of impact by the planes. We have no video evidence to support collapse of the upper section before it made contact with the ground. To add it to the equation would require me to lessen the time required to break the floor free. i.e. If I break 76 floors free in 3 seconds, it must require more energy to break 109 floors free in the same amount of time.
Robert,
At the beginning of the collapse all floors were intact (mod plane damage – neglect this). 13s later no floors were intact. Free fall takes 9.18s. Therefore 110 floors were broken loose in 3.78s.
Robert:
the numbers I gave you are for the material. The load is code prescribed. You take the safety factor on the material so if you need 10 lbs of steel to support 100 pounds of load you increase the steel weight by about 1.5-1.67 so you use say a 15 lb beam to support the 100 lbs.
Or saying it another way, if your section modulus needs to be 10 in^3 to support a 100 lb load you would bump it up to 15 or 16 in^3.
BobEsq:
why does thermite necessarily need to be the reason for heat at the site?
I think there has been sufficient evidence presented to justify heat from multiple sources. Why is thermite so special?
Slarti,
I’ll show my numbers. When I’m finished you can change the number from 76 to 109 if you wish. The energy required to break 76 floors loose in .38 seconds is much less than it would take to do the same thing to 109 floors.
Byron,
I provided you with the numbers I am using. If you want to offer a number other than 1716 kg/m^2, I’ll wait for you to present your number.
Bob,
It was a dodge. I asked a question, you refused to answer and tried to change the subject. Like I said, it was a adept one, but it was one none the less.
Someone always has to come up with a theory before you can check to see if it’s falsifiable. That’s why it’s step one. You can’t check a theory that doesn’t exist against anything. Since we have a theory, it’s fairly clear, we’re somewhere between steps two and three. I admit I neglected a “Repeat as necessary” step. Investigation falls into the second step and is entirely appropriate, and I encourage it. If the investigation comes up with something that doesn’t mesh with the current theory, we need to change the current theory (assuming there’s actual facts behind what the investigation says). All I’m saying is that any changes in the theory need to be as vigorously checked against reality as the unaltered theory was.
Robert:
Currently office space is designed for 80 psf for corridors, 50 psf for offices and 20 psf for moveable prtitions.
Add another 50 psf for a 3″ concrete floor.
Maybe around 200 psf for a design load. But that does not include the weight of the structural members.
Byron,
“Maybe around 200 psf for a design load. But that does not include the weight of the structural members.”
You came up with 200 psf design, and I came up with 212 psf design.
Different floors of the WTC were designed to support different loads. Some of the floors were designed to hold equipment. My 212 psf is an average.
Are you objecting to the safety margin?
I hate to leave you guys hanging, but I keep getting interrupted, and now have to run out for about 6 hours. I’ll continue my calculations when I get back, and post them as soon as they are completed.
I do have one very important question for Slarti.
When creating molten steel by transferring energy, does it matter if that energy transfer takes place on the head of a pin (the way you did it) or can I spread out that energy transfer over 500 sq. miles and still have the same effect? Does the rate at which the energy is transferred have anything to do with the equation.
I was getting ready to drop a 70 lb bag of cement on my friends head from 5 ft above him, and was wondering if pouring the contents over 20 minutes would have the same effect.
Robert:
200/212 no real difference, except in this case you put the safety factor on the supporting member.
If you want to put the safety factor on the loads it would be about 310 psf using my number.
There is a little more to it but that is basically it.
Allowable Stress Design (ASD) vs. Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD). Most people use LRFD in this day and time. I imagine ASD was used for the WTC.
But then the design load is not the load in the building at time of collapse, that would have been around 70-100 psf dead load plus the weight of the supporting members and finishes, also dead load.
Robert,
Take your time. I was in the same place yesterday and I had to keep answering posts from you and Bob. Frustrating, isn’t it?
I’ll answer your question when I get finished with my response to Bob.
Byron,
Thanks. I think my numbers should be acceptable. They may even be low when we consider that we are not just looking for failure, but uniform instantaneous failure.
450,000,000 kg appears to be the dead load of a tower. At 110 floors that equals 4,090,909 kg per floor. Floor area is 3,636 sq. m.
So that would be a per square foot load = 1,125 kg/m^2 or 230 psf close to both our estimates.
Slarti:
are these the numbers you used? Also did you take each floor’s weight and its corresponding height of fall? Or did you use some sort of average?
Taking Byron’s 4.5 x 10^8 dead load and assuming uniform density. (So help me, Bob, if you mouth off about this assumption, I will go on AT LENGTH about why it is a reasonable assumption given the calculation and what can be inferred by its result.) This gives a total GPE of 9.47 x 10^11 J. This number is in good agreement with the value Robert gave of 3.98 x 10^11 J.
Byron: “why does thermite necessarily need to be the reason for heat at the site?”
I didn’t say it was necessary, I said as of April of 2009, it had been established that there was evidence if active thermitic material found in the debris of ground zero.
The implication being, if we can’t account for nearly six months of steel existing at or near the heat of fusion, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, there were other factors besides gravity at work.
Bob posted:
“Byron: “why does thermite necessarily need to be the reason for heat at the site?”
I didn’t say it was necessary, I said as of April of 2009, it had been established that there was evidence if active thermitic material found in the debris of ground zero.
The implication being, if we can’t account for nearly six months of steel existing at or near the heat of fusion, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, there were other factors besides gravity at work.”
Great! We’ve accounted for quite a bit of heat, so, maybe, just maybe, there weren’t other factors at work here.
Gyges: “It was a dodge. I asked a question, you refused to answer and tried to change the subject.”
Refusing to answer a question that leaps off topic is not a dodge. I’m focused on the issue of an immense amount of excess heat that’s unaccounted for; analysis of that issue has nothing to do with an inquiry as to the existence of a conspiracy.
I offered you a taste of the absurd story of AAL 11 as yet another example of the absurd stories being proffered for what happened on 9/11. About as absurd as the notion that gravity alone can cause steel to melt on earth; and keep it molten for six months.
Gyges: “Someone always has to come up with a theory before you can check to see if it’s falsifiable.”
Correct, but your question had nothing to do with the focus of the analysis here.
Gyges: “All I’m saying is that any changes in the theory need to be as vigorously checked against reality as the unaltered theory was.”
Elementary my dear Gyges; however when you see that the prevailing theory is full of holes and those who adhere to said theory are quite reluctant to let it go, even when logic dictates they should let it go, you don’t begin by postulating another theory, conspiracy or otherwise, until you’ve gotten the point across as to WHY they should take another look.
How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “First, take a minute to think of the heroes of 9/11 – the men and women of NYPD and NYFD and the passengers on United Flight 93.”
Spare me the appeal to emotion; why not regale us with song and poem? (See Rheinquist’s dissent in Texas v. Johnson — pathetic)”
Fine, my analysis stands on its own, I thought that since you’re insisting that our government murdered nearly 3000 people including some who were performing very heroically, it deserved mention.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: Assumptions: GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)”
Yet the entire event included WTC 7; the collapse of which left and even hotter pile of rubble than one of the Towers and just as much molten metal. Accordingly your theory fails to account for the molten metal at ground zero and is therefore incomplete and incorrect.”
I didn’t include the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, either. I was investigating the plausibility of the hypothesis that there was sufficient energy involved in the WTC collapse to account for observations. I said that I COULD do a similar analysis of WTC 7, but would not unless I were paid for it. My theory is complete in addressing my hypothetical. It doesn’t answer questions about WTC 7 and it doesn’t purport to. It is correct in that from the given assumptions my calculations are accurate.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC did not involve added explosives”
That’s a conclusory assertion, not a fact.”
This is the hypothetical that we are investigating the plausibility of. My model assumed no added explosives. This is a necessary assumption for the goal of my model and in no way improper.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “All of the simplifying assumptions that I have previously specified”
Most of which were also conclusory assertions.”
See above – with the addendum that making simplifying assumptions is a necessary part of science. If you can track the vectors of all of the particles that made up WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 the morning of 9/11 and account for every millijoule of energy, more power to you. My calculation is a good first step and the kind of thing that a scientist wants to consider when he asks the question: Were the observations consistent with my hypothesis (no explosives).
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale”
Sure did, but since you’re using the conclusory assertion that there were no explosives involved, you’re using the seismic evidence to bolster your fallacy.”
The amount of energy needed for seismic events is well understood and easily calculable. Roughly 5.9 GJ of seismic energy is required to generate an event that registers a 2.1 on the Richter scale. This is true no matter what the cause of the event. I subtracted this energy from my calculation (this was kinetic energy converted into seismic energy). Just to be clear – this is energy that is no longer available for heat or generalized destruction. To bolster your argument, you would like to make me subtract as much energy as possible – would you like me to add this back in? (It’s the equivalent of more than a metric ton of TNT.
)
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption from 100 milies away”
All that represents is energy unavailable for conversion into heat. Or… so what?”
It is identifiable energy released in the collapse, so I account for it. It isn’t much, just 60 MJ, but every little bit helps you out.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The sound of the collapse lasted for 1 minute”
Relevance counselor?”
The volume of sound is measured in decibels (dB). This is a measure of the power required to produce a sound. Power has units of energy per unit time. In order to calculate the amount of sonic energy present we must know how loud the sound was and how long it lasted. I chose what I considered to be more than reasonable upper bounds for both.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The thermal characteristics of iron (specific heat and heat of fusion) from the paper that Robert linked to are correct”
Wow; relevance to this alleged point you’re building?”
I gave thermal energy equivalents in terms of ‘metric tons of iron at room temperature liquified’. I used the specific heat and heat of fusion from that paper to do the calculation. If I don’t do things like this, my work is not reproducible (I know that no one will attempt to reproduce it, but the principle is still important.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “A metric ton of TNT is equivalent to 4.6 MJ (megaJoules)”
And how many joules of energy represent all the dripping faucets in the country?”
I would measure all of the dripping faucets in the country in liters per second, not joules. I’ll leave estimating the actual value to you.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “‘Little Boy’ had a yield of 13-18 kilotons”
Okay
Slartibartfast: “room temperature is 68 F”
And there are four pecks in a bushel…”
Again, I have to specify any constants that I used.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: I accounted for energy in the following forms:
GPE
KE
thermal energy in the rubble
seismic energy
sonic energy
energy to reduce the building to rubble and create the pyroclastic flow”
No you didn’t. You argued in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion based on bare assumptions targeted at a specific outcome. Your 17.4% GPE argument assumed the very conclusion which you were supposed to prove; namely that the collapse created the molten metal.”
First off, the 17.4% figure is from outdated numbers. The correct figures are 16-50% depending on the duration of the collapse. Assuming that my scenario is correct, 16-50% of the gravitational potential energy was available for collapsing the structure, pulverizing the materials, and generating the pyroclastic flow. 50-84% went elsewhere. In the interest of accuracy, the sonic energy should probably be included here, however it is so small that it doesn’t effect any of the numbers that I have reported. My calculation suggests what the distribution of the GPE stored in the WTC would be during the collapse. I’m not trying to prove that the collapse created the molten metal, I’m just saying that enough GPE was converted to heat to liquify 270-455 metric tons of iron at room temperature. With additional heat sources available, I think this makes finding molten metal in the rubble reasonable. I have never asserted anything more.
Bob said:
“Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel?”
about 900,000.
Bob said:
“And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’”
I actually posted this (along with the height it would need to fall from to obtain that velocity (neglecting air resistance)) upthread. Find it yourself.
Bob said:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-98758
The aforesaid fallicious reasoning poisoned every other calculation in your process.”
You link to a prior post of your in which you go on at length with comments no more valid than any of these. Since you did not see fit to reproduce the arguments, I’m not going to bother refuting them here. Most of them have been refuted in other posts.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “I assert that the amount of other forms of energy present in the collapse of WTC are much smaller than any of these forms (except sonic energy, it’s a wuss). If you feel otherwise, please explain what form of energy I’m neglecting and why that energy is relevant on a scale measured in GJ.”
You do a hell of a lot of asserting; you’re just tad light on forming so much as a syllogism or proving anything.”
I was offering you (or Robert) the opportunity to point out energy that I haven’t considered, provided you could justify including it. I would be a poor scientist if I wasn’t willing to do this. You clearly do not understand my goal here. I am providing evidence of whether or not the ‘natural’ theory of collapse is consistent with the observed facts by calculating the distribution of the GPE originally in the towers the morning of 9/11. I think my analysis is pretty solid evidence that it is.
Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change.”
Do you also assert that buildings falling at free fall speed is an everyday natural phenomena? Sorry, but it seems a bit fucking silly to me.”
By comparing the time required for the collapse with the free fall time, we can determine the velocity of the collapse, we can determine how much of the original GPE went into KE and how much was diverted to generalized destruction. If there were no resistance, the building would have fallen at free fall speed and all of the GPE would have become KE. Are you saying that the question of how much energy is available for destruction is irrelevant? If so, you should tell Robert that he’s wasting his time. Could we understand the result of the computation that Robert is doing as well if we didn’t have the context of my analysis and the 200 GJ to compare it to?
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “On the morning of September 11, there was half a terrajoule of gravitational potential energy in the WTC, the equivalent of over 100 kilotons of TNT (5 – 10 times the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima) or enough energy to power the flux capacitor for nearly seven seconds (Doc Brown only needed the duration of a lightning strike to send Marty forward 30 years).”
And the energy in WTC 7? And the length of the time of collapse, what was that 6.5 seconds? The height? The velocity of the collapse?”
If you’re referring to the 6s/6.6s times I used in earlier calculations, I believe they are free fall vs. collapse times from WTC7, if so, the 17.4% of GPE for destruction is applicable to the collapse of WTC7. If you’re talking about the 6.9 minutes that the flux capacitor could be powered, I assumed that a lightning strike lasts one second to compute the number of years it would be possible to travel through time (~15,000).
Bob said:
“Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?”
See above.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “This energy exists to this day, this is my best guess as to where it went.”
I’ve never seen anyone use the law of conservation of energy as a fucking Hallmark card.”
So you agree that I am correctly using the law of conservation of energy. It’s a start. (You really should watch your fucking language, though.)
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: Somewhere between 80 to 250 GJ went in to collapsing the building, pulverizing debris, and the pyroclastic flow.”
What happened to the 17.4% GPE? You know, the figure you got from assuming the conclusion you were allegedly going to prove?”
As per above, the 17.4% number comes from using the WTC 7 collapse times in the calculation. With a collapse time of 10-13s, we get 16-50% of the GPE diverted from KE to destroy the building.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “This is the equivalent of 18 – 55 kilotons of TNT or somewhere between one and five times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Right before the descending rubble of the WTC impacted the Earth it had about 250 to 420 GJ of kinetic energy.”
Because the rubble wasn’t being created by the Work of the collapse; the rubble was created by the Work of God; right?”
Because the energy used to create the rubble has already been subtracted. Call the energy that went into collapsing structure, pulverizing debris and generating the pyroclastic flow (you can throw in the big kaboom) the energy of resistance – this is the stuff that slows down the collapse. The magnitude of the energy of resistance is determined by the collapse speed. I calculated it. Do you understand? This number is one of the numbers in my analysis that does not depend on the ‘no explosives’ assumption. Given the observed facts 80-250 GJ of kinetic energy was diverted into generalized destruction, additional explosives or not.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute.”
And you precluded the use of explosives in the basements of the buildings causing the 2.1 Richter how? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t exclude the possibility; you just threw that assumption on top of your 17.4% assumption.”
As I’ve already explained this is a well-defined amount of energy which I subtracted from the energy available for heat generation. If you want to say it came from explosives, I get to add it back in (5.9 GJ) and you have to show why you think there was over a metric ton of TNT in the basement.
Bob said:
“You’re just the logic maven; aren’t you?”
I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done here.
Bob said:
Slartibartfast: “The rest of the kinetic energy was converted into about 240 – 415 GJ of energy, the equivalent of 50 – 90 kilotons of TNT and enough energy to liquify 270 to 455 metric tons of iron at room temperature.”
Thanks for the equivalent alert; but still waiting on that assumed conversion mechanism of yours.”
It’s called inelastic collision it applies to all collisions where there is no ‘bounce’ or the rebound speed is negligible (that’s for you Buddha
). The rubble did not bounce enough to worry about, so the collapse was an inelastic collision.
Bob said:
“Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?”
See above.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The debris landed mainly in a cross-shaped pattern centered on the footprint of the WTC and extending 300 to 400 meters from the footprint. If this thermal energy were
Seeing you YET AGAIN failed to account for the method of conversion of your miraculous amount of Ke available into heat, after your deus ex machina explanation of the Work required for shredding the building, I’ll have to end my little trip down the rabbit hole with you here.”
That a significant amount of GPE was converted in to KE is unquestionable. As is the fact that that energy continued to exist. Since the energy had to be somewhere, I hardly find it miraculous when it turns up where we (at least I) would expect it to be (the rubble heap that it was in to begin with). I have already explained the origin and magnitude of energy that went into shredding the building, so with that I’ll rest my case.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
Gyges,
I’d like to thank you for intervening in this discussion yesterday. You took Bob’s rhetorical heat off my back (I love mixed metaphors…) and allowed me to concentrate on the physics. In my Scopes Monkey Trial analogy, you’ve taken the role of Clarence Darrow. I hope you’re happy with the testimony of your expert witness.
You said yesterday (and I agreed) that Bob was beating me on style and I was beating him on substance. What do you think now?
BobEsq:
did you know that the exterior support columns were coated with aluminum?
“The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4″ wide and set only 22″ apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.”
http://www.skyscraper.org/TALLEST_TOWERS/t_wtc.htm
I just found that out. I think that might be your answer or at least it sure goes a long way toward explaining some things. That would be one heck of a lot of aluminum.
I wonder why that wasn’t looked into as a source for possible “thermite” residue? At least I haven’t seen any mention of it in anything I have read.
recipe for thermite:
8 parts iron oxide
3 parts aluminum
parts by weight
I think we can put that controlled demolition speculation to bed once and for all.
Byron,
BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE! (or thermite
)
Could it be that simple?
Slarti:
more like in like a Lion out like a Lamb.
Bob,
I asked you why you felt that a conspiracy was a logical necessity, right after you implied that a conspiracy was a logical necessity, and that’s off topic. You either have a bad memory, or a very flexible one.
A refresher:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-98804
and my “off topic” question.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-98820
Either way, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that you’ve convinced yourself that anyone disagreeing with you is wrong, and therefore not worth actually listening to. Have fun, I see no reason to keep enabling your disillusion of being an impartial and unbiased interpreter of facts.
Slart,
Aesthetically Bob still wins. No offense, he’s just a master wordsmith and rhetorician, even his absurdities sound plausible. I actually had to go back and reread what I said a few times, and I’m no slouch when it comes remembering what I wrote.
However, when it comes to establishing a factual basis for your claims, math wins over words. Especially when you’re trying to prove a possibility.
Byron said:
“more like in like a Lion out like a Lamb.”
ROTFLOL. How right you are.
Gyges said:
“Aesthetically Bob still wins. No offense, he’s just a master wordsmith and rhetorician, even his absurdities sound plausible. I actually had to go back and reread what I said a few times, and I’m no slouch when it comes remembering what I wrote.
However, when it comes to establishing a factual basis for your claims, math wins over words. Especially when you’re trying to prove a possibility.”
I can live with that. I’m trying to communicate, not entertain or persuade. I believe that if people understand the science, they will be better able to judge the truth for themselves.
It would explain the residue.
As I said earlier, chemistry is a funny thing. But if all the basic ingredients were there? It makes that “not impossible” statement about a process we might not be seeing come to light. And had I known that’s what’s in thermite? I’ve been to the WTC. I knew it had aluminum cladding. I’ve touched it. I might have made that chemistry connection earlier. As Sgt. Schultz would say, “Veddy interestink.”
That could be the simple answer to one question.
Not mine, but one.
BTW, Byron. Good show on piecing that together. Pretty good reasoning for a capitalist pig.
Buddha,
I knew that aluminum was a main ingredient of thermite, but not that the WTC was clad with it. Together did we know that the ingredients for thermite were abundant in the WTC collapse? What is 1/2 of knowledge?
.
.
.
HEY! Look over there!
.
.
.
Sorry, I just had to distract you so I could steal your hat of probability.
Byron,
What Buddha said.
bUDDHA/Slarti:
thank you, oink, oink.
Slarti,
I will stipulate that the heat of fusion and residue issues do lend more credence to anomaly than conspiracy. However, I was never in either camp. I was in the “could be meat, could be cake, could be meat-cake!” camp (apologies to Mr. Carlin). But what you have described is a possibility. A slide one direction in the matrix of probability. I have no problem with possibility, and while your possibility (with the possible explanation for the residue Byron hooked us up with) has reshaped my hat of probability, it has not destroyed it – merely changed the fit. My hat no longer has the thermite question in it.
Feel free to keep that hat. I’ve probably got more. Don’t mind the Orc blood on it. We got a little carried away last dungeon.
I will remain skeptical of symmetry from asymmetry. However, this points to a problem that is solely mine. A long recognized personal quirk. I have a thing about chaos. It is deep embedded in the universe’s behavior and when it act orderly without intervention it always makes me curious. Not necessarily suspicious (though it can), but curious always.
Buddha,
I understand the fascination with chaos – after reading Gleick’s book I was hooked. I spent two years in grad school taking classes in non-linear dynamics and ergodic theory with a student of Stephen Smale’s. Very cool stuff. I once asked him about a phenomenon called ‘Newhouse sinks’ and professor Newhouse replied, “I don’t call them that…” and proceeded to give me a very thorough explanation of the concept.
Thanks for the hat. I’ve got some ACME instant spot remover that I’m sure will get the orc blood right out.
Slow down guys. Aluminum cladding on the side of the tower doesn’t magically turn into thermite. It also doesn’t explain the high concentrations of sulfur. And it doesn’t explain the 45 degree cuts on the core support.
I asked this question before I went out. I would really appreciate an answer.
I do have one very important question for Slarti.
When creating molten steel by transferring energy, does it matter if that energy transfer takes place on the head of a pin (the way you did it) or can I spread out that energy transfer over 500 sq. miles and still have the same effect? Does the rate at which the energy is transferred have anything to do with the equation.
I was getting ready to drop a 70 lb bag of cement on my friends head from 5 ft above him, and was wondering if pouring the contents over 20 minutes would have the same effect.
Robert:
I am not saying it turned into thermite just that it is a viable explanation for “thermite like” residue.
I also answered you about the sulphur.
Are you talking about the cuts in the pictures? Those are from upper floor columns. The lower level columns were massive and were rectangles with 3 or 4 interior bulkheads. The upper level columns were rectangular with no bulkheads, 4 sides only. The pictures I saw were only rectangles and looked like they were cut with torches. In close ups you could make out flame marks. As you well know being a welder an acetylene cutting torch leaves a very distinctive pattern in the steel.
Buddha,
Your right about symmetry – symmetry breaking is a common form of bifurcation, and the reverse doesn’t usually follow the entropy arrow. I’m fine with your newly reshaped probability hat, all I wanted to do was provide a scientific context to answer the question ‘Were explosives necessary?’. I don’t want to make up anyone’s mind for them, I just want to show them what my reasoning is based on. I figure if my thinking is good and other people understand it, then they will tend to agree with me (unless they disagree with my assumptions). As long as people don’t form their opinions based on ignorance (especially willful ignorance) I’m happy. I hope you like the new contours of your hat.
8 parts iron oxide
3 parts aluminum
parts by weight
All the ingredients where there in quantity and enough energy was introduced to the system to cause vaporization or crushing the materials into a fine enough powered to work.
That’s not magic. That’s not thermite. It’s a residue that looks like thermite because it the same chemical composition. Some of it burned similar to thermite, but it was a thermalitic compound created by the accident proper – not man made. Iron oxides and aluminum dust under energy are all that’s required to get the residual effect. As noted, there was a lot of pulverized and particulate iron and aluminum dust generated by the transfer of KE on impact. Then it’s just a matter of mixture in and deposition by the pyroclastic cloud. The fuel cloud itself was not thermite hot. But some of the local materials went that way under that proper conditions.
Strangely coincidental – an odd series of conditions precedent – but not magic.
Compare to this:
A plane carrying jelly hits a store house. One part of the building stores peanut butter, the other is built out of bread. After the impact, finding a PB&J sandwich in the rubble isn’t magic. It’s coincidence.
Byron,
You said “And sulfur occurs in many hydro-carbon based products and it occurs in steel. He did not say what % of sulfur was found. Was it 0.5% or 15%.”
I found and posted this: “Someone was asking “how much sulfur”. U.S.G.S analysis is available here. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/
Sulfur% MIN 0.87 MAX 5.77 AVG 3.11″
Those are pretty high concentrations of sulfur.
Slartibartfast: “I thought that since you’re insisting that our government murdered nearly 3000 people including some who were performing very heroically, it deserved mention.”
I’m insisting that our government murdered nearly 3,000 people? I am? Really? I said the govmint did it? Do you enjoy putting words in my mouth?
Slartibartfast: Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: Assumptions: GPE of WTC1 = WTC2 = 500 GJ (gigajoules) (From here on out, I will just refer to WTC or ‘the tower’)”
Yet the entire event included WTC 7; the collapse of which left and even hotter pile of rubble than one of the Towers and just as much molten metal. Accordingly your theory fails to account for the molten metal at ground zero and is therefore incomplete and incorrect.”
I didn’t include the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, either. I was investigating the plausibility of the hypothesis that there was sufficient energy involved in the WTC collapse to account for observations. I said that I COULD do a similar analysis of WTC 7, but would not unless I were paid for it. My theory is complete in addressing my hypothetical.”
What you offered was an incomplete explanation for the existence of molten metal at ground zero for nearly six months after the attacks. Your theory is based so heavily on your near operatic emphasis on the amount of GPE in the Towers that it falls flat on its face per explaining the molten metal at building 7. As a scientist, you know damn well that what you offered was ANYTHING but scientific.
Slartibartfast: “It doesn’t answer questions about WTC 7 and it doesn’t purport to.”
Which makes it by definition a NON-EXPLANATION as to the existence of molten metal at ground zero for nearly six months after the attacks.
Slartibartfast: “It is correct in that from the given assumptions my calculations are accurate.”
Your entire method was fallacious. To get your numbers you begged the very question you were allegedly setting out to prove and worked your way back to your desired outcome.
Slartibartfast: This is the hypothetical that we are investigating the plausibility of. My model assumed no added explosives. This is a necessary assumption for the goal of my model and in no way improper.”
Then you should have stated it in your summary as an assumption; not a declarative fact.
Per my comment that your other ‘simplifying assumptions’ were conslusory assertions, I need only point to THE METHOD (not the number, I mean your reasoning process) by which you arrived at your 17.4%. Basing your other ‘simplifying assumptions,’ and the derivatives thereof, on such fallacious reasoning makes all that follows suspect as well.
Slartibartfast: “making simplifying assumptions is a necessary part of science.”
No kidding; but it’s not a license to cut corners via faulty reasoning.
Slartibartfast: “If you can track the vectors of all of the particles that made up WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 the morning of 9/11 and account for every millijoule of energy, more power to you.”
Love the way you treat WTC 7 as a quantum particle; “it’s part of the event” “It’s not part of the event”
I could complain at the Wendy’s drive thru that when they put my straw for my ice cold drink in the bag with my hot fries and chicken sandwich that they’re unnecessarily warming my drink when I put my straw in it. But, like tracking those vectors, I think that would be a fucking waste of time; don’t you?
Slartibartfast: Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “The collapse of WTC registered 2.1 on the richter scale”
Sure did, but since you’re using the conclusory assertion that there were no explosives involved, you’re using the seismic evidence to bolster your fallacy.”
To bolster your argument, you would like to make me subtract as much energy as possible – would you like me to add this back in? (It’s the equivalent of more than a metric ton of TNT.
)
My objection lays with your process; thus ‘bolstering’ your fallacy.
“Slartibartfast: “I gave thermal energy equivalents in terms of ‘metric tons of iron at room temperature liquified’. I used the specific heat and heat of fusion from that paper to do the calculation. If I don’t do things like this, my work is not reproducible (I know that no one will attempt to reproduce it, but the principle is still important.
It’s still not reproducible/falsifiable because your entire theory fails in the face of WTC 7. In case you haven’t been paying attention, I don’t care what equivalents you use if you don’t tell me how steel capable of liquifying by falling to earth. How many times do I have to ask
To wit:
How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel? And
You know why I ask this and you know why you avoid answering the question? It goes back to your post hoc ergo propter hoc/question begging regarding the existence of molten metal. It’s the basis of all your further calculations; seeing you assume heat generation for a thousand mentric tons of steel by gravity alone and thence arrive at your 17.4% or whatever you’re calling it now.
How fast does that steel have to fall in order to approach the conditions necessary for your first ‘simplified assumption?’ How fast does your speeding bullet/meteoric steel have to fall to melt on impact?
Slartibartfast: “Again, I have to specify any constants that I used.”
Something something 9.8 m/s^2 and about 415 meters to play with? So, at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’ — U=mgh?
Slartibartfast: “First off, the 17.4% figure is from outdated numbers. The correct figures are 16-50% depending on the duration of the collapse.”
Once again, irrelevant. Post hoc ergo propter hoc/question begging is by no means a scientific method.
Slartibartfast: “Assuming that my scenario is correct, 16-50% of the gravitational potential energy was available for collapsing the structure, pulverizing the materials, and generating the pyroclastic flow. 50-84% went elsewhere.” … I’m not trying to prove that the collapse created the molten metal, I’m just saying that enough GPE was converted to heat to liquify 270-455 metric tons of iron at room temperature.”
Bullets, meteors, gravity …
Slartibartfast:
Bob said:
“Once again: How many joules does it take to ‘liquify’ one kg of steel?”
about 900,000.
Bob said:
“And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’” — I actually posted this (along with the height it would need to fall from to obtain that velocity (neglecting air resistance)) upthread. Find it yourself.
Well, you claim it’s 1.45 km/sec, or 1450 m/s
However, based on your 900,000 joules, it’s a little less:
900,000 joules = .5 * 1kg * v^2 (divide both sides by .5)
1kg v^2 = 1800000 joules
Square root of 1800000 is ~ 1341.6 m/s
And converting that back to the English system, i.e. in terms that most people understand, we get …. bout 3,000 mph or about Mach 3.94.
So I take a kg of steel and toss it off the top of a 415 meter tall building and just before impact, according to your liquification theory, the steel is traveling at mach 3.94 when it hits the ground. Did you know that it would take more than fifty seconds for that kg of steel to reach that speed if it was in free fall near the surface of Jupiter?
I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek TNG where ‘Q’ says he can solve everyone’s problems by changing the gravitational constant of a moon. In actual plot he was speaking hypothetically, sine he was stripped of his powers; but I think you get the idea.
Slartibartfast: Bob posted:
Slartibartfast: “Depending on the time required for the collapse (free fall requires 9.18s), the various quantities change.”
Do you also assert that buildings falling at free fall speed is an everyday natural phenomena? Sorry, but it seems a bit fucking silly to me.”
By comparing the time required for the collapse with the free fall time, we can determine the velocity of the collapse, we can determine how much of the original GPE went into KE and how much was diverted to generalized destruction.”
You missed the point; you don’t seem to understand that buildings falling at near free fall speed suffer from a want of resistance i.e. from the very structure of the building. As if it vanished.
Slartibartfast: “If there were no resistance, the building would have fallen at free fall speed and all of the GPE would have become KE.”
That’s my point; yet you’re not amazed at the speed of the falls.
Slartibartfast:
Bob posted:
And the energy in WTC 7? And the length of the time of collapse, what was that 6.5 seconds? The height? The velocity of the collapse?”
If you’re referring to the 6s/6.6s times I used in earlier calculations, I believe they are free fall vs. collapse times from WTC7, if so, the 17.4% of GPE for destruction is applicable to the collapse of WTC7.”
No adjustments for mass, height, velocity? Or did you feel free to change the gravitational constant of the earth again?
Slartibartfast: “As per above, the 17.4% number comes from using the WTC 7 collapse times in the calculation. With a collapse time of 10-13s, we get 16-50% of the GPE diverted from KE to destroy the building.”
So your theory includes, but doesn’t include WTC 7??
Slartibartfast:
Bob posted:
Because the rubble wasn’t being created by the Work of the collapse; the rubble was created by the Work of God; right?”
Because the energy used to create the rubble has already been subtracted. Call the energy that went into collapsing structure, pulverizing debris and generating the pyroclastic flow (you can throw in the big kaboom) the energy of resistance – this is the stuff that slows down the collapse. The magnitude of the energy of resistance is determined by the collapse speed. I calculated it. Do you understand? This number is one of the numbers in my analysis that does not depend on the ‘no explosives’ assumption. Given the observed facts 80-250 GJ of kinetic energy was diverted into generalized destruction, additional explosives or not.”
Note how I stressed the word “Work” — i.e. that necessary component for the GPE to be used to shred the building. Also, when you say “The magnitude of the energy of resistance is determined by the collapse speed.” The problem here, in light of some incredible collapse speeds, is that the LACK OF RESISTANCE might be construed, by those who find buildings collapsing at near free fall speed as rather odd, to be evidence of demolition. But seeing how wrapped up you are in proving your outcome, I can understand why that thought wouldn’t cross your mind.
Slartibartfast: Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “As the rubble impacted the Earth, this kinetic energy caused a seismic event of magnitude 2.1 and the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for one minute.”
And you precluded the use of explosives in the basements of the buildings causing the 2.1 Richter how? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t exclude the possibility; you just threw that assumption on top of your 17.4% assumption.”
As I’ve already explained this is a well-defined amount of energy which I subtracted from the energy available for heat generation.
–Thus the reason I told you that your post hoc ergo propter hoc/question begging is the reason your theory fails.
Slartibartfast: “If you want to say it came from explosives, I get to add it back in (5.9 GJ) and you have to show why you think there was over a metric ton of TNT in the basement.”
I don’t ‘want’ to say anything. However there exists some interesting audio/video footage of the events indicating massive explosions occurring just before each collapse.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=65460757734339444&hl=en&emb=1#
Robert said:
“Slow down guys. Aluminum cladding on the side of the tower doesn’t magically turn into thermite. It also doesn’t explain the high concentrations of sulfur. And it doesn’t explain the 45 degree cuts on the core support.”
No aluminum on the side of the building doesn’t magically turn into thermite, but the presence (in abundance) of the primary ingredients of thermite in the collapse is a devastating blow to the theory that the residue found could have only been the result of thermite demo charges. Byron’s taken care of the rest.
Robert said:
“I asked this question before I went out. I would really appreciate an answer.
I do have one very important question for Slarti.
When creating molten steel by transferring energy, does it matter if that energy transfer takes place on the head of a pin (the way you did it) or can I spread out that energy transfer over 500 sq. miles and still have the same effect? Does the rate at which the energy is transferred have anything to do with the equation.
I was getting ready to drop a 70 lb bag of cement on my friends head from 5 ft above him, and was wondering if pouring the contents over 20 minutes would have the same effect.”
Sorry, my bad. I fell victim to SOS (shiny object syndrome) and forgot to answer this. The energy transferred is the same, the effects of that transfer would be different. Obviously, an extremely high energy density would be necessary to melt steel. The question is, ‘Were conditions in the WTC collapse sufficient for that?’. I would suspect that the energy density in the center of the footprint of the building would be extremely non-uniform. Could these densities be high enough to melt iron which was already heated (you do realize that when you bend a bar of iron it heats up, don’t you? This is an example of energy that is converted from kinetic energy, used to do work in destroying the building and remaining as heat in the rubble, by the way – something that you and Bob have repeatedly mocked as ridiculous and which is not included in my calculations. In reality, the whole load of GPE of the towers winds up in the rubble heap, less seismic energy, sonic energy, and the energy ejected in the pyroclastic flow (plus the odd grider and piece of rubble). After subtracting out the GPE in the rubble heap, all that’s left ends up as heat. In addition, there was peanut butter, bread, and raspberry jell… er, … I mean fires and likely exothermic reactions in the rubble which could have helped maintain the temperature for the long periods of time observed.
If you drop a 70lb bag of bag of cement on your friend’s head one grain at a time, each grain would heat slightly on impact (which could be treated in the same way as I have done), but the heat would dissipate (and the total’s not that much heat anyway (I’m not figuring it out for you since you didn’t use metric units)). If you dropped the whole bag on his head the kinetic energy transfer would be different. The remaining kinetic energy is equal to the kinetic energy in the center of momentum frame of reference. In the case of the WTC, the size difference between the impactor (rubble pile) and Impactee (the Earth) allowed for the approximation that this was coincident with the center of the Earth (in reality it’s almost 500 picometers from the center of the earth). In the case of your friend’s head this assumption is no longer valid. He will likely suffer injury due to the transfer of kinetic energy and momentum (can’t forget the big MO! – unless one party outweighs the other by a factor of 10^18).
How’s the floor-ripping calculation coming? I’m looking forward to seeing your results.
Gyges: “Either way, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that you’ve convinced yourself that anyone disagreeing with you is wrong, and therefore not worth actually listening to.”
Gyges,
Allow me to simplify this argument for you. I asked Slarti to explain the existence of molten metal at ground zero for six months after the event.
Problem 1. In formulating his theory, which was to show how that molten metal got there and why it stayed around for so long, Slarti begged the question of the existence of the molten metal. Combine this with the Post ergo propter hoc “After the collapse, there was molten metal; therefore the molten metal was a result of the collapse.” And how does he begin his calculations? By ASSUMING heat generation for a thousand mentric tons of steel by gravity alone and thence arriving at a remainder amount of energy which he deems the energy necessary to shred the building.
Problem 2. He states that the force of gravity pulling the steel to earth was sufficient to liquify the steel on impact; thus the reason I kept asking HOW FAST MUST THAT STEEL FALL?
When he finally got around to at least addressing the question, he did so as follows:
Bob said: “And at what velocity must one kg of steel need to fall in order for it to ‘liquify?’”
Slarti: “I actually posted this (along with the height it would need to fall from to obtain that velocity (neglecting air resistance)) upthread. Find it yourself.”
So Gyges, I checked his math
Bob: “Well, you claim it’s 1.45 km/sec, or 1450 m/s
However, based on your 900,000 joules, it’s a little less:
900,000 joules = .5 * 1kg * v^2 (divide both sides by .5)
1kg v^2 = 1800000 joules
Square root of 1800000 is ~ 1341.6 m/s
And converting that back to the English system, i.e. in terms that most people understand, we get …. bout 3,000 mph or about Mach 3.94.
So I take a kg of steel and toss it off the top of a 415 meter tall building and just before impact, according to your liquification theory, the steel is traveling at mach 3.94 when it hits the ground. Did you know that it would take more than fifty seconds for that kg of steel to reach that speed if it was in free fall near the surface of Jupiter?
I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek TNG where ‘Q’ says he can solve everyone’s problems by changing the gravitational constant of a moon. In actual plot he was speaking hypothetically, sine he was stripped of his powers; but I think you get the idea.”
It’s not that I don’t want to be proven wrong Gyges, I simply refuse to accept the absurdity as reality.
Bob,
Excellent video! I can hear the repeated explosions. They took place well before the tower began to collapse. Light travels much faster than sound. If the explosions were sounds of the tower collapsing, they would not occur until after the tower began to fall.
Slarti,
To save time, you’ll need to start the clip at around the 13:20 mark.
Robert,
Start at 13:20 and they’ll go through the sound delay; adjusting for distance and relative humidity.
Buddha:
I never said thermite was created, I said it is an explanation for thermite residue.
Strawberry or Raspberry jam? Smooth or crunchy?
White or whole wheat?
Byron,
Raspberry, smooth, whole wheat.
Slarti,
All you need to do is make a little love and you can get down tonight. There was plenty of dancing in your last post.
All of your calculations for energy transfer take place on the head of a pin, and they happen instantaneously.
I think your references to meteor impacts and atomic bombs may have led you astray. Even your bullet reference is an instantaneous event.
I was hoping that you would get the difference between an explosion and an event of longer duration. I was also hoping that you would understand the difference between imparting energy on a point, and that of imparting energy on an area.
As to the bending of iron beams, the reason they get hot is deformation. This is a form of friction. It is internal friction at a molecular level.
When an object hits the earth, it transfers its kinetic energy to the earth. The energy continues along the path of least resistance. You may be able to consider a very small portion of that energy to generate heat. In addition the area upon which it impacts determines the force exerted. This is represented in kg/m^2 or psi. We don’t end up with a puddle of joules.
Buddha is Laughing,
We know that the building was clad in aluminum. We also know that the airplane fuselage was made of aluminum. Both of these are highly ductile and malleable. I know how to turn concrete into dust, but I’m not sure about aluminum.
How did you convert aluminum cladding or airplane fuselage to powder or flakes?
Slarti:
Great minds think alike
Gyges,
I see what you mean about Bob’s absurdities sounding good. I think that I’ve convinced everyone else (save Robert – who is putting his money where his mouth is and calculating the energy to rip loose a floor) that I know what I’m talking about here, yet Bob made reporting that I had made a error of 8% (to my disadvantage, no less) sound like a credible indictment of my veracity. And finished it off with a Star Trek reference. If Orly Taitz was as good as Bob, I’d fear for Obama’s presidency!
Bob,
Everyone else can see that I’m making an entirely reasonable argument based on the principles of physics. I’ve clearly stated my assumptions, my methods, my results, and what I think the proper interpretation of those results are. You have ceased to make any valid criticisms of my model, simply because you can’t. I have built my argument on the laws of physics using the structure of mathematics. Built on the foundations of my assumptions, the structure is unquestionably true i.e. It’s been proven and cannot honestly be denied. My assumptions were shaped by the scientific method and are the correct ones to answer the question I posed: “Was there enough energy in the WTC collapse to account for observations without the use of explosives?” My model answers this question and the answer looks like yes to me. If Robert comes up with a value for the energy needed to rip a floor loose that my model can’t account for or I can’t discredit, then the model is proved wrong (and, I believe, CD cannot happen). Therefore the model is falsifiable and by your and Popper’s definition, good science (that’s not the only way to falsify it, mind you). You can continue using your golden keyboard to run circles around me, but I’ve already won and I know it. And deep down, I think you know it, too.
Robert:
the aluminum was a patina probably a few mils thick.
Robert said:
“I know how to turn concrete into dust, but I’m not sure about aluminum.”
I’d try melting it and mixing it with a bunch of concrete dust and see what happens.
Byron,
Here’s what some of that cladding looked like from the recovery.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/SEPTEMBER11/collection/record.asp?ID=104
Slarti said, “I’d try melting it and mixing it with a bunch of concrete dust and see what happens.”
During the collapse, the aluminum (on the outside) melted; combined with concrete dust; cooled; and was pulverized again to created the aluminum found in the site collections????? And this all happened in how many seconds?
Keep that up and you might make the atheists return to church. :>)
Sorry Robert, I’m busy explaining the misconceptions in your earlier post.
Sigh,
Well.
While the thermite residue has a rational explanation, my hat is now back in it’s old shape after watching the time/sound dissected video of the collapse Bob linked to. I’ll tell you why shortly. There is something I feel Bob, Byron and Slarti should know about me.
I must caveat that I have not looked at some of the more critical review of the tapes. I didn’t at the time and not since then for the aforementioned “physical Jesus” reasoning. This seeming lack of interest is for personal reasons.
I went into hospital on the morning of 9/12 with a life threatening condition. By the time I was out? Most people were still freaked out, but my relation to the attack has always been . . . a bit remote. I knew the instant it was terrorists when I heard about the first plane on the way to work. I saw the collapse and thought it was oddly neat – sparking my ordered outcome issues but beyond that? I went home, kissed my now ex-wife and went to bed. Then I woke up in severe pain. I spent the next several weeks fighting for my life and being malpracticed on. The WTC was and is an abstraction to me. I knew it was going to be bad for our legal system. But I simply didn’t have enough emotional investment to be paranoid or fearful – part of that is also due to my admittedly unusual nature but a lot of it had to do with the morphine and trying not to die.
It’s like I went to sleep in a John Hughes movie with a Wes Craven ending with someone saying “There’s an ogre at the door.” But when I woke up, everyone around me was bruised in odd ways I was having problems connecting with them. Problems causing them to act irrationally and jump at shadows. The general publics trauma was raw and festering. Mine was very abstract. Like the thought of losing a distant but once fond relative.
One day, I spent an hour in front of hardware store lecturing about chemical weapons, virology, the nature of bacteria and how plastic sheeting wasn’t going to do shit to protect ANYONE. I had some biters. About a dozen said, “Screw it” and went home. Many more of the fearful went on in to buy their useless plastic totem.
I went to sleep and logic was mostly the norm. I woke up and blind unthinking madness and induced paranoia were the norm. I went to sleep in an Elmore Leonard novel. I woke in a Kafka novel. And everyone was turning into roaches, fearful and scurrying.
I just thought you guys should know that about me.
Now I have another issue with time after watching the dissected tape.
I’ve been to demos. That was too close to a regular sequence I heard. A little too regular for my liking.
My skepticism remains in tact as much as before.
On a practical level, I agree with Bob – there’s a lot of bullshit here and some of it stinks. I also agree with Slarti and Byron that thermite – which even in private with Bob I’ve always contended was a weak spot – has another rational explanation. It IS possible it was a natural collapse. But like Bob says, its also possible it wasn’t.
Arguing the physics? You guys will continue to go round and round on where the joules went. This will be a non-conclusory argument. It’ll narrow down to opinion. Both are possible. One side has a distinct opine, the other has the opposite. That means no one is right and no one is wrong. It means both are absent sufficient evidence to make a statement with conclusory certainty. You are both relying on Gödel even if you don’t realize it yet. I’ll give Slarti and Byron points for the thermite question and for style. But you guys can’t prove it was natural with certainty just like Bob can’t prove with certainty it wasn’t. Bob gets points for being Bob. I love to argue with him. It’s like wrestling a grizzly bear. But you are both pointing to oddities in the data. You just draw different conclusions. So the argument isn’t “Is there a duck in the room.” Yeah, there’s a duck. The argument is “What kind of duck is it?”
But I won’t lie either.
Hearing the time dissected explosions? That set my chaos/order alarm off again.
So I return to complexity. The root of my skepticism. I expect no one to share it with me. I am not trying to convince anyone. It’s just my opinion and it’s based on raw math in operation. Complexity/Chaos, whatever you want to call it, it affects the universe at least as much as physics. Physics is a system, a model by man. Complexity affects not just reality, but all models as well. There’s too many parts here and too much order under such high energy conditions to please me. Order is not the norm.
It still stinks. And I’ll stop now.
Slartibartfast: “Everyone else can see that I’m making an entirely reasonable argument based on the principles of physics.”
Your theory doesn’t even work on the planet Jupiter; yet you’re convinced you’re making a valid argument?
Slartibartfast: “I’ve clearly stated my assumptions, my methods, my results, and what I think the proper interpretation of those results are. You have ceased to make any valid criticisms of my model, simply because you can’t.”
3,000 mph or about Mach 3.94? What objects even so much as break the sound barrier when falling? And where do you get off with your petitio principii? Accusing you of assuming that which you claim you will prove is an invalid criticism? On what planet; the one where your steel is capable of reaching the velocity of 3,000 mph in free fall?
Slartibartfast: “I have built my argument on the laws of physics using the structure of mathematics.”
Greased up with a generous portion of fallacies.
Slartibartfast: “Built on the foundations of my assumptions, the structure is unquestionably true i.e. It’s been proven and cannot honestly be denied.”
Unquestionably true? Proven? You haven’t proven anything. In fact, given your claim that your theory cannot be denied, having based entire said theory on multiple fallacies of reasoning, you apparently wouldn’t be able to find a proper syllogism with two hands and a flashlight.
Piaget would have a field day with you.
Slartibartfast: “My assumptions were shaped by the scientific method and are the correct ones to answer the question I posed: “Was there enough energy in the WTC collapse to account for observations without the use of explosives?” My model answers this question and the answer looks like yes to me.”
Your model answers require changing the earth’s gravitational acceleration to make them work. Boy if I had a nickel…
Slartibartfast: “the model is falsifiable and by your and Popper’s definition, good science (that’s not the only way to falsify it, mind you).”
Since we live on earth, and steel cannot liquify by virtue of gravitational force, your theory is nonsense and most certainly non-refutable — since we can’t falsify your f’n imagination.
Slartibartfast: “You can continue using your golden keyboard to run circles around me, but I’ve already won and I know it. And deep down, I think you know it, too.”
What are you, a fucking five year old?
Buddha has said some flattering things about you; but let’s see him explain your behavior here.
Byron,
I didn’t meant to imply you said thermite was created. But FeO and Al could still not only cause residue but reaction as well. It’d be like crappy, poorly mixed thermite, but who says that can’t ignite? “Making” isn’t the issue. The raw materials were there and exposed to heat. Remember – Fire is easy. Air Fuel Heat.
Robert,
Enough energy induces phase state changes in materials (see he asteroid impactor comments). Impact alone could have vaporized/aerisolized the aluminum. And Iron Oxides tend to be powdery anyway. It’s rust.
Buddha: “Impact alone could have vaporized/aerisolized the aluminum.”
4566 °F??
What fell that fucking fast?
The Swiss explain nothing.
Besides.
You guys aren’t arguing my point. You’ve both conceded my observation and question are legitimate. You guys are playing football and I’m on baseball field.
But please continue to argue yours. I this is MUCH better than TV. And right now? It’s TV or abuse the hospital WiFi. It’s the first time I’ve got to watch Slarti in heavy action and I always like to see Bob get his Kant on. I will say Slarti’s take on physics and mine are slightly different as are mine and Bob’s (although mine is actually closer to Bob’s). This comes from our different paths to the subject I suspect.
So I’m not explaining shit. It’d ruin my entertainment.
Who gives a damn who wins! The fight is the thing!
Now.
The first rule of Fight Club is . . .
Bob,
The specific heat of aluminum is much smaller than that of iron.
Bob,
You and I both know it wouldn’t have to be perfect granularization of the aluminum. All it had to be was small enough pieces to get the surface areas exposure to oxygen the FeO and heat to ignite. I may have overstated the “dust” effect, but Al is soft and it shreds easy. Shavings would be all that’s needed with the addition of the FeO and the excess heat. Because while jet fuel burns cool, it does burn hot enough to ignite thermite.
Buddha,
In Bob’s world, here on Earth, objects don’t break the sound barrier in free fall.
Get it?
We live on planet Earth Buddha; third stone from the sun with a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. Surely you’ve heard of it. Come back … Buddha…
Raoul Duke: “Psychedelics are almost irrelevant in a town where you can wander in a casino any time in the day or night and witness the crucifixion of a gorilla [much less the fucking laws of physics here on EARTH!]“
Buddha,
Yeah, I’ve been seeing Bob get his Kant on up close and personal. It’s like staring down the barrel of Andy’s Dobie-O-Matic. (It’s a Far Side reference if you don’t get it.) This is definitely a heavyweight fight, glad your enjoying the show. I feel like I’ve gotten the upper hand now (I’ll explain why when in my next post to Bob). If you liked this, I hope you get a chance to see me engaged in an evolution debate (although it’s unlikely that anyone could do the job Bob’s done with intelligent design
).
you said:
“The first rule of Fight Club is . . .”
Rule #2 is ‘No poofters’, right?
I tend to agree with Buddha, at this point we are arguing for the sake of argument.
Bob and Robert think CD and crazy people, Slarti and I think big planes and crazy people.
I know I don’t have enough information to change my mind about this and obviously Bob and Robert don’t either.
Bob,
I’m not sure where I mentioned free fall.
That has nothing to do with particulating aluminum. I corrected my over statement.
Please, elucidate. The only bodies in free fall I’ve mentioned are asteroids and THEY DO break the sound barrier because they are hauling some serious ass when they hit. But their free fall there has the added momentum of their natural state of motion. They are V = Δx/Δt + G.
But other than that? I haven’t mentioned free fall to my knowledge. Unless you mean the suspiciously orderly free fall of the debris. The planes are in powered motion, the buildings are stationary.
Sorry, buddy. You took a left turn there while I was looking for the last of the mescaline and I feel out of the Shark. Come back and get me and tell me about this free fall error I’m making.
Bob,
Check your e-mail.
Buddha,
Check your email
Bob,
What you don’t seem to understand is that I know my analysis is true. I know it in the same way that I know the Pythagorean Theorem is true. I correctly applied the relevant laws of physics and performed the needed calculations. Anyone with enough knowledge of physics and math can repeat my experiment from the information I’ve posted here and will get the same results. I shaped my model to answer a specific question: “Can the energies involved reasonably explain observations of the collapse of the WTC?”. I have in no way misrepresented my results and I clearly pointed out what my interpretations of the results were and what I thought was reasonably inferred from it – that the answer to the question I asked is “Yes.”. We started this arguing about Occam’s razor. I said my scenario was simpler, you said otherwise. Well, I’ve laid out my case in numbers and laws of physics while you have yet to put a complete theory (of what led to the collapse of the twin towers and the observed heat in the rubble) in the field. What type of explosives were used? What is the yield? (you don’t get enormously better than TNT – I think the stuff they use for nukes is only like 8-10 times more powerful) What were the charges designed to do? Where is a physical model of the collapse that requires explosives to account for observations? When I say I’ve won, this is what I mean. I have a theory which accounts for all of the energy that was unquestionably stored in the WTC. You have nothing but a couple of facts that you say favor your point (and if you don’t think that large quantities of aluminum being present when half a terraJoule of energy is sloshing around hurts your argument, you’re blind). I said I know that my argument is correct – I don’t think you know what I mean by that. When a scientist (like me) says something like this is correct, they are staking their reputation on it. Now, I’m not going to have my reputation destroyed if it turns out that an argument I made on a blog is wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am that confident about this model. I am thinking of writing a short paper on this model. If I do, you could take the paper to any physicist (or other expert qualified to understand it) and they would tell you that it is essentially correct. I know this because there are rules in my world and the best part about these rules is that when you follow them the result is true and I have followed them. Byron and Buddha may think I have a good argument (that energy is accounted for more or less the way I described), I, however, have successfully learned and understood the laws of physics and the mathematics that are used to interpret them. I have correctly applied those laws and accurately completed the relevant calculations. I’ve gone all-in and showed you my hand, and it’s a royal flush. I know the full house you have looks good, but I don’t advise you to call. I have repeatedly acknowledged that, as Gyges said, you are master wordsmith and I’m sure you are an outstanding lawyer, but what you don’t seem to realize is that I’m good at my job, too. And my job is creating mathematical models. I’m not toying around with this on weekends, I didn’t just take some physics in college. I spent 4 years in college and another 10 as a graduate student and earned a BS, an MS, an MA, and a Ph.D. so that I could spend my time doing this sort of thing professionally. I am paid to create mathematical models and I couldn’t get anyone to do that if I wasn’t up to the task. You have continually disrespected me in this discussion even after I apologized for my own disrespect and behaved as politely towards you as I am able. I have repeatedly answered questions for you and Robert with patient answers based on the laws of physics even though you don’t seem to understand. In your ignorance you mock the truth and I’m getting tired of it. So if I seem arrogant, it’s because I’m annoyed with your willful ignorance and lack of respect in the face of my knowledge that I am speaking the truth. I don’t expect you to turn around and admit that I’m right, but I grow weary of you throwing stones from your broken-down glass house. While I’ll keep answering your attacks I no longer believe that you offer any relevant criticism of my model and I’m not going to hide it. I’ve made a prediction – there was as much as 200 GJ of energy present to collapse the structure, pulverize the materials and eject the pyroclastic flow. This prediction is out there. You can not touch it – you don’t have the physics or the math. Robert is speaking my language now. If he comes up with a number (and the theory to back it up) for the energy required to break loose a floor, it with either be more or less energy than I say is present. If it is less, it validates the model. If it is more it casts the model into grave doubt (and means that I will have to reconsider my opinion) unless I can refute his theory or his math or his numbers or find more energy in my theory (i.e. evidence for a longer collapse time). You are irrelevant to this process. Sorry.
lol
I didn’t see that, but I got the email and responded earlier. Thus the post and this explanation of the patently obvious
Slartibartfast,
Short answer, you committed two major fallacies in your reasoning and your inelastic collision explanation for the heat generation requires changing the earth’s gravitational acceleration.
I just wrote Buddha a long email. Here’s hoping he can explain it to you; seeing you obviously don’t want to hear it from me.
Fun debate though I must say.
Bob,
I’ve enjoyed this debate as well. As I have previously indicated, your criticism showed me where my arguments were weak and unclear allowing me to improve my theory and my model. I’ll listen to what Buddha has to say (as I’ve listened to everything you’ve said) and if you (or Buddha or anyone else for that matter) would like to email me privately, My advisor is the current chair of the Duke Math department and I am his most recent graduate student. The address (lastname)@math.duke.edu will reach me, but be careful spelling my last name. I am (obviously) certain that I am correct and I assume that you are confident in your opinions as well. In all probability some of our disagreement is from each of us not understanding each other’s positions and some of it results from one (or both) of us being wrong. If you would like to discuss this privately in an effort to alleviate the former in the hopes of determining the latter in the absence of you dancing around me with rhetoric and me bludgeoning you with numbers, I welcome it.
Bob,
As a postscript to my last post, if I’m ever in a courtroom I want you as my lawyer and if you’ve ever ridden in a Saturn L200, you’ve trusted my modeling.
Did anyone else notice that Bdaman disappeared when the fur started flying in this discussion? At least he has the instincts of a small rodent to scurry for cover when there are large predators about.
Robert said:
“All of your calculations for energy transfer take place on the head of a pin, and they happen instantaneously.”
(Well, in the head of a pin – so to speak.) I’ll let you in on a little secret, you’re right. In the moment of impact the kinetic energy of an object striking the earth is instantly converted to thermal energy (among other things). There is no time needed for transfer, because the energy remains in the same location it was in before the impact.
Robert said:
“I think your references to meteor impacts and atomic bombs may have led you astray. Even your bullet reference is an instantaneous event.”
Each collision of a bit of rubble with the earth is also an instantaneous event.
Robert said:
“I was hoping that you would get the difference between an explosion and an event of longer duration. I was also hoping that you would understand the difference between imparting energy on a point, and that of imparting energy on an area.”
I understand the difference very well, thank you.
Robert said:
As to the bending of iron beams, the reason they get hot is deformation. This is a form of friction. It is internal friction at a molecular level.”
Yes, when a beam is bent, kinetic energy is transformed into heat energy through the process of friction.
Robert said:
“When an object hits the earth, it transfers its kinetic energy to the earth.”
You’re thinking of momentum. Look up ‘inelastic collision’ in wikipedia. See what it says there about the change in kinetic energy. One instant the KE is there, the next instant its not. Where did it go? It couldn’t have moved anywhere in an instant, so it is logical to assume that it didn’t. I say that it was instantly transformed into thermal energy (along with a few other things that don’t amount to much of the original energy). It HAD to go somewhere. Just tell me where that energy is if it is not present in the object as heat.
“The energy continues along the path of least resistance.”
This sentence is meaningless. Energy is transferred and transformed in a variety of ways. It all eventually ends up as heat – that’s what the second law of thermodynamics says.
Robert said:
“You may be able to consider a very small portion of that energy to generate heat. In addition the area upon which it impacts determines the force exerted. This is represented in kg/m^2 or psi. We don’t end up with a puddle of joules.”
energy is not an entity on its own. We always refer to the energy of an object, or a electro-magnetic, sonic, or seismic wave. There is a gravitational potential in all of space around a planet, but only an object can have gravitational potential energy.
Bob,
I’ve been thinking about our failure to communicate and I thought that I would make an attempt to clarify my view of the physics involved and exactly what I’m claiming. First, when a moving object hits an immovable object (m1 << m2), the kinetic energy it contains is instantly transformed. Some of it may remain in the object as kinetic energy with it's momentum changed (bounce), some of it may be transferred into the earth as seismic energy or into the atmosphere as sonic energy. The rest of it is instantly transformed into thermal energy in the object (the energy stays were it is but changes form). The law of conservation of energy tells us that energy is conserved in any collision and this case is simple enough that we can track it all. In the case of an asteroid 10k wide moving at escape velocity there is an enormous amount of kinetic energy released resulting in enough heat to cause the mantle to form a crater as well as a fireball and seismic wave. This is all caused by the kinetic energy of the impactor becoming so much thermal energy that the meteorite literally explodes. In the case of the WTC rubble, this effect is far smaller in magnitude, but the same in principle. Every bit of rubble had somewhere between 65 and 85 m/s worth of kinetic energy which was converted (mostly) to heat at the moment of impact. It also had whatever thermal energy it had received earlier in the form of kinetic energy converted via work done in bending steel and pulverizing concrete. Additionally, while the 10,000 J/cm^2 energy density probably only occurred near the center of the collapse and would only result in a roughly 20 degree temperature rise in iron, the density may have been locally higher in places and would engender different responses in different materials, depending on their specific heat and density. Aluminum has a specific heat almost twice that of iron (at room temp), but it's density is far lower (I couldn't quickly find good numbers for specific heat and heat of fusion, but if I can track them down, I can do the calculation). Some materials are going to heat up more than others and there will be heat transfer between them, we don't know how hot any particular thing will get, but we can calculate the thermal energy that will have been added to the rubble pile as a whole (theoretically, I could make an estimate of the temperature increase of the rubble as a whole, but it would be a lot of work for a very shaky estimate at best). And it's the better part of half a teraJoule. When I say the the energy is sufficient to melt 100 metric tons of iron, the implicit part of that sentence is 'if it were concentrated in 100 metric tons of iron'. No, its not going to melt the rubble like an impactor can melt the mantle of the earth, but it is going to heat things up. It isn't surprising to me then, that the rubble pile is very hot and retains that heat for a long time – Unfortunately, I have no idea what value to use for the coefficient in the heat equation, so I can't do the calculation (and the rubble pile was decidedly not homogenous) but I suspect that the rubble was a fairly good insulator. When you add to this with multi-fuel fires both before and after the collapse, plus the fact that hot iron reacts exothermicly with steam and also produces hydrogen which would react exothermicly with oxygen (I've tried to find information on the energy produced in these reactions, but no luck yet). These reactions are important because they generate heat regardless of the temperature of the reactants (so, unlike fire, they could theoretically be responsible for melting steel). Given all of these heat sources, I thing that molten metal and persistent high temperatures are only to be expected at ground zero. Bob and Robert (and Buddha and Byron as well), if there are any parts of this analysis that you disagree with or don't understand, let me know and I'll try to explain it better or we can compare our respective knowledge to its object and determine the truth.
That was a little longer than I had intended it to be and is probably very dense (no way am I going to reread it – I apologize for any typos), but I think it gets all of the concepts across and I tried to clear up the points where you might have mistakenly thought that I was violating laws of physics. Goodnight all.
Slarti,
Bob has asked you time and time again for your method of conversion from KE to TE. You danced around it. You did everything but answer it. You have a very good understanding of math, but don’t really have a good grasp on physics. You have tunnel vision.
I said “All of your calculations for energy transfer take place on the head of a pin, and they happen instantaneously.”
Slarti responded (Well, in the head of a pin – so to speak.) I’ll let you in on a little secret, you’re right. In the moment of impact the kinetic energy of an object striking the earth is instantly converted to thermal energy (among other things). There is no time needed for transfer, because the energy remains in the same location it was in before the impact.
I’m going to let you in on something that is not so secret. Our world doesn’t exist on the head of a pin. The WTC was not the size of the head of a pin. The area in which most of it settled is not the size of the head of a pin.
In a true isolated system (not your made up size of the universe isolated system) all energy and mass can be accounted for. Because of this, all calculations can be performed as though they take place on the head of a pin.
“There is no time needed for transfer, because the energy remains in the same location it was in before the impact.”
That statement indicates that you can’t explain what happened to the KE when the rubble hit the ground. You think this is all magic.
Slarti, Hang on to your hat. In my next post I’m going to demonstrate why your head of a pin calculations don’t work. I tried to give a you a hint a couple of times. Now I’m going to show you; using your numbers.
Robert,
Are you saying that the energy of the universe is not conserved? Because I just don’t agree with that and I never will. I assert that kinetic energy becomes thermal energy in each individual piece of rubble – if you’re going to argue with me, you must say where that energy is going, or else you’re violating conservation of energy. I’ll wait for your next post and Bob’s reaction to my last couple of posts but, quite frankly, I don’t see either of you changing my mind if you can’t explain where the energy goes.
Slarti, Energy is conserved in the universe. However, if you’re going to consider the universe to be your isolated system, you must be able to account for all energy transfers in the universe. The only reason you consider your isolated system to be a universe is to avoid accounting for it.
“I assert that kinetic energy becomes thermal energy in each individual piece of rubble”. How? What is the method by which the energy is transferred? It’s you model. You must be able to identify the method of energy transfer.
I want you to perform an experiment: You will need a hammer, a hardwood floor, a nail, and a 3′ x 3′ piece of hardened steel.
Put the piece of hardened steel on the hardwood floor and strike it with the hammer. Pick it up and examine the floor.
Now put the nail (point down) on the hardwood floor, and strike it with the hammer. Pick it up and examine the floor.
The same amount of energy was transferred. Why did one cause no damage, and the other leave you with a hole in your floor?
Bob and Robert,
I’m not sure what you guys find wrong with specifying the universe as my system.
Do you think this is an invalid choice of system? If so, why?
Do you think that this isn’t a closed system? I think that it’s the ultimate closed system (literally).
Do you think that energy isn’t conserved in this system? If so, explain why you are not violating conservation of energy.
I say that we need to account for half a teraJoule of energy (and I do account for it).
Robert,
I will respond to the hypothetical in your post momentarily.
Slarti,
1) I see Robert is going to address one of my points so I’ll let him do his thing and see if he and I are of like mind. As a teaser I’ll say I’m thinking gravity. You seem to have extra, Slarti.
2) The other error Bob points to the post ergo proctor hoc error. Now . . . this is a common fallacy and you BOTH have made it – just in different ways and different reasons. To answer further, I’ll copy part of an answer I was writing to Bob last night before the drugs took hold I had to fight off the bats.
____
The Elastic Question Pt. 1 – Begging the question. No issue there. That’s where the Gödel comment came from. I was hoping he’d catch that error on recalculation. However, convincing him it is relevant may be an issue and I’ll tell you why. It’s an assumption true enough, but you and I are used to a harder logic and Slarti is used to the Method. It’s a raw logic versus a process. They are related but different creatures as we both know. However, he’s likely to consider the fallacy a harmless one because of that damned word “reasonable”. It’s an assumption, not one that covers all the bases either, but from a SM perspective? It’s a reasonable assumption. In the normal course of events melting comes after energy is applied. Method treats time as linear as applied by 99% of all scientists because it’s usually appropriate to use linear time as that’s how we perceive time in general. Slarti has some issues with time. [Ed. Note: and I don't know anyone who has said there is a problem with time here - except me from the very beginning.] Physicists sometimes snicker at that because they realize time behaves more like a fluid than an arrow but they also know linear time is a useful tool so a snicker is all that they give. Kind of a “that’s not exactly it, but close enough for government use” snicker. Kinda like how I treat most people’s abuse of Occam’s Razor.
Your view though, Bob, suffers from a lighter version of the same fallacy as Slarti – while it is a more through type of reductionist logical analysis to look pre and post impact for ALL explanations, it begs an assumption too and that is molten metal (an energy transfer) before impact and that thermite or some other element had something to do with it (based on a post impact observation – not contemporaneous or pre-impact chemical observations). Now while that would comport to the rest of your analysis as reduced from specific verified knowledge, it is still just an assumption as all our actual physical evidence comes post crash and from watching how the buildings fell. To PROVE your assumption, we’d need exactly that – proof metal was taking energy sufficient for heat of fusion before impact and a sufficient mechanism that cannot be rationally explained by another process. And I think thermite is now right out as a contender for the mechanism since there is now a possible explanation of the residue – residue that probably is complicating this analysis because it’s an energy carrying compound that MAY have added energy or not (but if it did I think it did so minimally and crudely – see below). This absence of proof however is not a proof of absence as related to explosives. You’ve assumed an explosive. You’ve erred in assuming a wrong kind of explosive but that error comes from Kant’s method. It was perfectly reasonable as a matter of reductionist logic that thermite could be the cause. We now have a viable alternative explanation of the residue though. You need to propose an alternative mechanism and we need something more than just the explosions themselves as visual evidence. We need more chemistry.
Every theory has an assumption. The problem is his assumption leads to an inaccurate in defining all the KE/PE – Slarti still has missing energy.
Your fallacy on the other hand, isn’t a “true” ergo propter hoc fallacy. It is part of your Kantian method. You’re a reductionist and your assumptions come from your methods operation, not out of thin air like this one (one of the freedoms and problems of using the Method over raw logics – less formal constraints). Kant is geared to find basic principles through logical reduction. The Method is really about pattern recognition and verification through testing based on observations. Apples and oranges. Both tasty and delicious, but not always interchangable in the kitchen. Not all tool are created equal. Not all errors are created equal. I’ve said all along I have energy deficiency issues. I think Slarti is off on his nets and that your questions about the missing joules are dead on. But you must see you too are making an assumption – the assumption molten metal existed/started to fuse before the impact. True, it explains the heat of fusion issue better. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong or Kant is wrong in his method.
It just means Gödel was right.
Every theory has an assumption. Your assumption comes from reduction. Slarti’s come because he’s limiting himself with time in his starting point for analysis. But I think yours fits the facts better than Slarti’s at this point because of the still missing joules. (Holy crap! It’s turning into a Cary Grant movie!)
I also think thermite is right out as a demo material, especially since there is now a viable chemical mechanism that might explain the residue. However, while I do think the impact could have created a kind of primitive thermite? It couldn’t have done it uniformly or timely and we are back to distribution and symmetry again.
I don’t disagree explosives could have been used. And after watching the dissected tape? Those explosions were in a set sequence that sets my suspicion alarm to red. Honestly? I’ve heard explosions and I’ve heard failures. Those were explosions. BOOM! not KERACK! Compression failure makes an entirely different noise from a concussive blast. And at the bottom of this rabbit hole, that is what we are talking about: compression failure versus concussive failure. But what caused those explosions? It is a mystery. Whatever it was? It wasn’t thermite. Even visually the blasts you could see were too energetic to be thermite – they were fast hard concussions. I’ve seen thermite in action. It burns almost as slow as gunpowder. We know themalitic compounds were found but now we have a possible reason as to why with the chemistry being filled in. But is there evidence for some other HE? C-4? Centex? Even TNT should have left nitrates everywhere. Some Top Secret compound? I don’t know. But I do know concussion and heat damage things differently. Again absence of proof is not proof of absence. But those four big booms were not thermite. I’d bet a dollar on that. I also don’t think they were the Tooth Fairy either. But that’s just my opinion.
Slarti went to the argument by analogy which I thought I addressed on the meteor question but I think the Chixalub details distracted him from my main point: energy at certain thresholds induces phase changes in materials and that his view of inelastic and elastic events was askew. Eh, my cretaceous geek got me and I wasn’t as clear as I could have been.
When I pointed out his error about inelastic explosions, I confess I missed his contention by implication about KE gained via free fall because what I was addressing was the plane impact. I should have been clearer and I should have read better both what you and he said in those posts (it’s been one of those weeks, my game is more than a bit off). If I had, I’d have asked Slarti how much does he think he weighs at sea level. The planes were an inelastic explosion. Not enough KE to cause the right kind of phase change and get rebound. The collapse of the towers was elastic however. The rebound threw shit all over the Island. Whatever actually caused the collapse imparted sufficient energy to induce phase changes. Was that energy sufficient to create long lasting pools of molten metal all derived from gravity? Alas, that is the question. Also another arrow pointing toward those missing joules. Yeah, I was being oblique about phase changes but Slarti sh/could have picked that up.
____
End Copy
____
I will be making a brief round on the threads maybe this evening but personal matters will be keeping me away from computers most of the day. I anxiously await seeing what gets done in my absence.
Buddha is Laughing,
You should have gotten “drugged up” and watched “Dollhouse”. Two episodes aired last night. Both wee very good. The first was “The Attic” and the second was “Stop Loss”.
If you’ve never watched it before, the Wikipedia entry for it should be sufficient to get you up to speed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse_(TV_series)
The episodes are available on Hulu. Here’s the link. http://www.hulu.com/dollhouse
Robert,
You and I are in complete agreement. I’m a HUGE Joss Whedon fan (I have five words for you – ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ – it was on Hulu last I checked) Due to an insane fall, this season’s Dollhouse episodes are sitting unwatched on my DVR, but I’ll get the chance to watch them soon. I take it you like this season?
Buddha,
I’m working on a response to Robert’s hypothetical after which I believe I will make an omelet (and some toast, definitely some toast) because your latest post looks like something best not taken on an empty stomach. After that I will read and consider what you wrote. Thanks for the attempt to bridge the communication gap. Good luck fighting off the bats. (Does the hat of probability help with that?)
Bob (and Robert),
I’m beginning to think that the larger part of this conflict is misunderstanding rather than disagreement. If you will let me know what you disagree with in my post here:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-99141
it would be a big help. Don’t feel that’s it’s necessary to explain why you think I’m wrong, I’m just trying to drill down on where we’re at odds.
After replying to Robert’s hypothetical, it will take me a while to consider and reply to Buddha’s post. Don’t worry, like Ahnold, “I’ll be back”.
Slarti,
This season’s episodes have been very good. I really like the back to backs. Those from last night were a really good mind trip.
Robert,
Have you seen Dr. Horrible? Neil Patrick Harris as the super-villain wannabe title character and Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer, his superhero arch-enemy. Did I mention that it’s a musical?
I haven’t seen Dr. Horrible yet. One your recommendation, I am downloading it.
Robert,
Enjoy.
In Robert’s hypothetical he was hitting an iron plate with a hammer and hitting a nail with a hammer. Just to get some things straight up front: hitting an iron plate or a nail with a hammer is an inelastic collision (I’ll assume for the duration of this argument that the hammer doesn’t bounce in either case), the hammer is the object with kinetic energy before the collision, the hardwood floor is not compressed by the plate being struck with the hammer (this would lead to minor parasitic effects that I would just be distracting), and our system is the hammer, the nail, the plate, the floor and the earth (I’m ignoring the sonic energy emitted and will also ignore the seismic energy emitted).
Robert said:
“Slarti, Energy is conserved in the universe. However, if you’re going to consider the universe to be your isolated system, you must be able to account for all energy transfers in the universe. The only reason you consider your isolated system to be a universe is to avoid accounting for it.”
I’m only interested in accounting for the GPE stored in the WTC on 9/10/2001. I need to choose my system as large enough that this energy does not leave it. You required the system to be closed or isolated. The universe satisfies both of these conditions. The energy that I’m tracking remains in the system and I’ve accounted for all of the forms this energy takes that I am aware of. I’m claiming I’ve accounted for the vast majority of it (with the exception of the GPE left in the rubble pile, which just has the predictable effect of lowering the KE that became TE slightly and would be a pain calculate).
Robert said:
“I assert that kinetic energy becomes thermal energy in each individual piece of rubble”. How? What is the method by which the energy is transferred? It’s you model. You must be able to identify the method of energy transfer.”
Inelastic collision.
Robert said:
“I want you to perform an experiment: You will need a hammer, a hardwood floor, a nail, and a 3′ x 3′ piece of hardened steel.”
I have gathered the necessary equipment in my mind.
Robert said:
“Put the piece of hardened steel on the hardwood floor and strike it with the hammer. Pick it up and examine the floor.”
The hammer strikes the steel plate in an inelastic collision. Since the steel plate is on the floor which is on the earth, the hammer stops instantly. The kinetic energy of the hammer’s motion disappears. It has been converted to a sonic shockwave (sound), a seismic shockwave (a very, very, very small earthquake), and thermal energy (in the head of the hammer). The temperature of the head of the hammer has gone up slightly.
Robert said:
“Now put the nail (point down) on the hardwood floor, and strike it with the hammer. Pick it up and examine the floor.”
The hammer strikes the nail in an inelastic collision. Since the mass of the nail is much less than the hammerhead, the hammer’s momentum is virtually unchanged. KE and momentum are transferred to the nail and it starts moving at the same speed as the hammerhead. Inefficiency in this transfer due to the structure of the nail (internal friction) causes some of that energy to become heat in the nail. The tip of the nail, now moving at the speed of the descending hammer, transfers kinetic energy into the floor, breaking the structure of the wood and remaining there as heat. This continues as the nail slides into the floor. Additionally, friction between the nail and the floor converts kinetic energy into heat in the surface of both the nail and the floor. When the head of the hammer hits the floor it undergoes the collision described above. The nail continues downward until its kinetic energy is sapped by friction and resistance from the structure of the wood.
Robert said:
“The same amount of energy was transferred. Why did one cause no damage, and the other leave you with a hole in your floor?”
Technically, it left me with a nail in my floor.
The circumstances in these two inelastic collisions were different which lead to different results. I believe that I have accounted for all of the energy, so I’m gong to go and break some eggs… (to make my omelet).
Slarti,
In the first part of your experiment, why did the head of the hammer heat up, but not the square of metal, and ultimately the floor? Was the majority of energy retained in the hammer head, or did it transfer to the metal square?
Slarti,
Do you have an infrared thermometer?
Robert said:
“In the first part of your experiment, why did the head of the hammer heat up, but not the square of metal, and ultimately the floor? Was the majority of energy retained in the hammer head, or did it transfer to the metal square?”
The kinetic energy of the hammer was converted to thermal energy. The head of the hammer was in thermal contact with the iron plate heat so thermal energy could flow between them after the instant of collision.
I do not have an infrared thermometer. I cannot think of an easily performed experiment that will demonstrate this phenomena – the KE and TE involved in day-to-day things is not that much (that is why it is easier to illustrate this principle using large quantities of energy with obvious effects (like the impactor example). If you use a hammer with a 1 kg steel head and swing it with constant acceleration though an arc 1 meter long in 0.5 s, the temperature raise in the hammer is approximately 0.018 degrees C.
The word ‘heat’ should not appear between ‘iron plate’ and ‘so thermal energy’ in my previous post.
We started off with a GPE of just under 400,000,000,000 joules for each tower. I’m not going to deduct anything for breaking the floors loose or pulverizing the concrete. I’m just going to consider that all 400 billion joules were converted to kinetic energy and hit the ground.
Did these 400 billion joules land on the head of a pin? No. We all know they didn’t. They landed in an area the size of the building’s footprint (actually larger than that, as evidenced by photos). 400 billion joules landed in an area that is 64m x 64m. That’s 4096 square meters. If the head of a pin is 4096 sq. meters, Slarti’s calculations are valid. If the head of a pin is not 4096 sq. meters, Slarti’s calculations are invalid.
400 billion joules landed in 4096 square meters. Even a math wizard can see that an even distribution would be 97,656,250 joules per square meter. (How many pin heads in a square meter?)
Immediately upon impact, the energy contained in the falling material was transmitted to the impact area. The falling material stopped. Since it was now on the ground it had no potential energy, and since it was no longer moving it had no kinetic energy. When the impact occurred, it would be reasonable to consider that some friction existed, and that some deformation took place. For the most part, the energy was transmitted into the earth. (Slarti wants to completely ignore this. He has to. He wants to consider the universe to be his isolated system, but does not include the energy transmitted to the universe, or the earth, or even Manhattan Island, in his calculations.)
According to Slarti’s calculations, if we take a 100 kg hunk of steel and drop it from a height of 100 meters, the majority of energy will be converted to thermal energy. GPE = mass times height times gravity. For this experiment, that would be 100 x 100 x 9.8 = 98,000 joules. Using Slarti’s calculations, what should be the temperature increase? (Remember, Slarti never identifies the method of transfer, he just says it will happen.)
We’ll consider the specific heat to be a constant of 450 J/kg. The temperature change would be 98,000 Joules divided by 100 kg divided by 450 J/kg = 2.18 degrees C (or a little under 4 degrees F) This is assuming that the steel landed flat, and that no deformation took place.
Does anybody think this heat transfer (without accounting for friction and deformation) even really takes place? (I know Slarti does) Would it be uniform and instantaneous throughout the steel block, or does heat enter at one point, and flow?
In a previous experiment, Slarti stated that the head of a nail gets hot when you hit it with a hammer. Why just the head of the nail? What happen to instantaneous uniform transfer? Was it friction (mostly in the form of deformation) that generated the heat in the nail head?
I hope you’re starting to see that Slarti’s claim that KE becomes TE by magic just doesn’t work.
Slarti’s calculations completely ignore contact mechanics.
When we discuss impacts, we discuss the force of that impact. Bullets, meteors, and even World Trade Centers, impact other objects with force. None of these are true inelastic collisions. In a previous post, Slarti said “These types of collisions are referred to as inelastic collisions. This essentially means that there was no ‘bounce’ – the particles stuck together after the impact.” This assumption is not supported by the evidence. With the exception of the steel I-beams, pretty much everything else DID NOT stick together. Some of that occurred on impact. They do not account for deformation or bounce. Yes Slarti, the pieces of the WTC did bounce a little, but gravity (still being exerted) and the dust cloud made that bounce unnoticeable.
Force is directed energy. i.e. The force of a hammer hitting a nail. The force of a bullet hitting an object. When a bullet hits a solid object of much higher density, some of the energy deforms the bullet, and some of the energy is transmitted thru the object to the earth. (Of course a shotgun blast is probably closer to what takes place when the WTC falls. This would require dividing up the force by the number of shot –But that is not accounted for in Slarti’s model) This is known as energy redistribution. Since force is directed energy, and since it rarely takes place on the head of a pin, we calculate force over an area. The most common way we examine force over an area is by PSI or kg/m^2 (or SI or dynes).
Can we calculate the force of impact for the World Trade Center collapse. The answer is Yes and No. We know that the entire building DID NOT impact the ground below at the same time. For our calculations, I’ll consider it all to hit at the same time.
Is anybody in disagreement with what I have just stated?
Slarti,
When one object hits a stationary object, does the energy transfer to the stationary object, or is it retained in the object that was moving? Is it all or nothing? Momentum would indicate that it transfers.
Robert said:
“When one object hits a stationary object, does the energy transfer to the stationary object, or is it retained in the object that was moving? Is it all or nothing? Momentum would indicate that it transfers.”
First of all, the objects make a difference. When one of the objects is the earth and one of the objects is the WTC we get to take advantage of the fact that the center of momentum frame of reference is located about 100 picometers from the center of the earth. This simplifies things. To go back to your hammer/plate analogy, kinetic energy is transformed into sonic, seismic, and thermal energy. The TE is the lion’s share of the energy and it remains in the head of the hammer. After the instant when the hammer strikes this heat behaves according to the heat equation. Momentum isn’t KE. Momentum is ALWAYS conserved, KE is not.
“When one of the objects is the earth and one of the objects is the WTC we get to take advantage of the fact that the center of momentum frame of reference is located about 100 picometers from the center of the earth.”
WTF? Just consider the surface of the earth to be a solid immovable object.
“The TE is the lion’s share of the energy and it remains in the head of the hammer.” Prove it. When a meteor impacts the earth, does most of the energy remain in the meteor? Wow. That would be nice.
“Momentum is ALWAYS conserved” That’s only true in a closed system.
Once you come back to earth from the universe, you’ll understand that everything we are talking about is happening in an open system.
Slarti:
very good analysis. But I see what Robert is trying to say. Although I don’t think he fully understands what you are saying. You are only talking about total energy while he is going for energy imparted per square foot. I am not sure his nail analogy applies.
I think I am starting to see why people cant wrap their minds around this, the energy is so tremendous that it does not register in people’s minds. They have no problem believing a meteor impact causes heat and holes but a building causing this is harder to conceptualize.
This was such a large building, way above the scale of most others, it is hard to grasp the magnitude. Everything is magnified, from the sound of failing columns to the energy released on impact.
I am more convinced than ever that you are correct, but would like to see Robert figure out how much energy is required to separate the floors. From what I have seen of the design, I bet it isn’t much. The connections would most likely have been in both shear and tension. They were probably originally designed for shear only. I guess the overall energy required for failure would be the same.
The point is that building was doing who knows what on the way down. I imagine there is not any way to get an accurate picture of how each individual component failed. How would you even assign a value to it? If there were a hundred connections per floor, I bet they all failed in different ways. It would be a huge data set.
The only way to do it is to get a theoretical value per floor. But you are already part way there because of the weight of the floors. So say if it takes a hundred units of energy to break a floor away your are already some % of the way there.
If you want to write a paper you are going to have look at energy required to break the floors loose.
Byron,
You do realize that you contradicted Slarti, don’t you?
I guess that huge crater is an indication that most of the energy remained in the meteor. Just like the head of the hammer.
I’m having trouble keeping up with you guys, but I am working on it – I’m working on post for Robert after which I’ll respond to Byron. I’ll get to yours after that Buddha, I promise.
Robert:
Some energy is retained in the hammer head. you cannot have a purely inelastic collision. Dont you think the hammer head deforms?
Byron,
There is slight deformation that takes place in the head of the hammer, but most of the deformation takes place in the nail. With any luck, the surface into which you are driving the nail will suffer the most deformation. The easier it is to deform, the less heat will be generated by doing so.
Go put a nail in a vice. Then hit it on the sides; dending it back and forth. Do that about 5 times each direction. Then remove it from the vice at touch the point at which it was bending. Compare that to the temp at the head of the hammer.
Now do the same thing. Put a fresh nail in a vice, and clamp on a pair of vice-grips to the other end. Bend it back and forth about 10 times. Did the vice grips get hot (other than by conduction)?
Robert:
take a paper clip and bend it to failure, it gets hot. The hammer head is doing some work in impacting the nail.
Your arm gets hot to because it is doing work bending the paper clip, using the hammer and working the vise grips. The steel in the hammer head is moving as well as the nail.
So what is your point?
The point is that most of the heat is generated by deformation. When the bonds are broken, the energy that held them together is released as heat. Work was done. In Slarti’s model no work is performed. He has kinetic energy being transformed to thermal energy with providing a means for that transition.
The reason the earth doesn’t move or deform is that the potential energy stored in the bonds of the molecules that hold the earth together were equal to the force of the impact. They exerted equal but opposite forces. If they did not provide equal forces for the event, the object striking the earth would have deformed, or bounced, OR the earth would have moved or deformed.
no work was performed? are you serious? how do you think those towers got to be almost 1400 feet tall?
there was a huge concreted foundation that prevented the earth from “deforming”.
I don’t think Slarti ever said the rubble did not “bounce”. You do understand that not every floor impacted at the same time and that the rubble deposited by lower floors acted as a decelerator for the higher floors?
Robert said:
“We started off with a GPE of just under 400,000,000,000 joules for each tower. I’m not going to deduct anything for breaking the floors loose or pulverizing the concrete. I’m just going to consider that all 400 billion joules were converted to kinetic energy and hit the ground.”
Fine.
Robert said:
“Did these 400 billion joules land on the head of a pin? No. We all know they didn’t. They landed in an area the size of the building’s footprint (actually larger than that, as evidenced by photos). 400 billion joules landed in an area that is 64m x 64m. That’s 4096 square meters. If the head of a pin is 4096 sq. meters, Slarti’s calculations are valid. If the head of a pin is not 4096 sq. meters, Slarti’s calculations are invalid.”
I gave estimates of energy density for the energy being spread over the building’s footprint (10K J/cm^2) and for the energy being spread over a 300m x 300m area. I said that it is possible (likely?) that energy densities may have been in the neighborhood of 10KJ/cm^2 at the center of the rubble heap (and remember, the heap is much thicker there). Kinetic energy was converted to heat in each piece of rubble as it impacted the ground this caused a temperature rise in each piece of rubble (of differing magnitude in different materials). Since the debris were so inhomogenous and consisted of so many different materials, there’s no hope (at least without more work than I’m willing to do) of estimating the temperature rise of the rubble, but we can estimate the overall magnitude of the energy which was converted from kinetic energy in the debris to heat in the rubble pile. Unfortunately, this energy is a large and abstract number which is hard to understand. In order to put things into a context that is easier to understand, I have made equivalences to what could be done with all of this energy in different forms or concentrations (I am in no way saying that these forms and concentrations happened in the WTC collapse) that are easier to place in the context of our experience like tons of TNT or room-temperature iron. I do this because I have no conception of what half a teraJoule is and I don’t think any of you do either (although my learning curve on this has been going through the roof). My calculations are accurate and exactly what I have presented them as.
Robert said:
“400 billion joules landed in 4096 square meters. Even a math wizard can see that an even distribution would be 97,656,250 joules per square meter. (How many pin heads in a square meter?)”
And I said 10,000 J/cm^2. If only there were some way to compare the two numbers…
Robert said:
“Immediately upon impact, the energy contained in the falling material was transmitted to the impact area. [No*] The falling material stopped. [Yes] Since it was now on the ground it had no potential energy [Yes], and since it was no longer moving it had no kinetic energy. [Yes] When the impact occurred, it would be reasonable to consider that some friction existed [No**], and that some deformation took place [Yes***]. For the most part, the energy was transmitted into the earth. [This is wrong] (Slarti wants to completely ignore this. He has to. He wants to consider the universe to be his isolated system, but does not include the energy transmitted to the universe, or the earth, or even Manhattan Island, in his calculations.)”
Okay, you’re flat-out lying here. Energy is transmitted into the ground as a shockwave. This type of energy is called seismic energy. It is measured via the Richter scale. I’m assuming the WTC collapse measured 2.1 on the Richter scale. It requires 5.9 GJ of energy to produce this level of seismic event. I have included this in my calculations from the beginning and mentioned it several times. It is a quantity that was MEASURED. Anything contradicting this paragraph is crap.
*Some of the energy was transmitted into the ground and air as shockwaves.
**Friction is a process that has duration, it happens over a period of time. A collision is an event that happens instantaneously, it has no duration (like 12 noon). You cannot confuse these.
***The energy transferred by deforming the ground has been passed to the ground and now resides there as heat. Now think of this process happening with a second piece of rubble striking the first piece of rubble which is now on the ground and so on…
Robert said:
“According to Slarti’s calculations, if we take a 100 kg hunk of steel and drop it from a height of 100 meters, the majority of energy will be converted to thermal energy. [Yes] GPE = mass times height times gravity. For this experiment, that would be 100 x 100 x 9.8 = 98,000 joules. Using Slarti’s calculations, what should be the temperature increase? [roughly 2 degrees C] (Remember, Slarti never identifies the method of transfer, he just says it will happen.) [WRONG!]
I have repeatedly identified the method of transfer as an inelastic collision. You may argue that I’m incorrectly using the physics of collisions (but the math says otherwise) or you may argue that this is not a collision (which is ridiculous), but saying that I haven’t identified the mechanism is more lying.
Robert said:
“Does anybody think this heat transfer (without accounting for friction and deformation) even really takes place? (I know Slarti does)”
Wikipedia says:
“In collisions of macroscopic bodies, some kinetic energy is turned into vibrational energy of the atoms, causing a heating effect, and the bodies are deformed.”
So count Wikipedia on my side. Anyone else care to be on the correct side of this?
Robert said:
” Would it be uniform and instantaneous throughout the steel block [Yes], or does heat enter at one point, and flow [No] ?”
Robert said:
“In a previous experiment, Slarti stated that the head of a nail gets hot when you hit it with a hammer. [No. I said the head of the hammer gets hot, that is where the kinetic energy was.] Why just the head of the nail? What happen to instantaneous uniform transfer? [reread what I said, you've misunderstood it] Was it friction (mostly in the form of deformation) that generated the heat in the nail head? [Yes, this would be a mechanism generating heat in the nail head]
Robert said:
“I hope you’re starting to see that Slarti’s claim that KE becomes TE by magic just doesn’t work.”
I believe that they are starting to see that the laws of physics tell us that KE may be converted into TE via the mechanism of collision.
Robert said:
“Slarti’s calculations completely ignore contact mechanics.”
Your link sent me to a Wikipedia page saying that there was no article.
Robert said:
“When we discuss impacts, we discuss the force of that impact. Bullets, meteors, and even World Trade Centers, impact other objects with force. None of these are true inelastic collisions. In a previous post, Slarti said “These types of collisions are referred to as inelastic collisions. This essentially means that there was no ‘bounce’ – the particles stuck together after the impact.” This assumption is not supported by the evidence. With the exception of the steel I-beams, pretty much everything else DID NOT stick together. Some of that occurred on impact. They do not account for deformation or bounce. Yes Slarti, the pieces of the WTC did bounce a little, but gravity (still being exerted) and the dust cloud made that bounce unnoticeable.”
Kinetic energy can be changed into thermal energy in all collisions. There were many collisions with varying degrees of elasticity involved in the collapse and the collapse was not instantaneous. What is undisputed is that there was a descending mass of rubble with 200 GJ of KE and a short time later there was a rubble pile with no KE. It is my assertion that treating this as a single inelastic collision is reasonable given the accuracy of the calculation. This is the kind of modeling decision that my model will stand or fall on.
Robert said:
“Force is directed energy. i.e. The force of a hammer hitting a nail. The force of a bullet hitting an object. When a bullet hits a solid object of much higher density, some of the energy deforms the bullet, and some of the energy is transmitted thru the object to the earth. (Of course a shotgun blast is probably closer to what takes place when the WTC falls. This would require dividing up the force by the number of shot –But that is not accounted for in Slarti’s model) This is known as energy redistribution. Since force is directed energy, and since it rarely takes place on the head of a pin, we calculate force over an area. The most common way we examine force over an area is by PSI or kg/m^2 (or SI or dynes).”
Now you’re confusing force and energy. I am doing calculations with energy – I’m not trying to answer questions about the forces involved – that is a much more complicated problem.
When investigating a crime, the rule of thumb is to ‘follow the money’. In physics, the rule is to ‘follow the energy’. This is what physicists look at first, and this is what I’m doing. If you’d like to make an assertion about the forces, feel free. I’ll probably even try to reproduce your work. But don’t tell me I should compare apples to oranges.
Robert said:
“Can we calculate the force of impact for the World Trade Center collapse. The answer is Yes and No. We know that the entire building DID NOT impact the ground below at the same time. For our calculations, I’ll consider it all to hit at the same time.”
As I said, forces are a much more complicated problem.
Robert said:
“Is anybody in disagreement with what I have just stated?”
Yes. See above.
Byron, When the material that was the WTC hit the ground, why didn’t it just keep going. I don’t care if it hit concrete, steel, or earth, we are considering all of them to be impenetrable, and non-deforming. Why did the debris stop?
Slarti, I searched every previous comment. Your last post is the first time you mentioned 10K J/cm^2.
It is also the first time you mentioned 300m x 300m or even 90,000 square meters. You did mention that the building was 64 meters by 64 meters, but never presented the use of that information in any of your calculations.
A statement made without incorporating the use of that data into your calculation only shows that you were aware of it. It demonstrates nothing else.
Quoting myself from two nights ago:
“If it were distributed over the footprint of the building, it would yield 6 – 10,000 J/cm^2, enough to raise the temperature of our block of iron by 13 – 23 C.”
Heat is a measurement of thermal energy in transition.
Slarti,
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newtons law of motion. The opposite reaction to the WTC energy hitting the earth is the energy of the earth to stop it from continuing.
Byron said:
“very good analysis. But I see what Robert is trying to say. Although I don’t think he fully understands what you are saying. You are only talking about total energy while he is going for energy imparted per square foot. I am not sure his nail analogy applies.”
I did my best to account for all of the energy in his nail/plate analogy.
Byron said:
“I think I am starting to see why people cant wrap their minds around this, the energy is so tremendous that it does not register in people’s minds. They have no problem believing a meteor impact causes heat and holes but a building causing this is harder to conceptualize.”
I’ve been smashing my head against this brick wall for days. It’s getting pretty hot…
Byron said:
“This was such a large building, way above the scale of most others, it is hard to grasp the magnitude. Everything is magnified, from the sound of failing columns to the energy released on impact.”
Yes.
Byron said:
“I am more convinced than ever that you are correct, but would like to see Robert figure out how much energy is required to separate the floors. From what I have seen of the design, I bet it isn’t much. The connections would most likely have been in both shear and tension. They were probably originally designed for shear only. I guess the overall energy required for failure would be the same.”
Thank you. I would like Robert to do that calculation as well. I am confident that if done correctly it would come in well under my model prediction – otherwise controlled demolition would be impossible.
Byron said:
“The point is that building was doing who knows what on the way down. I imagine there is not any way to get an accurate picture of how each individual component failed. How would you even assign a value to it? If there were a hundred connections per floor, I bet they all failed in different ways. It would be a huge data set.”
Which is why I haven’t tried to do it myself.
Byron said:
“The only way to do it is to get a theoretical value per floor. But you are already part way there because of the weight of the floors. So say if it takes a hundred units of energy to break a floor away your are already some % of the way there.”
Yeah, it’s a bitch of a problem.
Byron said:
“If you want to write a paper you are going to have look at energy required to break the floors loose.”
Either that or find some other prediction to validate the model. If I estimate the energy in the pyroclastic flow, I’ll have an energy for just collapsing the structure. At one point Robert made an estimate of 14 GJ / floor – I’m guessing this was made by something like popping every rivet and shearing every beam. If so, that bodes well for my prediction. Even with this value, it’s still within an order of magnitude of my model prediction.
My bad. I searched for 10K not 10,000K.
Robert:
do you just like to argue? Are there many people that believe CD brought the towers down?
“If it were distributed over the footprint of the building, it would yield 6 – 10,000 J/cm^2, enough to raise the temperature of our block of iron by 13 – 23 C.”
Then how did it melt the iron. How did you manage to focus the energy?
You can do a lot on the head of a pin, that you can’t expect to do in the real world.
“**Friction is a process that has duration, it happens over a period of time. A collision is an event that happens instantaneously, it has no duration (like 12 noon). You cannot confuse these.”
Did all of the WTC hit the ground at the same time? No. By your own calculations some of the pieces not involved in breaking the floors loose or perform pre-impact pulverization should have hit at near the speed of gravity, and the others should have hit later.
Slarti,
The earth deformed? This is the first time I have seen you mention it. If the earth deformed, it must have absorbed energy from the building. How much energy went into deforming the earth?
Slarti,
Inelastic collision is an event. It is not a method of heat transfer. Friction is a method of energy conversion. Deformation (the separating of molecular bonds) is a method of energy conversion.
Two solid objects traveling at 30 mph each hit each other straight on. Which one transfers energy to the other?
A solid object is moving at 60 mph at hits a solid wall. Why doesn’t the wall move? Is the wall using energy to remain stationary?
“In collisions of macroscopic bodies, some kinetic energy is turned into vibrational energy of the atoms, causing a heating effect, and the bodies are deformed.”
Correct. What two “macroscopic bodies” collided? Was that the earth, and the WTC? If so, why does the WTC vibrate and the earth does not?
Now that you have conceded that the earth deformed, I guess both the earth and the WTC heated up.
Wikipedia “Contact Mechanics”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_mechanics
Slarti,
“Now you’re confusing force and energy. I am doing calculations with energy – I’m not trying to answer questions about the forces involved – that is a much more complicated problem.”
Energy does nothing until it performs work. That battery in your car is full of energy, but until you turn the key on, the battery does nothing. That brick on your roof does nothing until it falls on your head, and when it does, the heat will not be the problem.
The reason your calculations fail is that they are performed on the head of a pin. Energy transfer on the head of a pin is not the same as energy transferred over an area. If it was all the same, nails would not be pointed. Directing energy does not have the same effect as spreading out the same energy. Your model does not compensate for that.
Byron said “[D]o you just like to argue?”
I enjoy reasonable debate. Where I come from that is how ideas are exchanged and differences of opinion are solved. How does it work in your neck of the woods?
“Are there many people that believe CD brought the towers down?” How many people question anything these days? As long as the TV and iPod work, most of our society is happy to ignore everything else. I hope you weren’t suggesting that my determination of the facts should be influenced by public opinion. Are you? What percentage of this country do you think are capable of even understanding the physics involved?
I have patiently and thoroughly answered your questions. I would appreciate it if you would do me the courtesy of reading my whole post before you respond. You have a tendency to ask questions which are answered later in a post.
Robert said:
“It is also the first time you mentioned 300m x 300m or even 90,000 square meters. You did mention that the building was 64 meters by 64 meters, but never presented the use of that information in any of your calculations.”
The first time I calculated energy density was for the summary I quoted from. I mentioned that the building was 64m x 64m and later referred to the footprint of the building. What did you think I meant by that?
Robert said:
“A statement made without incorporating the use of that data into your calculation only shows that you were aware of it. It demonstrates nothing else.”
I used all of the data that I referenced, including the power requirements for a flux capacitor. I invite you to repeat my calculations to verify this.
Robert said:
“Heat is a measurement of thermal energy in transition.”
Replace every instance where I used the word heat with ‘thermal energy’.
Robert said:
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newtons law of motion. The opposite reaction to the WTC energy hitting the earth is the energy of the earth to stop it from continuing.”
You are confusing kinetic energy and momentum again. The momentum of the earth is not appreciably changed by the impact.
Quoting myself:
“If it were distributed over the footprint of the building, it would yield 6 – 10,000 J/cm^2, enough to raise the temperature of our block of iron by 13 – 23 C.”
Robert said:
“Then how did it melt the iron. How did you manage to focus the energy?”
I never said either of those things happened. I suggested that 10K J/cm^2 was a rough upper bound of the energy density. I have also described other sources of thermal energy in the rubble. I believe that a combination of all of these sources would have been capable of locally melting iron.
Robert said:
“You can do a lot on the head of a pin, that you can’t expect to do in the real world.”
I’m not doing any sort of ‘computation on the head of a pin’. I have given the appropriate context for every number I have reported.
Quoting myself:
“**Friction is a process that has duration, it happens over a period of time. A collision is an event that happens instantaneously, it has no duration (like 12 noon). You cannot confuse these.”
Robert said:
“Did all of the WTC hit the ground at the same time? No. By your own calculations some of the pieces not involved in breaking the floors loose or perform pre-impact pulverization should have hit at near the speed of gravity, and the others should have hit later.”
Quoting myself:
“What is undisputed is that there was a descending mass of rubble with 200 GJ of KE and a short time later there was a rubble pile with no KE. It is my assertion that treating this as a single inelastic collision is reasonable given the accuracy of the calculation. This is the kind of modeling decision that my model will stand or fall on.”
You should really read the whole post before you reply.
Robert said:
“The earth deformed? This is the first time I have seen you mention it. If the earth deformed, it must have absorbed energy from the building. How much energy went into deforming the earth?”
It’s not a big deal – the foundations were concrete as was the ground around the towers. Any energy going into deforming the ground (breaking or crushing that concrete) ends up as thermal energy in that concrete i.e. thermal energy in the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“Inelastic collision is an event. It is not a method of heat transfer. Friction is a method of energy conversion. Deformation (the separating of molecular bonds) is a method of energy conversion.”
Quoting myself quoting Wikipedia:
“In collisions of macroscopic bodies, some kinetic energy is turned into vibrational energy of the atoms, causing a heating effect, and the bodies are deformed.”
Robert said:
“Two solid objects traveling at 30 mph each hit each other straight on. Which one transfers energy to the other?”
Kinetic energy may be transformed into thermal energy, transferred, redirected, or emitted as shockwaves depending on the specifics of the collision.
Robert said:
“A solid object is moving at 60 mph at hits a solid wall. Why doesn’t the wall move? Is the wall using energy to remain stationary?”
The wall is anchored to the earth – it has zero momentum with an enormous amount of mass.
Quoting myself quoting Wikipedia(again):
“In collisions of macroscopic bodies, some kinetic energy is turned into vibrational energy of the atoms, causing a heating effect, and the bodies are deformed.”
Robert said:
“Correct. What two “macroscopic bodies” collided? Was that the earth, and the WTC? If so, why does the WTC vibrate and the earth does not?”
Because the WTC had the kinetic energy which has been converted into thermal vibrations.
Robert said:
“Now that you have conceded that the earth deformed, I guess both the earth and the WTC heated up.”
Yup. All that thermal energy went into the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“Energy does nothing until it performs work. That battery in your car is full of energy, but until you turn the key on, the battery does nothing. That brick on your roof does nothing until it falls on your head, and when it does, the heat will not be the problem.”
Energy exists. Always. This is what the law of conservation of energy means. That is why I choose to model the energy distribution. This is the way physics is done. Energy is changed into other forms when it performs work. In this sort of problem energy is easy to follow, work is much more complicated – KISS (I assume you know what this means
). The raise in temperature of the brick is negligible. If a pebble hit your head at escape velocity the heat would be a big deal.
Robert said:
“The reason your calculations fail is that they are performed on the head of a pin. Energy transfer on the head of a pin is not the same as energy transferred over an area. If it was all the same, nails would not be pointed. Directing energy does not have the same effect as spreading out the same energy. Your model does not compensate for that.”
My calculations are about rubble piles an the earth and seismic waves and sonic waves and 110 story buildings and pyroclastic flows. I don’t know where you’re getting this ‘head of a pin’ thing. Yes, energy density affects results of energy transfers, but we’re trying to understand the magnitude of the energies involved and where they are located. I’ve specified a mechanism and calculated the values I have no need to know the forces involved and energy transferred or transformed in every single collision in the collapse, I’m looking at the whole thing in aggregate.
Robert,
Contact mechanics tells us how kinetic energy is transformed into thermal energy by the work performed to deform objects.
“Robert said:
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newtons law of motion. The opposite reaction to the WTC energy hitting the earth is the energy of the earth to stop it from continuing.”
You are confusing kinetic energy and momentum again. The momentum of the earth is not appreciably changed by the impact.”
What is the equal but opposite reaction of the earth when the Tower hits it? When a crane lifts an object, why doesn’t the crane go into the earth?
Robert said:
“What is the equal but opposite reaction of the earth when the Tower hits it? When a crane lifts an object, why doesn’t the crane go into the earth?”
Now you’re confusing force and energy.
“Contact mechanics tells us how kinetic energy is transformed into thermal energy by the work performed to deform objects.”
Congratulations! You just discovered a method by which kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy. Friction (rubbing) is another.
Which one of those is the method by which you transferred the kinetic energy of the falling WTC into the itself? Was it deformation or friction or none of the above?
Quoting me:
“Contact mechanics tells us how kinetic energy is transformed into thermal energy by the work performed to deform objects.”
Robert posted:
“Congratulations! You just discovered a method by which kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy. Friction (rubbing) is another.
Which one of those is the method by which you transferred the kinetic energy of the falling WTC into the itself? Was it deformation or friction or none of the above?”
The individual atoms had 80m/s worth of kinetic energy at the moment of impact. The energy that didn’t go into shockwaves or breaking molecular bonds raised the vibrational energy of the atoms. The temperature of the atoms was increased (because temperature is a measure of the vibrational energy of atoms). Are we clear?
An entire post lost?
What’s up with that?
What duplicate; it never posted in the first place.
““What is the equal but opposite reaction of the earth when the Tower hits it? When a crane lifts an object, why doesn’t the crane go into the earth?”
Now you’re confusing force and energy.”
You do understand that gravity is force? You’ve been working with force since the beginning.
FYI, The force down on the earth is equal to the force used to lift the object. It’s that pesky equal but opposite reaction thing again.
Bob,
Did you post something that didn’t show up?
Bob Esq.,
Lost post. Sorry to hear that. I have had it happen before. Now I do all long posts in Word. Then I copy and paste.
Bob,
I’ve also been writing my posts elsewhere and pasting them into the text box. Last spring I had a couple of posts that began with “Professor Turley” disappear. I definitely sympathize.
Robert said:
“You do understand that gravity is force? You’ve been working with force since the beginning.”
No, I was working with the gravitational potential in order to ‘follow the energy’
Robert said:
“FYI, The force down on the earth is equal to the force used to lift the object. It’s that pesky equal but opposite reaction thing again.”
What have I ever said that would lead you to believe that I didn’t understand this?
“The individual atoms had 80m/s worth of kinetic energy at the moment of impact. The energy that didn’t go into shockwaves or breaking molecular bonds raised the vibrational energy of the atoms. The temperature of the atoms was increased (because temperature is a measure of the vibrational energy of atoms). Are we clear?”
No. We’re not clear.
1. You say that all of the vibrational energy stays in the pieces of the WTC. What is that vibration not propagated into the surrounding environment? What makes you think the vibration remains in the material that fell?
2. Even if you permit the vibration to be shared by the earth and the WTC; why doesn’t the vibration continue to travel? Is dirt to rock transmission taboo? Is steel to air transmission of vibration taboo?
Slarti said; “No, I was working with the gravitational potential in order to ‘follow the energy’”
“Potential energy is energy that is stored within a system. It exists when there is a force that tends to pull an object back towards some lower energy position.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_energy
GPE only exists because of force. If the force of gravity did not exist, you would not be able to discuss GPE.
Robert said:
“1. You say that all of the vibrational energy stays in the pieces of the WTC. What is that vibration not propagated into the surrounding environment? What makes you think the vibration remains in the material that fell?
2. Even if you permit the vibration to be shared by the earth and the WTC; why doesn’t the vibration continue to travel? Is dirt to rock transmission taboo? Is steel to air transmission of vibration taboo?”
I am not taking this debate into quantum mechanics. I have enough problems trying to explain Newtonian mechanics to you.
Robert posted:
“Slarti said; “No, I was working with the gravitational potential in order to ‘follow the energy’”
“Potential energy is energy that is stored within a system. It exists when there is a force that tends to pull an object back towards some lower energy position.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_energy
GPE only exists because of force. If the force of gravity did not exist, you would not be able to discuss GPE.”
I have done my entire calculation without using force – I never said nor implied that there weren’t forces involved. The fact that my analysis doesn’t involve any calculations of forces is irrelevant. I didn’t include electromagnetic radiation either, so what?
Buddha said:
“1) I see Robert is going to address one of my points so I’ll let him do his thing and see if he and I are of like mind. As a teaser I’ll say I’m thinking gravity. You seem to have extra, Slarti.”
Let me know what you think now.
Buddha said:
“2) The other error Bob points to the post ergo proctor hoc error. Now . . . this is a common fallacy and you BOTH have made it – just in different ways and different reasons. To answer further, I’ll copy part of an answer I was writing to Bob last night before the drugs took hold I had to fight off the bats.”
I think that one of the big issues here is language. The language of mathematics is very precise. Every sentence written or spoken in it means exactly one thing. English is not that way – there are multiple meanings, nuance, etc. It is very frustrating to me that I can explain this in a language in which I cannot lie, but all of you understand that language incompletely at best. This is a real problem when it comes to the hard part – making the analogy between the map and the terrain. I have a map which I know to be correct (it is spoken in the language of mathematics expressing the laws of physics). I strongly believe that it is a map of the territory in front of us and I have good evidence to support this connection. Additionally, the map has an unmistakable piece of terrain on it (200 GJ available for destruction of structure) If we can find any part of this feature in the terrain (an estimate of the energy to break loose a floor, for example), we will have good evidence of whether or not my analogy is apt. Until then, you can question my assumptions and you can question the analogy that I’m trying to make, but given my assumptions, my model is a correct implementation of the physics involved.
I’m not sure what the point of the previous paragraph was, but I thought that I would post it in the hopes that Buddha finds it interesting and to whet his appetite for more posts later tonight. This discussion seems to be evolving in a physics discussion with Robert and Byron and a meta-discussion with Budda, Bob, and Gyges. That’s fine with me, but I’m going to have to switch gears right now, so I may not be answering Robert’s posts for a bit – I mean no offense, but I can only do so much.
“I am not taking this debate into quantum mechanics. I have enough problems trying to explain Newtonian mechanics to you”.
What you have just told me, is that you can’t comprehend how energy can leave your model (even though it is supposedly the universe), so it has to remain there. That’s not scientific, that’s just plain lazy.
“I have a map which I know to be correct (it is spoken in the language of mathematics expressing the laws of physics)”
You have a map in which you believe to be correct. It must be nice to consider yourself to be above peer review. I hope coming across as arrogant was your intention.
Slarti, I spent 25 years as an engineer at nuclear power plants. I’ve designed my modifications and emergency support systems. Heat transfer is my job. Forces are my job. Energy, well, they don’t call it nuclear energy because we avoid understanding energy. You want to know how fast a reactor heats up? The rate is equal to the mass flow rate of the coolant times the specific heat transfer coefficient of the coolant times the temperature difference between the coolant and the surface of the reactor core. What happens to the pressure in that system as the coolant heats up? What controls reactor power during a transient? Why does it have that effect? What happens to reactor power when you open the steam valve to the turbine?
You’re trying to discuss physics in one dimension while attempting to use the universe as your isolated system. You decided that your model had enough remaining energy to melt steel, but only if that steel was all on the head of a pin.
Having the energy available to do work, and actually doing work are two completely different things. Is there enough energy in a falling hunk of steel to increase the heat of that steel? Yes, but it doesn’t change from kinetic to thermal without performing work. That’s your blind spot. To you it’s PFM. You don’t need a mode, you just accept that it can happen, and don’t feel a need to understand the details of the exchange.
I’m not just familiar with physics, I very capable of discussing nuclear physics, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and electrical power generation and distribution.
If you would like to discuss the the thermalization of a neutron as it passes thru varying materials, and the resulting effect on reactor power, I’m all in.
This is just obscene. Maybe I should try to post it in two parts
Part I
Buddha: “It’s an assumption, not one that covers all the bases either, but from a SM perspective? It’s a reasonable assumption.”
A man’s got to know his limitations. No one is entitled to assume an event that has never been witnessed on Earth as a valid premise in an argument or logical proof. If we are given a gravitational acceleration constant of 9.8 m/s^2 (at or near sea level), an assumption necessitating that steel dropped from a maximum height of 415 meters reached a velocity of 3,000 mph by the time it impacted the ground is, if anything, unreasonable.
Buddha: “Your view though, Bob, suffers from a lighter version of the same fallacy as Slarti – while it is a more through type of reductionist logical analysis to look pre and post impact for ALL explanations, it begs an assumption too and that is molten metal (an energy transfer) before impact and that thermite or some other element had something to do with it (based on a post impact observation – not contemporaneous or pre-impact chemical observations).”
As I tried to explain to Gyges earlier, I have one objective here and that’s to show the immense disparity between knowledge and its object with regard to the explanations proffered for the molten metal found at ground zero. There are reasons I posted additional material; but I never volunteered to accept the burden of proving anything. I assure you, I’m not wearing a tin foil hat; although I find that filtered water does taste better than plain tap water. My bodily fluids are fine and I’ve never had to answer to the Coca Cola company either. (See Dr. Strangelove)
By posting a link to the paper about finding evidence of thermitic material (i.e. thermate, not thermite) at ground zero, it was at most to elucidate the complete lack of investigation into the collapses of the buildings; due in no small part to the disposal of the crime scene and the barring of any investigation by local authorities.
So, we’re left with Slarti’s unique attempt to explain the existence of molten metal at ground zero for a period of nearly six months.
Buddha: “To PROVE your assumption, we’d need…”
to read what I clarified above.
Buddha: “Every theory has an assumption. The problem is his assumption leads to an inaccurate in defining all the KE/PE – Slarti still has missing energy.”
Slarti’s been as meticulous as Dexter Morgan; excepting with his assumption that the gravitational acceleration here on earth enables him to use the potential energy of the towers to melt steel via conversion to Ke from free fall from the maximum height of 415 meters (i.e. the second floor is about 4 meters from the ground, etc. extrapolate up from there)
Buddha: “Your fallacy on the other hand, isn’t a “true” ergo propter hoc fallacy. It is part of your Kantian method.”
Just for now, pretend I never mentioned that man’s name.
Buddha: “Apples and oranges. Both tasty and delicious, but not always interchangable in the kitchen.”
2000 Year Old Man: “Eat Nectarines! Half a peach, half a plum; it’s a hell of a fruit.”
… (Continued)
Part II….
Buddha: “I’ve said all along I have energy deficiency issues.”
Raul Duke: “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can….”
Buddha: “I think Slarti is off on his nets and that your questions about the missing joules are dead on. But you must see you too are making an assumption – the assumption molten metal existed/started to fuse before the impact.”
You’re all sideways man. If I’m assuming anything, it’s simply this: that steel falling to earth, from any height, doesn’t fucking melt before or after impact.
Buddha: “Every theory has an assumption. Your assumption comes from reduction. Slarti’s come because he’s limiting himself with time in his starting point for analysis.”
I don’t know where Slarti’s assumption ‘comes from’, but I do know that assuming steel falling from a maximum height of 415 meters, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2, will melt upon impact.
Buddha: “I also think thermite is right out as a demo material,”
Too many variables, too many unknowns; especially since we haven’t yet let go of the current fairy tale being defended.
Buddha: “But what caused those explosions? It is a mystery. Whatever it was? It wasn’t thermite. Even visually the blasts you could see were too energetic to be thermite – they were fast hard concussions.”
Like I said, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. You’re getting too far ahead of yourself. But I will concede that those explosions would begin to explain that unaccounted for energy existing at ground zero for nearly six months after 9/11.
Buddha: “Not enough KE to cause the right kind of phase change and get rebound. The collapse of the towers was elastic however. The rebound threw shit all over the Island.”
I have no problem with the assumption of an inelastic collision; I just have a problem with changing Earth’s gravitational acceleration for sake of argument.
Buddha: “Whatever actually caused the collapse imparted sufficient energy to induce phase changes.”
Now you see my reasoning for posting the article regarding thermitic material found in the debris of ground zero; shedding light on a more plausible explanation while revealing more doubts about the original story that fails to account for said evidence.
Buddha: “Was that energy sufficient to create long lasting pools of molten metal all derived from gravity? Alas, that is the question.”
Thus, according to Ockham, we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so.
but I do know that assuming steel falling from a maximum height of 415 meters, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2, will melt upon impact –[is per se unreasonable].
I haven’t read any posts since last night.
We’re expecting 12-18″ here.
Must get to store now.
I have the distinct feeling I have wandered into a meeting of the Vienna Circle and can’t get out. I think we have as many “elastic” jowls here as elastic joules!
“We’re expecting 12-18″ here.”
Be careful out there Bob.
We got a dusting last night. If I was a kid, I’d be jealous, but as the one who has to shovel the driveway, I’m happy to let you keep your snow.
This video is pretty good. I think Slarti will enjoy all the math.
Robert said:
“What you have just told me, is that you can’t comprehend how energy can leave your model (even though it is supposedly the universe), so it has to remain there. That’s not scientific, that’s just plain lazy.”
Please specify any energy that I am not taking into account.
Robert said:
“You have a map in which you believe to be correct. It must be nice to consider yourself to be above peer review. I hope coming across as arrogant was your intention.”
No, I invite review because I know what I’ve done can withstand it. Yes, I am being arrogant here – it’s a result of answering your questions all day, sorry.
Robert said:
“Slarti, I spent 25 years as an engineer at nuclear power plants. I’ve designed my modifications and emergency support systems. Heat transfer is my job. Forces are my job. Energy, well, they don’t call it nuclear energy because we avoid understanding energy. You want to know how fast a reactor heats up? The rate is equal to the mass flow rate of the coolant times the specific heat transfer coefficient of the coolant times the temperature difference between the coolant and the surface of the reactor core. What happens to the pressure in that system as the coolant heats up? What controls reactor power during a transient? Why does it have that effect? What happens to reactor power when you open the steam valve to the turbine?”
You know your job. I believe that. You’ve been telling me for days that I don’t know mine. I do.
Robert said:
“You’re trying to discuss physics in one dimension while attempting to use the universe as your isolated system. You decided that your model had enough remaining energy to melt steel, but only if that steel was all on the head of a pin.”
What I said could be interpreted as ‘if a lump of iron weighing 100 metric tons and containing half a teraJoule of energy hit the earth in an inelastic collision, it would liquify’. Statements like that were intended to give a context for the magnitude of the forces involved and were clearly (at least in my mind) not intended to mean ‘the impact of the WTC liquified 100 metric tons of iron’. If you can point to me having said that, I will admit I spoke incorrectly, but I don’t think I have.
Robert said:
“Having the energy available to do work, and actually doing work are two completely different things. Is there enough energy in a falling hunk of steel to increase the heat of that steel? Yes, but it doesn’t change from kinetic to thermal without performing work. That’s your blind spot. To you it’s PFM. You don’t need a mode, you just accept that it can happen, and don’t feel a need to understand the details of the exchange.”
The work is performed on the subatomic level. The kinetic energy of the atoms becomes vibrational energy of the atoms. Why do you believe that this energy just disappears? Wikipedia says that this happens, why do you persist in acting like I’m making this up myself?
Robert said:
“I’m not just familiar with physics, I very capable of discussing nuclear physics, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and electrical power generation and distribution.”
I don’t doubt it, but you have shown some real blind spots in the fundamentals.
Robert said:
“If you would like to discuss the the thermalization of a neutron as it passes thru varying materials, and the resulting effect on reactor power, I’m all in.”
No, thank you, I don’t know anything about that. If you think that I am wrong about where the energy goes, you must tell me where you think it goes and why you think it. You seem to think that the law of conservation of energy isn’t important. I don’t accept that. I wont answer any questions in violation of the law of conservation of energy.
Bob said:
“but I do know that assuming steel falling from a maximum height of 415 meters, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2, will melt upon impact –[is per se unreasonable].”
Yes it is. And I have never said otherwise.
Bob said:
“I haven’t read any posts since last night.
We’re expecting 12-18″ here.
Must get to store now.”
I did that yesterday. 1-2” were forecasted (that’s serious here in North Carolina) but all I saw were flurries. At the very least we’ve provided you with reading material for being snowed in. Stay warm.
mespo727272 said:
” have the distinct feeling I have wandered into a meeting of the Vienna Circle and can’t get out. I think we have as many “elastic” jowls here as elastic joules!”
Hi mespo!
This one is also very good. I really like the way it demonstrates the different possibilities. Look at the core in the first example.
““What you have just told me, is that you can’t comprehend how energy can leave your model (even though it is supposedly the universe), so it has to remain there. That’s not scientific, that’s just plain lazy.”
Slarti:”Please specify any energy that I am not taking into account.”
You’re taking the kinetic energy and turning it into thermal energy by means of magic. You’re not claiming that friction or deformation was the mode. Again, collision is an event. Provide us with the work performed to transfer the energy. Friction is work. Deformation is work. Collision is an event.
“No, I invite review because I know what I’ve done can withstand it.”
And that’s why every scientist invites peer review. Those that a proven wrong by peer review also thought they could withstand peer review.
“What I said could be interpreted as ‘if a lump of iron weighing 100 metric tons and containing half a teraJoule of energy hit the earth in an inelastic collision, it would liquify’. Statements like that were intended to give a context for the magnitude of the forces involved and were clearly (at least in my mind) not intended to mean ‘the impact of the WTC liquified 100 metric tons of iron’. If you can point to me having said that, I will admit I spoke incorrectly, but I don’t think I have.”
I thought you were trying to account for the pools of molten steel that existed at ground zero.
“The work is performed on the subatomic level. The kinetic energy of the atoms becomes vibrational energy of the atoms. Why do you believe that this energy just disappears? Wikipedia says that this happens, why do you persist in acting like I’m making this up myself?”
I had to laugh. One day I hope to learn how to deal with things at a subatomic level. :>) Care to discuss antineutrinos?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antineutrino
Vibrations propogate. They don’t just stay in a material. The denser the material, the faster the vibration travels through it. Go hit a piece of steel with a hammer. How long did you hear the vibration? Put your hand on it and do the same thing. How long did you continue to feel the vibration? Where did it go? Hint: It didn’t turn into a bunch of subatomic vibration in the block of steel. The energy was transfered to whatever the steel was sitting on or attached to. From there it went into the earth and the air.
“You seem to think that the law of conservation of energy isn’t important. I don’t accept that. I wont answer any questions in violation of the law of conservation of energy.”
Slarti, Energy is conserved in an isolated system. Your isolated system is the universe, but you think the energy can’t go anywhere but the WTC. It does. It all did. For the most part, every bit of energy that was in the towers left those towers immediately upon impact. The pieces that were hauled away did not have the stored energy in them. (other than the binding energy that existed before the towers fell.)
That’s the problem with your model. You use the universe, but refuse to measure anything but the WTC. Your refusing to leave your house, but wanting to tell me about the world. (I hope you understand the analogy.
Robert/Slarti:
what did work, where did it go?
It went right where Slarti said it did, into vibration and bending big steel beams (as in your nail and vise grip analogy).
Robert wants to know what work was done, Buddha wants to know about the big bangs as does Bob. The big bangs were the columns failing under huge compressive forces almost instantaneously. The sound probably amplified/modified by the shape of the columns and surrounding structures.
There are rational answers to all of these questions that Robert and Bob posit. Bob is correct in thinking that a better investigation should have been undertaken.
To be clear:
All I have ever asserted is that thermal energy originally stored as GPE, in concert with energy from the plane impacts, multi-fuel fires both before and after collapse, and exothermic reactions in the rubble heap are a plausible source of the observed heat (including molten iron dripping down beams) in the rubble. This all began when Bob contended that Occam’s razor favored his theory over mine. I’ve presented my theory and as Bob has presented no coherent theory of his own, I think mine’s simpler by default. (Or my knowledge compares more favorably with the object of inquiry than the knowledge contained in his non-existent theory.
Robert said:
“You’re taking the kinetic energy and turning it into thermal energy by means of magic. You’re not claiming that friction or deformation was the mode. Again, collision is an event. Provide us with the work performed to transfer the energy. Friction is work. Deformation is work. Collision is an event.”
Each atom in every object in the rubble contained roughly 80m/s worth of kinetic energy when they were stopped by impact with the ground.
via interaction with it’s neighbors in the structure of the object that kinetic energy was converted into randomized vibrational energy – i.e. thermal energy.
Robert said:
“I thought you were trying to account for the pools of molten steel that existed at ground zero.”
I have stated on multiple occasions that the only evidence I have seen for ‘pools of molten steel’ is a picture in which workers are clustered around a glow purported to be molten steel. One of the worker’s legs were in the glow. If the picture had truly been of molten steel, his legs would have been on fire. This is not credible. Eyewitnesses report drips of molten steel running down beams. I believe that the ‘natural’ sources of heat in the rubble are sufficient to account for this.
Quoting myself:
“No, I invite review because I know what I’ve done can withstand it.”
Robert said:
“And that’s why every scientist invites peer review. Those that a proven wrong by peer review also thought they could withstand peer review.”
Then check my computations yourself. It’s not very well organized, but I have laid out what I have done and what the results were.
Quoting me:
“You seem to think that the law of conservation of energy isn’t important. I don’t accept that. I wont answer any questions in violation of the law of conservation of energy.”
Robert says:
“Slarti, Energy is conserved in an isolated system. Your isolated system is the universe, but you think the energy can’t go anywhere but the WTC. It does. It all did. For the most part, every bit of energy that was in the towers left those towers immediately upon impact. The pieces that were hauled away did not have the stored energy in them. (other than the binding energy that existed before the towers fell.)”
I am accounting for energy originally stored as GPE in the WTC. That is all I ever claimed to be doing. You seem to think that energy ‘left those towers immediately upon impact’ yet you have specified no mechanism by which it did so. In doing so, you are requiring energy to move at infinite speed. I’m asserting that this energy stayed where it was and changed into a different form through a collision. The resultant thermal energy was slowly dissipated from the rubble pile which was why it was so hot.
Robert says:
“That’s the problem with your model. You use the universe, but refuse to measure anything but the WTC. Your refusing to leave your house, but wanting to tell me about the world. (I hope you understand the analogy.”
As I said before, my intent is to account for the energy stored as GPE in the WTC. That’s what I did. Energy from solar radiation in Sheep Meadow (in Central Park) is irrelevant to what I’m doing – I ignore it.
Byron said:
“There are rational answers to all of these questions that Robert and Bob posit. Bob is correct in thinking that a better investigation should have been undertaken.”
I would also like to add that I think that incompetence is a simpler explanation of the investigation than a coverup is. (Not saying that this is unquestionable, just that it is what I believe. I would have liked a better investigation, too, Bob. I just don’t think the reasons for what happened were sinister. (Apart from the terrorists.)
“Each atom in every object in the rubble contained roughly 80m/s worth of kinetic energy when they were stopped by impact with the ground.
via interaction with it’s neighbors in the structure of the object that kinetic energy was converted into randomized vibrational energy – i.e. thermal energy.”
NO. You are misinterpreting translational kinetic energy. Ojects have to be heated in order for the molecules to be able to move freely and faster (that’s why it expands). Vibration of the magnitude required to conform to your theory cannot take place. Their just isn’t room between the molecules for it to happen in the magnitude required to support it. Minor increases (maybe a degree of so) yes, major no way.
Robert,
Where does the kinetic energy go?
Robert,
At one point you suggested that it would take 14 GJ to break loose a floor. Where did you get that number?
Robert:
why couldnt vibration cause something to heat up? It is just energy.
“Where does the kinetic energy go?”
As a kid, did you ever tie a string between two paper cups? Did you talk back and forth? Well, that’s were the kinetic energy that was imparted into the string went. It comes in one end (the point of impact) and out the other. The path of least resistance is the string, so it follows the string. At the end, it comes out as sound. It then disappears into the air. Your ear captures a part of it. The same thing happens with any other material. The vibration (just like sound vibration) will always take the path of least resistance. A sound made 3 ft below the water may be able to be heard 30 ft away in the water, but not be heard above the water.
Slarti/Bob/Robert/Gyges/Byron (in no particular order),
My point is simply this:
These are what I am taking as given, Note that 1 & 2 are assumptions but if any of you cats think you can take on Gödel or Smales or Poincaré, be my guest. Chaotic systems are a subset of complex systems not governed by their history. Here we have two complex system driven to disorder by adding E and that results in . . . more order. Hmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. Now to my assumptions.
1) Gödel was correct.
2) Complexity/Chaos theory is correct.
3) You have both stipulated that assumptions have been made.
4) When two assumptions collide, being that they are assumptions and unprovable, it’s the Battle of Coke vs. Pepsi.
5) There is indeed a language gap here.
I have found both sides raise some interesting points – none of which are conclusory. But really I think the points are more interesting than the conclusions because the conclusion about the how of collapse is irrelevant to a large degree until another question is answered. Patience, I’m getting to that.
I’m not making an assumption other than those stated above. The transaction is complex. Millions of parts, thousands of different chemicals, lots of KE/PE. The route to the end of the equation is actually irrelevant in light of the result.
One side says enough KE/PE, the other says nay without some extra boom-boom.
I say you’re both looking at the wrong ball.
How the ball gets to the plate is irrelevant. It’s the home run – the order from the chaos – that matters. There are millions of paths that lead to fouls and outs, but only a few that lead to home runs. Why’d we get a homer?
I expect my coin flips to be random, damn it.
Order not randomness. It’s either 1) anomaly or 2) induced. The third possibility, an emergent system – nature’s way of making order, does not apply here. That’s said in English, but I guarantee it’s also in the math. Language differences are not always fatal.
Do you both now see why I’ve been less concerned with the collapse than the order of it? Too many assumptions about how.
The question should have never been what caused the collapse. Energy imparted in excess of the buildings carrying capacity is what caused the collapse. End of line. The question should have been what caused the collapse to have an optimal result. That’s a different question than “how”. It’s the question of “why” followed by “how”. Ultimately how is even irrelevant.
I’m saying “Look at that! A giant gorilla where there should be a cartload of monkeys!” You guys are arguing about how to make a giant gorilla.
The how conversation has been quite entertaining (and I still think Bob has a point about your use of gravity Slarti), but I really don’t care how as a matter of first instance. Never have. I’ve been wallowing in this argument simply because it’s a hoot and you two are two of the best debaters here.
I care why first. I’ve said so from the start.
Why didn’t the towers just topple as is the most likely outcome?
Why did they fall straight down?
Why is there an optimal ordered outcome from a chaotic event?
You say you are talking about math, Slarti. So am I. Unlike you, I readily admit I’m too lazy to do the math. These days I limit my actual number crunching to what is required to do my job. But still . . .
It’s as if Skylab fell an made a Toyota FourRunner instead of a crater of strewn garbage.
There’s order in that there pile of rubble, my friends.
All my how questions relate to that. Hence the time/sequence fixation in relation to an ordered outcome. How is important to me only as it relates to why I have an observation that makes no sense as a matter of probability.
Hey, would you look at that! I’m still the Swiss. Or you can call me Walter.
P.S. Bob – I’m going to keep mentioning Kant every time you act like a methodological reductionist because Kant is shorter to type. I’m lazy. If you have a shorter notation of preference, I’ll be glad to use it. MRsubK?
Also: GO SEE AVATAR NOW.
I have no shame telling you this.
I am not a huge Cameron fan. T1 is a Harlan Ellison rip off that’s aged like Hell, T2 was a great action flick as was Aliens, Titanic was soap opera crap (Sorry! It’s junk and Winslet can’t act her way out of a bag). He’s spotty at best and anyone who has HMFIC (Head Mother F’er In Charge) on his set caps? Yeah, I’d have to tell him to blow me in person with that kind of ego. Story wise, it’s nothing special – it’s a hundred different Tarzan movies or Dances With Wolves In Space. Competently executed, but neither the Bard or Kurt Vonnegut would have lost sleep over the competition.
But visually . . .
When I saw Pandora and the Navi?
I had the weirdest sensation.
Like no movie, book, sex act or drug has ever given me. I’ve done lots of all of those, some to excess, but I never felt this way about a film.
I felt like I had found home. I mean HOME. Those were the people we should be. The Navi were the people I should be.
That’s not hyperbole. I actually had tears in my eyes.
It’s the damnedest thing. But thanks to Everett? I know somewhere, somewhen, I may actually be HOME.
I certainly hope so anyway.
Robert:
Speakers use heat sinks to dissipate vibrational heat.
Also I am waiting with anticipation for you to present your findings on the amount of energy needed to release a floor.
I would be happy if you just gave the general procedure and a few calculations that we could kibitz. If you were the one that said 14 GJ I would like to know how you came up with it. I have an idea as to how I would do it and would like to see if you were thinking the same way.
“why couldnt vibration cause something to heat up? It is just energy.”
It could be done, but it wouldn’t be very fast or very efficient. The molecular bonds are such that they would rather permit the vibration to propagate along the path of least resistance then exit, than rip themselves apart.
Buddha:
those buildings were extremely well designed and were able to sustain the initial loads. I was honestly surprised they were able to remain vertical as long as they did. But steel is ductile and therefore tough.
This is not chaos theory it is pure Newtonian mechanics and some chemistry. That we may think it chaos is only because our knowledge at this point is insufficient to bring order.
May I make a suggestion, lets hikack another thread with a smaller number of postings, I suggest the following:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/16/the-not-so-speedy-trial-turkish-trial-ended-after-28-years/
it has only 4 posts and is 4 days old.
Buddha,
I’m still working on the response to your earlier post, but I thought that I would give my reaction to the opening of this post. And I plan on seeing Avatar on Monday.
Buddha said:
These are what I am taking as given, Note that 1 & 2 are assumptions but if any of you cats think you can take on Gödel or Smales or Poincaré, be my guest.”
I wouldn’t dream of it, those guys are my idols! (and it’s Stephen Smale, btw)
Buddha said,
“Chaotic systems are a subset of complex systems not governed by their history. Here we have two complex system driven to disorder by adding E and that results in . . . more order. Hmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. Now to my assumptions.
1) Gödel was correct.
2) Complexity/Chaos theory is correct.
3) You have both stipulated that assumptions have been made.
4) When two assumptions collide, being that they are assumptions and unprovable, it’s the Battle of Coke vs. Pepsi.
5) There is indeed a language gap here.”
1) His Theorem is one we CAN prove (or at least he can, anyway)
2) And cool. And it makes pretty pictures. I even have my own fractal.
3) Hereby stipulated and assumed.
4) I prefer Coke, but I don’t drink any because I have no need for phosphoric acid and high fructose corn syrup in my diet.
5) Since you are agreeing with me, I have to agree with you by the reflexive property of agreement.
What order coming out of chaos are you referring to?
“Speakers use heat sinks to dissipate vibrational heat.”
The heat isn’t generated by vibration, it’s generated by electrical impedance.
14 GJ to break the floor loose. I thought I posted the whole thing, but I only took you most of the way there. After you (Byron) compared my load estimate, and found it to be reasonably close, I forgot about the rest. I didn’t save the spreadsheet. If you need it, I’ll work on it tomorrow. I do remember that the 14 GJ came from double what I thought the floor should handle. I know that’s well above the safety margin, but I’m permitting for uniform instant failure of each floor. I think it was pretty conservative. To get that kind of explosive collapse, the real number should be much greater.
I second Byron’s suggestion of piracy!
Buddha is Laughing,
Thanks for the tip on Avatar. The trailers have been pretty good.
To add to your recent post: I would have probably accepted the uniform collapse of one tower. I would have just considered it to be a freak alignment of the stars. But three buildings? That dealer got busted a long time ago.
Byron,
I’m guessing your suggestion to move the thread is related to trouble scrolling on the page. I suggest using Mozilla Firefox. I have the scrolling problem with Internet Explorer, but Firefox works great on the same page.
Earlier today I had 48 Internet Explorer sessions open, and was on this thread with FireFox. All were smooth. If I open just this page with IE, it acts up.
Slarti,
I’m referring to a CD style downward collapse that left a minimal damage footprint area wise to the more likely toppling that would have been a truly epic scale disaster wiping out blocks of skyscrapers. That was the most likely outcome of an asymmetric event like the impacts, an asymmetric result.
Down, straight down, is order after an asymmetrical strike. It’s an unlikely optimization to happen as an anomaly (although I don’t discount that chance – I do follow Finnagle’s Law (Larry Niven) “The perversity of the universe tends toward the maximum.”)
That is the order I am plagued by.
That 3,000 people died bothers me.
But what really bothers me more is that 10,000 people didn’t die from this event.
It’s the more likely outcome.
Order from chaos.
Byron,
Complexity/Chaos applies to all systems just like the Incompleteness Theorems do. It’s built into the universe as much as the basic forces.
IE is evil. So is Chrome. And Safari just sucks.
Use Firefox. Use it with ADBlock Plus, Flashblock and NoScript extensions. I also suggest TOR and FoxyProxy. You have to train NoScript and FlashBlock, but after you do?
The internet is much better without all the advertising vomited on you.
Buddha:
I am an engineer, we like order and completeness. F . . . chaos, it isn’t good for business.
I don’t understand chaos theory anyway. The universe is pretty orderly, otherwise we couldn’t figure it out. I know, I know quantum mechanics, just a hiccup of randomness/chaos in an otherwise rational universe.
We will figure it out one day.
Slarti,
I knew it was Smale. I plead being tired and having seen Caddyshack once too often and having a proclivity for abusing homophones – even close ones.
Byron,
Seriously, check out James Gleick’s book “Chaos”. It’s a wonderful primer. As an engineer, it will make your head hurt I promise. But hey! It’s the holidays and what’s a little intentional infliction of scientific pain between friends.
Give you an excuse for that extra glass of egg nog with the alka-seltzer chaser. 
Here’s his website/blog.
http://www.around.com/
Buddha said:
“I’m referring to a CD style downward collapse that left a minimal damage footprint area wise to the more likely toppling that would have been a truly epic scale disaster wiping out blocks of skyscrapers. That was the most likely outcome of an asymmetric event like the impacts, an asymmetric result.”
You make an assumption here that I think is unwarranted. I think that toppling is an extremely unlikely event. There is no evidence to indicate that toppling is a favored mode of collapse.
Buddha said:
“Down, straight down, is order after an asymmetrical strike. It’s an unlikely optimization to happen as an anomaly (although I don’t discount that chance – I do follow Finnagle’s Law (Larry Niven) “The perversity of the universe tends toward the maximum.”)
That is the order I am plagued by.
That 3,000 people died bothers me.
But what really bothers me more is that 10,000 people didn’t die from this event.
It’s the more likely outcome.
Order from chaos.”
As far as the casualties, I would have to estimate what kind of casualties would be expected before I would take a firm stance on them being higher or lower than expected, but I suspect that they were lower than expected but not suspiciously so. I think that the evidence of the three tallest structures ever to collapse, in addition to everything we know about gravitational collapse from controlled demolition suggests that ‘straight down’ is the preferred mode of collapse for such structures. That probably accounts for the different shapes of our probability hats. (Did you see I got the orc blood out?)
homophonebic – fear of homonyms
Byron,
You’re right. The whole point of control theory is to engineer chaos out of the system.
I second the Gleick recommendation. It’s well written and easy to read (I read it in high school before I knew all about the math).
Buddha,
Caddyshack. Good excuse.
Fair warning guys, big post coming through!
Buddha said:
“The Elastic Question Pt. 1 – Begging the question. No issue there. That’s where the Gödel comment came from. [BTW - have you ever read 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' by Douglas Hoffstader? I think you would enjoy it.] I was hoping he’d catch that error on recalculation. [Not sure what error you mean here] ”
I pretty much think the next part hits the nail on the head, if you’ll forgive the pun.
Buddha said:
“However, convincing him it is relevant may be an issue and I’ll tell you why. It’s an assumption true enough, but you and I are used to a harder logic and Slarti is used to the Method. It’s a raw logic versus a process. They are related but different creatures as we both know. However, he’s likely to consider the fallacy a harmless one because of that damned word “reasonable”. It’s an assumption, not one that covers all the bases either, but from a SM perspective? It’s a reasonable assumption. In the normal course of events melting comes after energy is applied. Method treats time as linear as applied by 99% of all scientists because it’s usually appropriate to use linear time as that’s how we perceive time in general. Slarti has some issues with time. [Ed. Note: and I don't know anyone who has said there is a problem with time here - except me from the very beginning.] Physicists sometimes snicker at that because they realize time behaves more like a fluid than an arrow but they also know linear time is a useful tool so a snicker is all that they give. Kind of a “that’s not exactly it, but close enough for government use” snicker. Kinda like how I treat most people’s abuse of Occam’s Razor.”
When thinking about time as a concept, I tend to go Einsteinian and think 4 dimensionally. The fluid paradigm is not exactly it, but close enough for government work. (Snicker) I wont let Robert go quantum and no relativity for the Buddha. Bob’s comments have been very educational on Occam’s Razor (and Kant).
Buddha said:
“Your view though, Bob, suffers from a lighter version of the same fallacy as Slarti – while it is a more through type of reductionist logical analysis to look pre and post impact for ALL explanations, it begs an assumption too and that is molten metal (an energy transfer) before impact and that thermite or some other element had something to do with it (based on a post impact observation – not contemporaneous or pre-impact chemical observations). Now while that would comport to the rest of your analysis as reduced from specific verified knowledge, it is still just an assumption as all our actual physical evidence comes post crash and from watching how the buildings fell. To PROVE your assumption, we’d need exactly that – proof metal was taking energy sufficient for heat of fusion before impact and a sufficient mechanism that cannot be rationally explained by another process. And I think thermite is now right out as a contender for the mechanism since there is now a possible explanation of the residue – residue that probably is complicating this analysis because it’s an energy carrying compound that MAY have added energy or not (but if it did I think it did so minimally and crudely – see below). This absence of proof however is not a proof of absence as related to explosives. You’ve assumed an explosive. You’ve erred in assuming a wrong kind of explosive but that error comes from Kant’s method. It was perfectly reasonable as a matter of reductionist logic that thermite could be the cause. We now have a viable alternative explanation of the residue though. You need to propose an alternative mechanism and we need something more than just the explosions themselves as visual evidence. We need more chemistry.”
Wow. I wish I could do that.
Buddha said:
“Every theory has an assumption. The problem is his assumption leads to an inaccurate in defining all the KE/PE – Slarti still has missing energy.”
Tell me what you think is missing. (Unless I address it below.)
Buddha said:
“Your fallacy on the other hand, isn’t a “true” ergo propter hoc fallacy. It is part of your Kantian method. You’re a reductionist and your assumptions come from your methods operation, not out of thin air like this one (one of the freedoms and problems of using the Method over raw logics – less formal constraints). Kant is geared to find basic principles through logical reduction. The Method is really about pattern recognition and verification through testing based on observations. Apples and oranges. Both tasty and delicious, but not always interchangable in the kitchen. Not all tool are created equal. Not all errors are created equal. I’ve said all along I have energy deficiency issues. I think Slarti is off on his nets and that your questions about the missing joules are dead on. But you must see you too are making an assumption – the assumption molten metal existed/started to fuse before the impact. True, it explains the heat of fusion issue better. Doesn’t mean you’re wrong or Kant is wrong in his method.
It just means Gödel was right. [We know he was right, he proved it
]
Every theory has an assumption. Your assumption comes from reduction. Slarti’s come because he’s limiting himself with time in his starting point for analysis. But I think yours fits the facts better than Slarti’s at this point because of the still missing joules. (Holy crap! It’s turning into a Cary Grant movie!)”
Are you referring the the starting point of after the planes hit but before the collapse or the starting point of my process?
Buddha said:
“I also think thermite is right out as a demo material, especially since there is now a viable chemical mechanism that might explain the residue. However, while I do think the impact could have created a kind of primitive thermite? It couldn’t have done it uniformly or timely and we are back to distribution and symmetry again.
I don’t disagree explosives could have been used. And after watching the dissected tape? Those explosions were in a set sequence that sets my suspicion alarm to red. Honestly? I’ve heard explosions and I’ve heard failures. Those were explosions. BOOM! not KERACK! Compression failure makes an entirely different noise from a concussive blast. And at the bottom of this rabbit hole, that is what we are talking about: compression failure versus concussive failure. But what caused those explosions? It is a mystery. Whatever it was? It wasn’t thermite. Even visually the blasts you could see were too energetic to be thermite – they were fast hard concussions. I’ve seen thermite in action. It burns almost as slow as gunpowder. We know themalitic compounds were found but now we have a possible reason as to why with the chemistry being filled in. But is there evidence for some other HE? C-4? Centex? Even TNT should have left nitrates everywhere. Some Top Secret compound? I don’t know. But I do know concussion and heat damage things differently. Again absence of proof is not proof of absence. But those four big booms were not thermite. I’d bet a dollar on that. I also don’t think they were the Tooth Fairy either. But that’s just my opinion.”
I’m not saying anything about this because I don’t have anything to say as a scientist. I have my own opinions about these things, but they are just that.
Buddha said:
“Slarti went to the argument by analogy which I thought I addressed on the meteor question but I think the Chixalub details distracted him from my main point: energy at certain thresholds induces phase changes in materials and that his view of inelastic and elastic events was askew. Eh, my cretaceous geek got me and I wasn’t as clear as I could have been.”
I hate it when my cretaceous geek gets me. So you think that my viewing the impact as a single, inelastic collision is leading me to miss ‘escaping’ KE in the rubble during descent/impact? That’s a legitimate concern. Here is my explanation justifying my assumption:
What we know for sure is this: one moment there was falling rubble with a couple of billion GJ of kinetic energy and shortly after that there was a pile of rubble with no kinetic energy. Since we know this energy must still exist, it must have been either transferred elsewhere or transformed into a different kind of energy. I have identified several candidates for for destination energy in collisions: 1) Sonic energy. This is atmospheric shockwave emanating from the collapse. I assumed that the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for a minute and accounted for the energy accordingly. My assumptions, as always, are open to debate. Tell me why you think it was louder than a Rocket engine or longer than one minute and I’ll change it. I have accounted for this energy in my calcuations. 2) Seismic energy. This is the shockwave emanating from the impact and propagating through the earth. There were seismic monitors that recorded the collapse. I assumed that the collapse registered a 2.1 on the Richter scale (I honestly don’t know where this number comes from and if anyone knows of a better seismic record, please let me know). 3)Thermal energy. The energy that went into heating the pile of rubble. I have put all energy that isn’t otherwise accounted for into this category. Before we get to the last category, let me say that I picked these forms of energy because they were all that I could think of. I will happily include any significant energy form which I have not considered if it is pointed out to me. 4) Miscellaneous. This includes redirected KE from elastic collisions, energy doing work to pulverize either the rubble or the ground, and energy doing work to deform either the rubble or the ground. (the sonic and seismic components of this I consider as accounted for above) Since the rubble pile is eventually at rest this kinetic energy has eventually been converted into other forms i.e. it’s being accounted for elsewhere in the calculation and should be ignored here. Energy doing work to pulverize the rubble remains in that pulverized rubble as thermal energy as does energy used to deform rubble. Energy deforming or pulverizing the ground remains as heat in the ground. Since the rubble pile ends up resting on the ground, the energy used to pulverize/deform the ground effectively ends up as thermal energy in the rubble pile. From this argument you can see that I believe that the energy used to collapse the building’s structure and pulverize the materials (but not energy ejected in the pyroclastic flow) end up in the rubble heap. Even though I believe this energy ends up as thermal energy in the rubble pile, I did not include there in my calculation. Additionally, this is energy that CAN be used to melt iron. How fast do you have to bend an steel beam into a horseshoe to make it melt? How fast can the collapse of a 110-story building bend a steel beam into a horseshoe? As I hope you can see, I may have been glib about this in the discussion, but I thought everything out carefully when I constructed my model. As I’ve said before, I’m limited by the language.
Buddha said:
“When I pointed out his error about inelastic explosions, I confess I missed his contention by implication about KE gained via free fall because what I was addressing was the plane impact. I should have been clearer and I should have read better both what you and he said in those posts (it’s been one of those weeks, my game is more than a bit off). If I had, I’d have asked Slarti how much does he think he weighs at sea level. The planes were an inelastic explosion. Not enough KE to cause the right kind of phase change and get rebound. The collapse of the towers was elastic however. The rebound threw shit all over the Island. Whatever actually caused the collapse imparted sufficient energy to induce phase changes. Was that energy sufficient to create long lasting pools of molten metal all derived from gravity? Alas, that is the question. Also another arrow pointing toward those missing joules. Yeah, I was being oblique about phase changes but Slarti sh/could have picked that up.”
Sorry Buddha, I’m trying to do a lot here. It’s late and I want to get this posted, so ask about it again if you want me to comment…
Slarti,
Really? Impacting one side of a structure causes it to fall DOWN and not OVER.
You my friend are clearly not a lumberjack. Or a builder. Or a football player. Or a martial artist.
I made no assumptions other than what I stated. You did though by assuming an asymmetrical blow would cause symmetrical damage to all sides to causing them to be equally damaged (to failure) and in a time frame that allows for ordered collapse – what would be required for a downward collapse.
You are making an assumption to answer a question you have no explanation for is not an adequate answer.
Go knock out a corner or side of building. Or a couple. I’ve demoed a building with machinery, not explosives. Several in fact, including the hospital I was born in. As in I ran the site and drove a bulldozer (my dad did after all own a construction company that kept me employed as a teen). If you don’t take out all the load bearing members fairly contemporaneously? Over, not down. It doesn’t fail uniformly downward. It topples. Sloughs down at best.
Children with blocks know this and that you would assert differently makes me think you must think I’m stupid to buy that line of bullshit. Seriously.
And it happened 3 times. Uh huh. 3. Once is an anomaly. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.
The causualty number was for illustrative purposes only. The actual number would have depended on which way the tower toppled. Don’t quibble over that because you can’t explain what I’ve pointed out.
And excuse? That’s just petty.
Like you don’t make typos.
I like you so I’m going to be perfectly frank for a minute.
You’re starting to act like evasive dick, not a scientist.
I have not denied your POSSIBILITIES. Nor have I done that with Bob SINCE YOU ARE BOTH USING ASSUMPTIONS.
Your blindness to the symmetry issue is not my problem. You have done nothing to disprove what I’ve said other than make more assumptions and become insulting, something I have refrained from with you. You wanted to know what my problem was, so I told you. Your answer? Bullshit.
So I think I’ll retain my skepticism for the reasons stated. That you can’t grasp why is your problem. If you disapprove? Tough shit. You think I’m wrong just because you can’t explain the phenomena – a phenomena I’ve said needs explanation but that I’ve stipulate all along could be anomaly. Also an acceptable answer.
Since now all you assumptions are pure fucking gold and everyone else’s are crap? I’m done with this. I afforded BOTH sides their assumptions. You attack mine based on a idea children can debunk with Legos? WTF?
And as far as comments from you on this topic? Tell it to someone who doesn’t think your full of shit now. You read that right.
I’m no longer discussing the WTC with you. Call back when you pull you “superior assumption” stick out of your ass. Because guess what? As an unprovable, your assumptions are not worth any more than anyone else.
Buddha:
you make a good point about the collapse being straight down and not to the side. I think if you look at one of the collapses the top floors do lean one way and then start falling down as an entire unit of 30 or so floors.
I think this can all be explained by fire and relative heat of the columns as they increase in distance from the fire. The ones closest to the fire would loose strength first and the forces would be redistributing for a period of time to other columns as the building worked to balance the loss of some of the supporting members.
Your analogy of a Lego block structure is not quite correct as you have to take into account tensile forces which are helping to restrain the side of the building first hit by the jet plane. Think cantilever or a teeter totter. The floors would act like large beams and the portion of the core left intact would act as a “fulcrum”. The external columns and other interior columns would act as “counterweights”.
I think the buildings “exoskeleton” has quite a role to play in all of this which causes the collapse to be different from a building with internal supports.
So I think there is a rational explanation for a fairly structured collapse.
Maybe because of my educational background I have a blind spot, in that I am able to come up with reasonable, at least in my mind, explanations for the failure. I don’t see it as chaos but as an expected event based on engineering principles.
Byron,
I’m out. I don’t care any more. My reasons are clear and I’ve said my piece. If some of you disagree, fine. If you fine a plausible explanation, that’s fine too. Slarti took all the joy out of it for me. Mot because of his numbers, but because he has superior assumptions to everyone else as his rationale.
as·sump·tion \ə-ˈsəm(p)-shən\, n.,
5 a : an assuming that something is true b : a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted
As in unprovable no matter who says them.
If I wanted that kind of nonsense? I’d be troll hunting.
Ya’ll enjoy. This is my last post to this thread.
Done reading it too.
I must be communicating poorly, because you seem to have read a lot into my comments that I did not intend and do not feel. I thought that your analysis was very insightful and my comments were intended to show that approval. I have been discussing physics with Robert all day and after refuting assertions like ‘KE is not transformed into TE in collisions’ my dismissive tone with him has apparently bled over into my post to you. This was not my intent, and I apologize.
Budda said:
“And excuse? That’s just petty.
Like you don’t make typos.”
I meant it to be humorous. Since you obviously didn’t take it that way, I apologize – I meant nothing untoward.
Buddha said:
“I like you so I’m going to be perfectly frank for a minute.
You’re starting to act like evasive dick, not a scientist.”
I’m sorry you feel that way. I will attempt to behave better.
Buddha said:
“I have not denied your POSSIBILITIES. Nor have I done that with Bob SINCE YOU ARE BOTH USING ASSUMPTIONS.”
I did not intended to attack your possibilities, only to vigorously defend and clarify my possibilities and assumptions.
Buddha said:
“Your blindness to the symmetry issue is not my problem. You have done nothing to disprove what I’ve said other than make more assumptions and become insulting, something I have refrained from with you. You wanted to know what my problem was, so I told you. Your answer? Bullshit.”
I have argued so many points today that I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about here. I do not recall calling anything you said and certainly did not intend to call anything you said ‘bullshit’.
Buddha said:
“So I think I’ll retain my skepticism for the reasons stated. That you can’t grasp why is your problem. If you disapprove? Tough shit. You think I’m wrong just because you can’t explain the phenomena – a phenomena I’ve said needs explanation but that I’ve stipulate all along could be anomaly. Also an acceptable answer.”
I don’t disapprove of your skepticism. I have only been trying to explain why I don’t share it. Everything that I have argued is with the intent to show that Occam’s razor doesn’t favor CD. I think your wrong, you think I’m wrong. I wanted to find where our differences lied. I thought that they lay in our assumptions so I lay out my assumptions and justify them – I didn’t mean for you to view this as an attack on your assumptions, but rather as an invitation to attack mine.
Buddha said:
“Since now all you assumptions are pure fucking gold and everyone else’s are crap? I’m done with this. I afforded BOTH sides their assumptions. You attack mine based on a idea children can debunk with Legos? WTF?”
My assumptions aren’t better and other’s assumptions aren’t worse, my assumptions are just mine. Bob and Robert have both been misstating my assumptions (implying things like I think iron dropped from the top of the WTC will melt), in my zeal to establish exactly what my assumptions and assertions are, I have apparently stepped on your toes. Again, sorry.
Buddha said:
“And as far as comments from you on this topic? Tell it to someone who doesn’t think your full of shit now. You read that right.
I’m no longer discussing the WTC with you. Call back when you pull you “superior assumption” stick out of your ass. Because guess what? As an unprovable, your assumptions are not worth any more than anyone else.”
I don’t believe that my assumptions are better, I just didn’t want to be tagged with assumptions that I didn’t make (and let me be clear, you never did this to me or anyone else). It seems that in my attempt to clarify and define what my assumptions were, my frustration with others caused me to write something that you found very insulting. Once again, this was not my intent and I sincerely apologize. I have found this discussion extremely interesting and I think that your input into it has been very insightful and uniformly positive, even when you’ve disagreed with me. I would hate to see you leave it because of something I said, so I ask you humbly to reconsider.
Bob,
Since Buddha has stopped reading this, I would appreciate it if you would email him and ask him to read my apology.
Slarti,
Someone else e-mailed me.
Apology accepted.
Buddah, posted a documentary called The Cloud Mystery by Henrik Svensmark for you here.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/14/leading-scientist-on-global-warming-has-heart-attack-during-debate-while-delegates-storm-out-over-impasse-over-the-agreement/#comments
He is the scientist who had the heart attack in the thread. Would like to know your thoughts and your analysis. Anyone else for that matter.
Buddah, posted a documentary called The Cloud Mystery by Henrik Svensmark for you here.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/14/leading-scientist-on-global-warming-has-heart-attack-during-debate-while-delegates-storm-out-over-impasse-over-the-agreement/#comments
He is the scientist who had the heart attack in the thread. Would like to know your thoughts and your analysis. Anyone else for that matter.
Buddha,
Thank you.
It kind of got buried in the high post volume yesterday, but I thought that your discussion of the more rigorous logic that you and Bob use vs. ‘The Method’ (I really like that term) was dead on. I do use the word ‘reasonable’ frequently and I do it mainly for the reason you suggest.
Here is a link to Buddha’s post. I’m referring to the paragraph beginning ‘The Elastic Question…’
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-99205
p.s. Due to other matters which require my attention, I will have little or no time to post for the next day or so, but I’ll be back tomorrow evening to continue this discussion…
Bdaman:
what have you been up to? you havent posted for awhile at least as Bdaman.
Hope all is well in “Trollsville”.
24″ with drifts between 5-9 f’n feet.
Will check back later
Slartibartfast: “Bob said:
“but I do know that assuming steel falling from a maximum height of 415 meters, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2, will melt upon impact –[is per se unreasonable].”
Yes it is. And I have never said otherwise.”
It is an analytic truth that you said the foregoing. The concept of the predicate is contained within the concept of the subject (i.e. your theory of collapse). I don’t need to go outside your theory of collapse to find the foregoing; it’s part and parcel of your theory, just as the predicate ‘unmarried’ is part and parcel of the the subject ‘bachelor.’
You got your 17.4% (and whatever you changed it to thereafter) by ASSUMING the force of gravity accelerated the steel to a sufficient velocity to create enough Ke upon (inelastic) impact to melt it; or, as you stated earlier, 900,000 joules.
Buddha: “How the ball gets to the plate is irrelevant. It’s the home run – the order from the chaos – that matters. There are millions of paths that lead to fouls and outs, but only a few that lead to home runs. Why’d we get a homer?”
Don’t you think that question is implicit in my demand for an explanation about the molten steel? Every time someone attempts an answer they bring in the symmetrical collapse from asymmetrical damage as well as the free fall speed of said collapses as givens. It’s like Wile E Coyote running off a cliff and not realizing he’s suspended in mid air about to drop. Of course it’s a home run; the key is to make sure your opponent realizes he’s arguing there was no batter. Asking how the molten metal appeared and stayed for six months necessitates discussion of three miraculous collapses and is thus tantamount to asking how the baseball came to life and decided to leave the park.
Bob,
I understand Slarti’s conclusion to be that there was enough energy to melt the steel, not that he had determined that it was the source of the molten steel. I don’t agree with Slarti’s conclusion (mostly because it lacks the mode of operation), but I don’t think he took it as far as you are claiming. Like most criminal investigations, just because you can establish means, motive, and opportunity, that doesn’t prove guilt.
Bob,
Exactly. And I think Robert is on to why I said irrelevant. We can establish just about everything about this except culpability beyond that of the hijackers. It’s almost like looking at the Big Bang. You can only follow the causation so far back and then? We run into the threshold. Not where conventional physics fail as in cosmology, but the threshold of provable fact relating to actors. We can say there is no batter, but we cannot say who hit the ball instead. Not enough evidence.
A Troll retreat out in the woods with Bubba
Buddha,
This is not a duplicate message mr. computer…
Check your email.
Done and done. Mission accomplished.
Robert: “I understand Slarti’s conclusion to be that there was enough energy to melt the steel, not that he had determined that it was the source of the molten steel. I don’t agree with Slarti’s conclusion (mostly because it lacks the mode of operation), but I don’t think he took it as far as you are claiming. Like most criminal investigations, just because you can establish means, motive, and opportunity, that doesn’t prove guilt.”
Robert,
His entire theory is predicated upon the fall to earth created an inelastic collision with enough velocity to convert that Pe to AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF KE so as to continue on as heat energy via his inelastic impact.
All of his numbers are predicated upon the the impact being powerful enough to melt the steel.
Furthermore, the mere existence of an immense amount of Pe doesn’t warrant any assumption that it will naturally convert to heat energy.
How much PE is stored in Hoover Dam? If the dam broke and all that PE flooded the valley below; would the rushing water spark fires?
Seriously…. wtf?
Buddha: “We can establish just about everything about this except culpability beyond that of the hijackers. It’s almost like looking at the Big Bang. You can only follow the causation so far back and then? We run into the threshold. Not where conventional physics fail as in cosmology, but the threshold of provable fact relating to actors. We can say there is no batter, but we cannot say who hit the ball instead. Not enough evidence.”
Buddha,
This isn’t an episode of CSI; the collapses of buildings are simply a piece of the larger mosaic.
Vincent Bugliosi: “When prosecutors present their circumstantial case against a defendant, they put one speck of evidence upon another until ultimately there is a strong mosaic of guilt.”
Another theme running through this mosaic is
Fatetur facinus qui judicium fugit – He who flees judgment confesses his guilt.
It narrows; especially when you get to the “that couldn’t happen without access to classified information” parts.
Buddha,
The email I sent this afternoon?
It’s cold in here.
Will check back later.
Bob said:
“but I do know that assuming steel falling from a maximum height of 415 meters, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s^2, will melt upon impact –[is per se unreasonable].”
Quoting myself:
“Yes it is. And I have never said otherwise.”
Bob said:
“It is an analytic truth that you said the foregoing. The concept of the predicate is contained within the concept of the subject (i.e. your theory of collapse). I don’t need to go outside your theory of collapse to find the foregoing; it’s part and parcel of your theory, just as the predicate ‘unmarried’ is part and parcel of the the subject ‘bachelor.’
You got your 17.4% (and whatever you changed it to thereafter) by ASSUMING the force of gravity accelerated the steel to a sufficient velocity to create enough Ke upon (inelastic) impact to melt it; or, as you stated earlier, 900,000 joules.”
I have never, in this entire thread, suggested that the steel beams of the WTC were melted by the KE of impact. I have said that this could have contributed to melting them (which it could, since it adds heat). In fact, the biggest delta-T I have suggested for iron via the force of impact is about 20 degrees C. All I have said is that ‘natural’ processes could have led to molten steel (the KE of impact is really all about general heat in the rubble pile – it added a lot, and it is not credible to thinks that there could have been enough explosives in the building to significantly increase it).
These are all things that I believe could have added thermal heat to the structural steel of the WTC before, during, and after the collapse.
1. Kinetic energy from the plane impact – this kinetic energy mostly became thermal energy just as the KE in the descending rubble did.
2. Multi-fuel fires in the impact zone – fires certainly would have added heat to the steel and the fact that there were many different substances burning opens the door to synergistic effects that would allow them to burn hotter that single-fuel fires (hot enough to melt steel – probably not, but hotter than you would calculate from a single-fuel fire).
3. Shearing/Bending during the collapse – For me, this is the prime suspect for melting energy. When a steel beam is bent, the kinetic energy used to bend the beam is transformed into thermal energy in the beam via internal friction i.e. while the beam is being bent, it is also being heated. Since steel loses strength as it gets heated this is a likely explanation of why failure occurred at lower energies than Robert calculated. There were steel beams bent into the shape of horseshoes in the collapse – this requires a lot of energy, hence generating a lot of heat in the steel. (And incidentally, steel will liquify on impact, you just have to drop it from 100 km up or so…)
4. Kinetic energy from impact – This may have raised the temperature of some steel by 20 degrees and certainly added an enormous amount of heat to the rubble pile.
5. Multi-fuel fires in the rubble – same as above.
6. Exothermic reactions in the rubble – If steam is passed over hot iron, the iron oxidizes in an exothermic reaction resulting in triferric oxide and hydrogen gas. (This was used as an industrial process to make hydrogen.) Given that there was unquestionably hot iron in the rubble and that the rubble was constantly being sprayed with fire hoses, this reaction seems almost certain to have occurred. Additionally, the hydrogen gas produced would have reacted with oxygen to produce more thermal energy. I tried to find reaction rates and energy produced for this reaction but had no luck. There were also likely other exothermic reactions in the rubble.
I believe that all of these sources of thermal energy together provide a better explanation (in the sense of Occam’s razor) than the theory that additional heat from explosives was required. While explosives being used to sever structural supports to aid the gravitational collapse cannot be ruled out (though I consider it unnecessary and highly unlikely) the magnitude of explosives that would have been necessary to have significantly raised the temperature of the debris pile (before or after impact) is so improbable as to be impossible. To match the thermal energy contained in the debris pile due to the gravitational collapse of the building, 100 metric tons of TNT would need to be used. According to Wikipedia, Octanitrocubane is the most powerful non-nuclear explosive and it’s about 2.7 times as powerful as TNT. As for thermic material, per Wikipedia:
“As both thermite and thermate are notoriously difficult to ignite, initiating the reaction normally requires trained human supervision and sometimes persistent effort”
While I agree that thermitic residue in the rubble should be investigated, I don’t think that there is any cause for speculation about explosives or incendiaries unless it can be shown that the residue could not have resulted from other causes, especially in light of the main ingredients (plus a lot of free energy) being abundant in the collapse.
Bob, please don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not an idiot. I also tend to very carefully qualify what I say. While I may make a mistake from time to time, if you think I’m saying something stupid, you’ve probably misunderstood me.
Finally, If a bullet weighing 19.44g were fired at a muzzle velocity of 830 m/s through a vacuum into a stationary target, enough kinetic energy would be turned into thermal energy in the bullet to raise it’s temperature roughly 500 deg C if it were made of steel (which is the only metal I had the thermal properties of). This neglects the energy in the shockwave transmitted through the target – which was on the order of 1% of the total in the WTC collapse, and the energy that went into deforming the target (which becomes thermal energy in the target). In finding this data I did note that at a range of 3,000m, the bullet would have slowed from 830m/s to 208-248m/s (depending on the drag model), so Bob was right about the friction (which is why I specified vacuum above), although friction would be a negligible effect if the gun were fired 1m from the target.
Bob,
Yes, I got that too and thank you very much. It’s been a really weird day and your words were most helpful. I am composing a reply but I may have to finish it tomorrow. What we were talking about offline has been a hot topic here today and I think that smell I keep smelling might be neurons catching fire. I just can’t think about it anymore tonight. In fact, I have a date with a bottle of whatever the Hell I can find here in a minute. Yeah, it’s not a solution, but neither is not sleeping for a week.
As to the CSI comment, I agree completely. It’s a piece of a larger puzzle. It’s just a piece that will be limited in resolution (in the data sense of the term) absent new information. It still has utility in seeking justice.
Careful with that cold and snow. That’s serious winter you’ve got.
Slarti,
What kind of temps are required to get the steam to separate into hydrogen and oxygen? What is the source of that heat?
Robert said:
“What kind of temps are required to get the steam to separate into hydrogen and oxygen? What is the source of that heat?”
If steam is passed over hot iron the following (exothermic) reaction takes place:
3Fe(s) + 4H2O(g) –> Fe3O4(s) + 4H2(g)
The hydrogen product would then be free to react with oxygen. I couldn’t find a reference with a cursory search, but if I recall correctly, a temperature of 400 C is sufficient to catalyze this reaction (most sites just say ‘hot’). Since the rubble pile was continuously sprayed with firehoses, steam was easy to come by.
Using the process of steam electrolysis, water degenerates into H and O at 2,500C. It is worth noting that is much hotter than 400C. This process is much more energetic (but more efficient) than straight traditional electrolysis and is accomplished by adding steam energy to supplement the electrical energy in splitting the bonds. In traditional electrolysis the smallest amount of electricity necessary to electrolyze one mole of water is 65.3 Watt-hours (at 77° F; 25 degrees C) but this varies due to temperature and pressure.
And that is all I can say about that, but I hope it shines some light on this issue.
I answered that after one large Cuba Libre. Time for a Cuba Libre chaser.
As tonight’s time stamps wear on, I’d be expecting a little less coherence in my answers.
Buddha,
Seems reasonable to assume that wasn’t going on. Thanks for the info. The reaction that I’m talking about has iron as a solid, so it can’t require temperatures of more than 1500 deg C.
Slarti,
Agreed. That was meant as contrast data.
Excellent choice of cocktail. Enjoy.
Slarti,
Will do. Especially now that I can say it was doctor’s orders.
Buddha,
If you’d like, I’m a doctor and I could order you to drink as well (say, if you need a double). But remember, alcohol and mathematics DO NOT MIX! DON’T DRINK AND DERIVE!
roflol
I promise I’ll leave the slide rule alone!
Buddha: “As tonight’s time stamps wear on, I’d be expecting a little less coherence in my answers.”
Raoul Duke: “Let’s get down to the brass tacks here… How much for the ape?”
Frank Zappa: “Goodnight Austin Texas; wherever you are!”
After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice, “Who was THAT?”
Round two?
Slartibartfast:
“I have never, in this entire thread, suggested that the steel beams of the WTC were melted by the KE of impact. I have said that this could have contributed to melting them (which it could, since it adds heat). In fact, the biggest delta-T I have suggested for iron via the force of impact is about 20 degrees C. All I have said is that ‘natural’ processes could have led to molten steel (the KE of impact is really all about general heat in the rubble pile – it added a lot, and it is not credible to thinks that there could have been enough explosives in the building to significantly increase it).”
You never suggested that the Ke of impact caused the steel to melt? Really? And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what?? When you start tossing joules about and assuming the complete availability of Pe to be converted to Te by question begging and discussing meteors, exactly what else could you be implying?
Slartibartfast: “1. Kinetic energy from the plane impact – this kinetic energy mostly became thermal energy just as the KE in the descending rubble did.”
There you go again.
Slartibartfast: “2. Multi-fuel fires in the impact zone – fires certainly would have added heat to the steel and the fact that there were many different substances burning opens the door to synergistic effects that would allow them to burn hotter that single-fuel fires (hot enough to melt steel – probably not, but hotter than you would calculate from a single-fuel fire).”
Single fuel, multi-fuel, just how long do you expect diffuse hydrocarbon flames to last in a pile of oxygen deprived rubble? Christ, the explosions during the collapse were probably sufficient to ‘blow them out’ (as oil well fires are extinguished)
Slartibartfast:
“3. Shearing/Bending during the collapse – For me, this is the prime suspect for melting energy. When a steel beam is bent, the kinetic energy used to bend the beam is transformed into thermal energy in the beam via internal friction i.e. while the beam is being bent, it is also being heated. Since steel loses strength as it gets heated this is a likely explanation of why failure occurred at lower energies than Robert calculated. There were steel beams bent into the shape of horseshoes in the collapse – this requires a lot of energy, hence generating a lot of heat in the steel. (And incidentally, steel will liquify on impact, you just have to drop it from 100 km up or so…)”
Let’s begin with the concluding parenthetical of yours; shall we? Steel will never liquify on impact with planet Earth. NEVER. It may burn up in the atmosphere if you drop it from a high enough altitude, but it will NEVER liquify due to IMPACT; the gravitational acceleration of Earth and the terminal velocity barrier for free falling bodies simply will not allow a Mach 3.94 collision with Earth.
Further, the work put into bending & shearing the steel would never be sufficient to melt it. And if you really need the math before you concede such a ubiquitous point, may I remind you that you’ve conveniently removed the TIME factor from the equation Q=mc(delta-T). 16 seconds of bending and shearing DIFFERENT SUCCESSIVE PIECES OF STEEL will create a pile of molten metal lasting up to six months?
And then you chime in “oh don’t forget the fires…” What fires? The fires that kept magically burning from the remains of the magic carpets the hijackers were carrying with them?
And how could you believe that your explanation qualifies as scientific, when it fails the very first test of the scientific method? IOW, your theory for the existence of molten metal at ground zero existing for six months, employing ONLY the twin towers for your ‘theory’, falls flat on its falsified face when we look to WTC 7. And then to stand back and proclaim you won’t complete your argument unless you get paid? What’s the intellectual difference between that and closing your eyes and saying “you can’t see me.”
Bob,
It will be a couple of days before I can start round two -I will defend what I said, but for now I’m going to wrap my towel around my head and say ‘you can’t see me”. Hope whatever holidays you celebrate are going well.
I said:
“(And incidentally, steel will liquify on impact, you just have to drop it from 100 km up or so…)”
Bob replied:
“Let’s begin with the concluding parenthetical of yours; shall we? Steel will never liquify on impact with planet Earth. NEVER. It may burn up in the atmosphere if you drop it from a high enough altitude, but it will NEVER liquify due to IMPACT; the gravitational acceleration of Earth and the terminal velocity barrier for free falling bodies simply will not allow a Mach 3.94 collision with Earth.”
You’re just wrong here. If by ‘freely falling’ you mean hitting the earth at escape velocity or higher (which I clearly did when I was talking about impactors)`then it is common for, say, iron asteroids to liquify or even vaporize on impact. And if were talking about astronomical object from the solar system colliding with the Earth, the velocity of the collision is somewhere between escape velocity for the Earth (~11 km/s) and 70 km/s (for an object that while crashing into the sun gets blind-sided by the Earth in its orbit and crashes into the Earth. If the object is big enough to make it through the atmosphere, then while there may be some heating and ablation due to friction with the atmosphere, the object doesn’t really slow down significantly in the 10 seconds or less that it is passing through the 100 km or so of meaningful atmosphere (and everything I’m saying applies equally well to the moon). Basically if something is going fast enough by the time it reaches the atmosphere, it wont have time to get slowed down to terminal velocity by friction.
Moving on to consider what happens when an object hits a planetary body at 11 km/s or faster…
Wikipedia says (in the ‘impact crater’ entry):
“The damage produced by the shock wave raises the temperature of the material. In all but the smallest impacts this increase in temperature is sufficient to melt the impactor, and in larger impacts to vaporize most of it and to melt large volumes of the target. As well as being heated…”
And in the entry on Meteor Crater in Arizona, it says:
“The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modelling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per second (45,000 mph), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 12.8 kilometers per second (28,600 mph). It is believed that about half of the impactor’s 300,000 tonnes (330,000 short tons) bulk was vaporized during its descent, before it hit the ground.[7]
The impactor itself was mostly vaporized; very little of the meteorite remained within the pit that it had excavated.[8]”
It is clear that impactors don’t just melt, they actually vaporize. Also if you look at the following figure:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Craterstructure.gif
You will see the black region on the figure that the legend indicates as ‘impact melt’. In a complex crater (like Chicxulub crater) this covers most of the surface area contained in the crater (25,000 square kilometers for Chicxulub).
I’m not just trying to make a debating point here. I’m treating both an impactor hitting the Earth and the collapse of the WTC as collisions (which they both are) and applying the physics of collisions in order to estimate the magnitude of the results. Although these events are very different in magnitude, exactly the same laws of physics are used to describe both events. Just as the Chicxulub impactor released energy equivalent to one billion megatons of TNT (which mostly ended up as thermal energy), the collapse of each of the twin towers converted nearly half a teraJoule of gravitational potential energy into mainly thermal energy in the rubble pile. I don’t know how big a temperature increase in the rubble pile as a whole that this translates into and I imagine this energy would be ditributed very non-uniformly in general, but this is an enormous amount of heat and certainly suggests that the center of the rubble pile would be hotter than might otherwise be suspected.
I’ll tackle more of your post a little later.
Okay, now that I’ve made it clear where I stand on the physics of collisions, I’ll tackle the rest of the questions in Bob’s post:
Bob posted:
“Round two?
Slartibartfast:
“I have never, in this entire thread, suggested that the steel beams of the WTC were melted by the KE of impact. I have said that this could have contributed to melting them (which it could, since it adds heat). In fact, the biggest delta-T I have suggested for iron via the force of impact is about 20 degrees C. All I have said is that ‘natural’ processes could have led to molten steel (the KE of impact is really all about general heat in the rubble pile – it added a lot, and it is not credible to thinks that there could have been enough explosives in the building to significantly increase it).”
You never suggested that the Ke of impact caused the steel to melt? Really? And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what?? When you start tossing joules about and assuming the complete availability of Pe to be converted to Te by question begging and discussing meteors, exactly what else could you be implying?”
I remember my dad taking me to the MSU observatory see comet Kahoutek when I was a child – I thought that it was very cool.
You are committing the ultimate in question begging by asserting that the heat seen in the rubble can only be accounted for by thermite (or thermate or some other phlebotinum) without first determining how much heat would be expected from sources known to be present. I have used the principle of conservation of energy to estimate the amount of thermal energy in the rubble of the WTC that was originally stored as gravitational potential energy. I haven’t said anything more specific than this energy ended up as heat ‘in the rubble’, excepting that the energy that went into bending and shearing the structural steel remained in said steel (as heat). As I mentioned in my last post both the WTC collapse and a meteor’s impact are examples of collisions and therefore governed by the same laws of physics. I have given enough information for you to repeat my calculations if you wish and multiple references that demonstrate that I am using the physics in an appropriate way.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “1. Kinetic energy from the plane impact – this kinetic energy mostly became thermal energy just as the KE in the descending rubble did.”
There you go again.”
Yes, there I go again obeying conservation of energy. If I’m wrong, where did the energy go? If you can’t answer that, you don’t have a theory that can refute mine.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast: “2. Multi-fuel fires in the impact zone – fires certainly would have added heat to the steel and the fact that there were many different substances burning opens the door to synergistic effects that would allow them to burn hotter that single-fuel fires (hot enough to melt steel – probably not, but hotter than you would calculate from a single-fuel fire).”
Single fuel, multi-fuel, just how long do you expect diffuse hydrocarbon flames to last in a pile of oxygen deprived rubble? Christ, the explosions during the collapse were probably sufficient to ‘blow them out’ (as oil well fires are extinguished)”
There was an observed fireball as well as smoke and fire before the collapse. The article that you referred me to as evidence of ‘molten metal’ talked about fires in the rubble – if that’s not credible evidence, then you’ve been wasting everyone’s time.
Bob posted:
“Slartibartfast:
“3. Shearing/Bending during the collapse – For me, this is the prime suspect for melting energy. When a steel beam is bent, the kinetic energy used to bend the beam is transformed into thermal energy in the beam via internal friction i.e. while the beam is being bent, it is also being heated. Since steel loses strength as it gets heated this is a likely explanation of why failure occurred at lower energies than Robert calculated. There were steel beams bent into the shape of horseshoes in the collapse – this requires a lot of energy, hence generating a lot of heat in the steel.”
[...]
Further, the work put into bending & shearing the steel would never be sufficient to melt it. And if you really need the math before you concede such a ubiquitous point, may I remind you that you’ve conveniently removed the TIME factor from the equation Q=mc(delta-T). 16 seconds of bending and shearing DIFFERENT SUCCESSIVE PIECES OF STEEL will create a pile of molten metal lasting up to six months?”
Kinetic energy provides power to forces which do work bending and shearing steel beams, the kinetic energy is thereby converted into (mostly) thermal energy in the beams. The magnitude of this thermal energy can be determined by multiplying the force involved by the distance over which it acts (time is not a factor here – the larger the force is, the more heat it generates – and the shorter the duration of the event). This calculation applies independently to each bending and shearing event.
I tried to make a rough calculation of the kinetic energy converted to heat in bending or shearing steel I-beams, but I couldn’t find the requisite material properties, so I will just note that nearly all of the energy which powered the work of shearing and bending steel beams remained in those beams as thermal energy. There was as much as a quarter teraJoule involved in bending and shearing beams (and otherwise destroying the structure of the towers), pulverizing the materials, and ejecting the pyroclastic flow.
Bob said:
“And then you chime in “oh don’t forget the fires…” What fires? The fires that kept magically burning from the remains of the magic carpets the hijackers were carrying with them?”
Fires were observed before the collapse and were seen in the rubble according to eyewitnesses accounts that you are asserting as proof of molten metal.
Bob said:
‘And how could you believe that your explanation qualifies as scientific, when it fails the very first test of the scientific method? IOW, your theory for the existence of molten metal at ground zero existing for six months, employing ONLY the twin towers for your ‘theory’, falls flat on its falsified face when we look to WTC 7. And then to stand back and proclaim you won’t complete your argument unless you get paid? What’s the intellectual difference between that and closing your eyes and saying “you can’t see me.”’
My explanation is both falsifiable* and unfalsified. I asked (and answered) the question: ‘What were the sources of heat in the rubble of the WTC given the ‘natural’ theory of collapse?’ It is my opinion that the sources I identified (and partially quantified) are sufficient to account for observations. For various reasons, answering the same question for the collapse of WTC7 is more difficult (and you don’t get two for the price of one, either). It took me a significant amount of work for several days to complete the analysis above. I’m not willing to undertake the more difficult task of modeling the WTC7 collapse for a person who is baselessly mocking my previous analysis when I’m confident (based on my knowledge of the structure/damage/conditions in WTC7) that it will end up showing the same thing. I don’t think that you would be willing to do 10-20 hours of legal research to refute someone who keeps telling you that you don’t understand the Constitution. (And let’s take a moment here to appreciate the efforts of Vince Treacy has put into just that on the birther threads.) This is not a defect of my analysis – I am not asserting anything about WTC7, I am simply not including it in my analysis. I am, however, capable of including WTC7, which I am willing to do if I’m paid for it (and you’re free to mock it as much as you’d like as soon as the check clears). I’m looking at two related events and choosing to analyze one of them and not the other. In no way am I being intellectually dishonest.
*Proof that the energy that I calculate as available is insufficient to break loose the floors or eject the pyroclastic flow are but a few of the many ways in which my analysis could be falsified.
Bob,
Just to further emphasize my point about kinetic energy being converted to heat, this is a quote from the ‘Imapct_(mechanics)’ entry of Wikipedia:
“At normal speeds, during a perfectly inelastic collision, an object struck by a projectile will deform, and this deformation will absorb most, or even all, of the force of the collision. Viewed from the conservation of energy perspective, the kinetic energy of the projectile is changed into heat and sound energy, as a result of the deformations and vibrations induced in the struck object.”
Now that I’ve provided more evidence of what conservation of energy implies for this event and (hopefully) convinced you that the gravitational potential energy of the towers was a source of a large amount of thermal energy in the rubble, I’ll tackle your whole argument in the context of Ockham’s Razor:
It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the conversion of kinetic energy via impact. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the impact of the jetliners. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the bending and shearing of materials during the collapse. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from the burning of materials known to be present in the towers or airplanes given the observed fact of fires both before and after the collapse. It is necessary to account for thermal energy resulting from exothermic reactions that could have occurred between materials present in the debris in light of the conditions present in the debris. To assume that explosives added to the heat present in the rubble is multiplying entities beyond necessity – you know what Ockham said about that. To quote Isaac Newton, “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes.” I’m trying to account for all of the causes that we know to be present. You are trying to add in a cause that is not necessary (in my opinion) to explain appearances. I have given extensive and detailed analysis in support of my opinion. You have done absolutely nothing to support your opinion that added heat from explosives/incendiaries is necessary to explain appearances except to ignorantly and baselessly attack my analysis of the physics involved. Your only evidence of the use of incendiary/explosive devices is a residue consisting of elements present in large quantity in the debris. All of this leads me to believe that Ockham’s razor favors my theory over yours.
Wikipedia says:
“In science, Occam’s razor is used as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[4][5] In the scientific method, Occam’s razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result.[6][7][8][9]”
This is the sense in which I used Ockham’s razor. In order to decide if I should believe in the controlled demolition theory or the impact-fire theory, I considered the implications of both theories and chose the impact-fire theory as being favored by this principle.
Finally, I’d like to ask exactly how your theory that explosives/incendiaries were required to account for observations is falsifiable. In truth, while I have a falsifiable theory supported by scientific evidence which is favored by Ockham’s razor, you have an unscientific theory which cannot be falsified and the only quality that your arguments have in abundance is hypocrisy.
I await the judges’ scores for round two…
Slarti,
“And the reason you and Buddha were ‘celebrating the Comet of Kahoutek’ and all that other meteor cosmik debris was what??”
I didn’t read past that. Why? Because I am out of this conversation having said my piece. You were wrong about inelastic explosions and I’m sure you are wrong about order from disorder. It’s called a disagreement. If you have a problem with that, it’s your problem, but my adjunct to this conversation ended some time ago. I said my piece. You said yours (which did NOTHING to dispel my questions except be dismissive and evasive).
I will not be drawn back into this. Why?
Because I don’t care about the KE or PE ultimately.
Not a damn bit.
I care about the orderly result of a chaotic event.
The Anomaly.
You know. That mathematical elephant in the room you choose to ignore or gloss over. That was my point when I started and my point when I left. That’s my only point now related to the WTC: the order of the fall belies the chaos of its inception. End of line. My stance is no more complicated than that.
However . . .
You especially want to leave me out of this if you are going to put words in my mouth. It’s rude to do to someone supposedly a friend. The assumptions were one thing. That above? That was something else, Slarti. Are you just trying to piss me off? It’s called drawing in a third or – as some call it – a “cheap ass tactic”. You only do it when you are either weak, need a foil or wish to cloud the field with extra players (a dilution tactic). You might want to reconsider that approach with me. Just because I consider you a friendly doesn’t mean I won’t tear into you for that kind of crap. That was amateur night in the argument department. If you don’t respect the dojo, the dojo won’t respect you. If you are not a martial artist, ask one. They’ll be glad to explain the concept. I am one of those who considers argument exactly that: a form of martial art. You could have phrased your attack on Bob’s position without mentioning me. You want to argue with Bob, knock yourself out. He’s still in the ring. But when I stepped out, I stepped out. My decision. Not yours. Not Bob’s. Mine. But when you are in the ring and throw something at someone outside the ring? See the dojo comment above. It was sloppy at best and stupid at worst. Since I don’t think you are stupid, I’m opting for a sloppy tactical decision on your part. But it was your decision.
Just like my decision is now not to be baited back into this topic. Why? Same reason I left the earlier. Because you guys are arguing about the gun. I’m questioning the magic bullet. I’ve said my piece (which has not been refuted in any scientific manner) and I don’t like repeating myself.
That is all I have to say about this matter and I will not post again on this thread. Sure I’ll read what you and Bob go back and forth with (just like I’ll go back and finish reading your posts now) – it’s a hoot, but if the topic comes up in the future? Unless I get REALLY bored and do the probabilities myself? I’m simply going to restate some version of what I have already said.
Happy New Year.
Ahhhh Buddha….no matter the distance or the medium, you always leave me with a smile, and the knowledge that I am much better off staying on your good side!
Buddhapest,
Get a Life and its time to take that stupid looking tin foil hat off. New Years is over unless you are waiting for VDay so you and your sweets can wear it together. And celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Metal Tiger. Bong, Bong, Bong?
Only kidding. Whats happening in the Bogey Bayous? You swap ratting?
AY,
No swamp ratting tonight. Too tired and fighting a bit of a cold from being out in the crappy cold rain NY Eve. It was horrible. I am just doing a quick read of the news and e-mail before bed and a book.
You did not tell me you were in the house? Going to turn a few pages tonight?
Yeah, I finished the book I had started before Thanksgiving while up at hospital so I borrowed the last two Dark Tower books from a cousin. I’ll probably only finish one before getting back, but I have them both on the shelf already at home. Like I’ll get a lot of reading done once I hit town. I’ll be busier than a one legged man at an ass kicking contest that first week back.
Buddha,
I was just quoting Bob’s reference to you. If anyone is guilty of putting words in your mouth it is him, not me. I don’t believe that I referred to you at all in any of my three recent posts (unless you count my comment about awaiting the judges’ scores on round 2). I consider you a ‘friendly’ as well, but please do not accuse me of doing something that I did not do. I did not try, nor do I want to draw you into the ring for tactical or other reasons. I think my posts show that I am capable of answering Bob’s arguments on my own and while you are free to comment as you wish, I have no interest in misrepresenting your position in any way (and I don’t believe that I have – if you can show me where I did, I will apologize). I don’t believe that I have wronged you here so if you feel otherwise, please tell me why.
As for ‘order out of chaos’, I disagree with your interpretation, but that’s all it is – a disagreement. I have my opinion based on my reasoning (and I don’t feel that I’m ignoring this, I just don’t don’t think that there is unnatural spontaneous symmetry there) and you have your opinion based on your reasoning. It is unlikely that either of us could convince the other to change their mind and I have nothing but a heuristic argument as evidence that I am correct. Odds are that neither of us will get bored enough to do the probabilities (pun intended), so I will just respect your right to your own opinion while exerting the same right myself. If you still feel that I have disrespected Professor Turley’s dojo, please explain why so I may either defend myself or apologize.
Sorry to hear that your new year’s eve sucked – I hope the rest of your year is better.
Slarti,
No further corrective action is required.
And the NYE wasn’t so bad except for the horrid weather. Nothing finer than cold sideways rain and drunk drivers. Aside from that a good time was had by all. Except the one person in the party who drank way way too much and ended up “selling Buicks” out in the parking lot in said lovely weather while insisting that he do so without shoes or a jacket. He got to both vomit and catch a cold for his efforts. Now THAT is a bad NYE. One that could have only been made worse by the addition of ice/sleet, the cops, a hospital, and/or my ex-wife.
Buddha,
I am surprised that you didn’t say that “This Happened One Evening” I have had a few Fords to sell in my life. The Porcelain Buick Bowl was beneath me, so to speak and lordy, lordy the FORD went all over.
I’m going out shopping now, but I just thought I’d clarify for the NTH time that I never “[asserted] that the heat seen in the rubble can only be accounted for by thermite”
Ockham’s razor would never allow me to take such a stance. If I said anything at all regarding the evidence of thermitic material found at ground zero, it’s only that it’s existence, i.e. evidence of it’s use, makes for a far more plausible theory than the impossible ones fronted earlier.
Shopping now…
As I alluded to with a quote in my earlier post, in science we generally use Ockham’s razor to decide between preliminary hypotheses. In our entire discussion, this is the context in which I’ve been talking about Ockham’s razor. My original statement was that Ockham’s razor favored the hypothesis that no additional heat sources were required to account for the observed heat in the rubble. Your response was to lecture me about Ockham’s razor and imply that I was making a knee-jerk decision to ‘trust the man’. You told me that I was incorrect about what Ockham’s razor implied in this situation and obviously had no sound reasoning on which to base my assertion. The negation of my hypothesis is that additional heat sources would be required to account for the observed heat in the rubble. Thus these are the two hypotheses at bar – and by deriding the hypothesis I favored, you were asserting its negation. I have constructed a falsifiable model and used it to quantify some of the heat sources that I claim, in total, could have accounted for the observed heat. I have presented what I think is convincing evidence and what even you must admit is extensive and reasoned evidence that Ockham’s razor favors my hypothesis. Along the way, you have repeatedly accused me of being unscientific with absolutely no legitimate grounds to do so. You have ridiculed my attempts to use concepts like conservation of energy and mechanics to understand events that obey conservation of energy and are governed by the laws of mechanics. You have offered no evidence that Ockham’s razor shaves away my hypothesis, and you are now even disavowing the negation of my hypothesis. Your ‘irrefutable’ evidence is a residue consisting of substances that were present in the rubble in large amounts (this alone, in my mind, shifts the burden of proof – this makes the ‘thermic’ material innocent until proven guilty rather than the reverse). I’ve laid out my theory completely and I believe that it is far more plausible that explosives were not used given:
1) That the available sources of heat (in my opinion) were sufficient to account for the observed heat.
2) That it would take an enormous amount of explosives/incendiares to substantially increase the amount of heat in the rubble.
3) There was (in my opinion) sufficient available energy to account for observed effects of the collapse if it is viewed as the collapse of a 30 or 15-story building on top of an 80 or 95-story building, which is the mode of failure that the observations suggest.
4) There was (in my opinion) sufficient initial and secondary damage to have initiated the collapse and the observed collapse was consistent with this mode of failure.
5) It seems unreasonable/implausible to go to the trouble and expense of covertly planting and precisely detonating tons of explosives/incendiaries to achieve a mode of failure that, in my opinion, most controlled demolition experts would tell you would be the likely result of failure via damage from the impacts of the jetliners.
5) The evidence for ‘thermic materials’ is a residue made up of substances plentiful in the collapse.
6) Any eyewitness accounts from 9/11 must be viewed with extreme skepticism. Eyewitness accounts can differ under the best of circumstances, I think that it is fair to say that 9/11 was far from the best circumstances to obtain accurate eyewitness testimony.
7) None of the visual evidence contradicts the ‘natural’ explanation (given the energies involved in the collapse, things like the so-called ‘squibs’ or the pyroclastic flow are reasonable).
8) In my opinion, the similarities between the collapse of the WTC towers and controlled demolition, is simply that the WTC came down in a gravitational collapse, just like all buildings taken down by controlled demolition.
Now I’d like you to ask yourself which one of us has had a knee-jerk reaction and which one of us has a position based on reasoning and evidence? I think your whole strategy of calling me an ignorant tool who doesn’t understand the law of parsimony while attacking my reasoning and understanding of physics with specious arguments, and while flagrantly demonstrating your own ignorance of the application of Ockham’s razor is hypocritical and disingenuous.
I will post a proper reply some time today, but let me give you a small taste of the tripe you’re selling:
“Kinetic energy provides power to forces which do work bending and shearing steel beams, the kinetic energy is thereby converted into (mostly) thermal energy in the beams.”
This is categorically WRONG.
Why, because by definition the majority of the Ke is being converted into WORK, not thermal energy. Thermal energy is a frictional BYPRODUCT.
Bob,
I’ll reply to your incipient post in due course, but there are a couple of things that I would like to ask – what, in your opinion, is the proper way to apply the law of conservation of energy? (Both in general and in this case.) And what does the phrase ‘heat death of the universe’ mean to you?
Slarti,
If you want to use the law of conservation of energy, you must be willing to account for ALL of the energy. I want to know how much went into the pyroclastic cloud, and when the cloud disipated, where did the energy go. It’s YOUR isolated system, so it’s YOUR responsibility to account for ALL of the energy.
When you’re done, try this.
A 100 kg block of steel is launched at 100m/sec to the north off the top of a 1000 meter tall building. What was the total energy of the block when it was launched, and what was the total energy of the block immediately before it hit the earth?
Excellent. I’ll have some fun reading later. I’m glad you guys are sticking with this thread. It’s a blast, pardon the very inappropriate but very deliberate pun.
Buddha,
One who is about to fight for your amusement salutes you!
HAIL BUDDHA!
(and you grudgingly have my pardon for the pun…)
“what, in your opinion, is the proper way to apply the law of conservation of energy? (Both in general and in this case.)”
Good accounting practices without resorting to convenient fictions hidden within argument by verbosity.
“And what does the phrase ‘heat death of the universe’ mean to you?”
Same thing it meant to the world when they first heard of it, or at least as I read they reacted while reading of it in:
Amazon.com: Physics and Its Fifth Dimension: Society. (9780201067675): Dietrich Schroeer: Books
Only I know better. What’s your point?
Bob,Esq.,
The Fifth Dimension? I was just getting used to things falling and you had to bring a song about a hot air balloon into the picture.
Robert said:
“If you want to use the law of conservation of energy, you must be willing to account for ALL of the energy. I want to know how much went into the pyroclastic cloud, and when the cloud disipated, where did the energy go. It’s YOUR isolated system, so it’s YOUR responsibility to account for ALL of the energy.”
I have accounted for all of the energy stored as gravitational potential in the WTC on the morning of 9/11. This energy is (like all energy existing that morning) still around (by which I mean in the universe).
Assuming that there was half a teraJoule of GPE in each one tower, this is its approximate disposition:
Sonic energy: 60 megaJoules (mJ)
ejected from system
Seismic energy: 5.9 gigaJoules (gJ)
ejected from system
Collapse energy: 80 – 250 gJ
Destroying structure – energy dissipated as heat in debris
Pulverizing materials – energy dissipated as heat in debris
Ejecting pyorclastic flow* – energy ejected from system
Impact kinetic energy: 245 – 415 gJ
energy dissipated as heat in debris
In the end 493.5 gJ of GPE less what was ejected in the pyroclastic flow (a significant part of 80-250 gJ) and what GPE remained in the rubble pile was dissipated as heat in the debris pile. As you can see, I’ve accounted for all of the energy, and no one has mentioned a valid destination energy that I am not accounting for.
* I don’t really care about where this energy went (it was mostly dissipated as heat in the pyroclastic flow) – just that it left the system and so did not end up as heat in the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“When you’re done, try this.
A 100 kg block of steel is launched at 100m/sec to the north off the top of a 1000 meter tall building. What was the total energy of the block when it was launched, and what was the total energy of the block immediately before it hit the earth?”
Neglecting friction wind resistance, the block (which may be launched in any direction, incidentally) will have 1.5 mJ of KE in the instant before it hits the ground if I haven’t dropped an order of magnitude somewhere. It will be going a factor of 3^(1/2) faster than when it was launched.
Bob,
I was talking with a colleague (who happens to have a Ph.D. in physics) earlier today, and on the off chance that there was some massive hole in my understanding of physics, I asked him what he thought happened to the gravitational potential energy stored in the WTC the morning of 9/11. He replied that it was dissipated as heat. I went on to outline my thesis about the distribution and ultimate disposition of the GPE in the WTC collapse and he agreed with my analysis. He added that his advisor told him that there are three things you should never discuss: religion, politics, and thermodynamics. There have been times during this discussion that I wish I had abided by that saying. They say that ignorance is bliss, and I really wish that I was ignorant of your nirvana-like bliss. I’ve tried my best to treat you with the respect that you have utterly failed to show me, but I will not let your egregious misunderstanding of physics go unanswered.
Bob posted:
[Me] “what, in your opinion, is the proper way to apply the law of conservation of energy? (Both in general and in this case.)”
[Bob] “Good accounting practices without resorting to convenient fictions hidden within argument by verbosity.”
As I showed in my post to Robert, I have kept good accounting practices in tracking the GPE stored in the WTC pre-9/11. Unfortunately, because of your talent at misinterpreting my meaning, I have had to engage in verbosity in order to carefully qualify what I said. Also, my writing style is better suited to scientific papers and is dry. Sorry. And what convenient fictions am I supposed to have buried in my verbose prose?
Bob posted:
[Me] “And what does the phrase ‘heat death of the universe’ mean to you?”
[Bob]“Same thing it meant to the world when they first heard of it, or at least as I read they reacted while reading of it in:
[link]
Only I know better. What’s your point?”
What a perfectly unhelpful answer. My point was just to ask if you understood what the concept of ‘heat death of the universe’ means – that entropy has reached maximum due to all of the energy having been dissipated as heat spread evenly throughout the universe. The ‘end state’ of all energy is as evenly distributed heat – this is when energy ceases to be useful because it can no longer be transformed (do work). The last bit of work that any energy does is generally the work that results in its conversion to heat.
Bob said:
“I will post a proper reply some time today, but let me give you a small taste of the tripe you’re selling:
I hope that the above comment was not your ‘proper’ reply, because that would just be lame.
Bob posed:
[Me] “Kinetic energy provides power to forces which do work bending and shearing steel beams, the kinetic energy is thereby converted into (mostly) thermal energy in the beams.”
[Bob] “This is categorically WRONG.
Why, because by definition the majority of the Ke is being converted into WORK, not thermal energy. Thermal energy is a frictional BYPRODUCT.”
You know the words, but you clearly don’t understand the concepts. I have cited numerous quotes from Wikipedia giving definitions in support of my arguments. Like this one from the ‘thermal energy’ entry:
“James Joule studied the relationship between heat, work, and temperature. He observed that if he did mechanical work on a fluid, such as water, by agitating the fluid, its temperature increased. He proposed that the mechanical work he was doing on the system was converted to “thermal energy”. Specifically, he found that 4200 joules of energy were needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.”
Or this one from the ‘work’ entry:
“In thermodynamics, work performed by a system is the quantity of energy transferred by the system to another due to changes in the external parameters of the system.”
Or the ‘friction’ entry:
“When contacting surfaces move relative to each other, the friction between the two surfaces converts kinetic energy into thermal energy, or heat.”
Or this one from the entry on ‘kinetic energy’:
“Kinetic energy can be best understood by examples that demonstrate how it is transformed to and from other forms of energy. For example, a cyclist will use chemical energy that was provided by food to accelerate a bicycle to a chosen speed. This speed can be maintained without further work, except to overcome air-resistance and friction. The energy has been converted into kinetic energy – the energy of motion – but the process is not completely efficient and heat is also produced within the cyclist.
The kinetic energy in the moving cyclist and the bicycle can be converted to other forms. For example, the cyclist could encounter a hill just high enough to coast up, so that the bicycle comes to a complete halt at the top. The kinetic energy has now largely been converted to gravitational potential energy that can be released by freewheeling down the other side of the hill. (Since the bicycle lost some of its energy to friction, it will never regain all of its speed without further pedaling. Note that the energy is not destroyed; it has only been converted to another form by friction.) Alternatively the cyclist could connect a dynamo to one of the wheels and also generate some electrical energy on the descent. The bicycle would be traveling more slowly at the bottom of the hill because some of the energy has been diverted into making electrical power. Another possibility would be for the cyclist to apply the brakes, in which case the kinetic energy would be dissipated through friction as thermal energy.”
What definition did you mean?
Friction is a process in which work is done that converts kinetic energy into thermal energy. Energy is converted into other forms of energy by the process of doing work. Work is the action of energy conversion, not a destination form of energy. If I lift a mass, the work I am doing is converting mechanical energy in my muscles (itself the result of the work done to convert chemical energy into mechanical energy and heat in my muscles) into gravitational potential energy (and heat in my muscles). In your car’s engine, work is done which converts chemical energy into mechanical energy (and heat in the engine and exhaust). What happens to that mechanical energy, you might ask? After it is converted to kinetic energy (and heat in the tires and roadway – are you sensing a theme here?) most of it is dissipated as heat through work done by the brakes. Photosynthesis is a process in which work is done resulting in the conversion of electromagnetic energy into chemical energy (and heat in the plant). Look at any instance of work being done and you will find energy being converted from one form into another (and usually some heat). So my question to you is, if the work being done bending steel beams isn’t converting kinetic energy (ultimately) into heat, then where does that energy go? That energy still exists in a quantifiable form. Where is it? What form is it in?
Slarti,
“I have accounted for all of the energy stored as gravitational potential in the WTC on the morning of 9/11. This energy is (like all energy existing that morning) still around (by which I mean in the universe).”
This is not acceptable accounting. It’s liken to a parent asking where the money was spent, and the child responding “on things”. To make matters worse, the child really does consider “on things” to be an acceptable answer and pats them-self on the back for being so honest.
Saying that the energy exists in the rubble pile is (a) a bullshit dismissive answer, or (b) a demonstration of the limits of the interactions at play in the real world. I suspect that in this case the answer is (b).
Today, Professor Turley posted the high-speed video of a water droplet landing on a pool of water. Slarti would have called this an inelastic collision. In reality, the water droplet, just like the rubble from the WTC towers bounces. (unaccounted energy)
Deal with one tower at a time. I know this makes your numbers lower, but it does a much better job of permitting unaccounted variables to withstand comparative tests.
I thought we had accepted 400 billion joules of GPE as a realistic number.
Look at this video and tell me what is happening to the energy. Is it all going down? Is some going up? Where is the Slarti calculation for energy expended to send rubble up and sideways?
Look at the arc of the debris and tell me where in the “Slarti Calculations” it has been accounted for.
I cannot accept “heat in the rubble pile” as an acceptable answer.
Nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE in the Slarti Calculations is energy simply transferred into the atmosphere. That’s where most of the energy goes, and it happens instantaneously. However, the Slarti Calculations don’t account for it. It’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t see, that absorbs most of the energy.
What happens to the Slarti Calculations when you consider that, unlike earthquakes that start in the bedrock, this started in the surface, and requires many times more energy to create the same seismic energy readings?
Last but not least. The numbers for sound energy do not take frequency into account. Does anyone think it takes the same amount of energy to transmit a low frequency sound as it does a high frequency sound?
Slarti,
If I come across as frustrated, I am. I despise arrogance. One of the worst attributes of a scientist is arrogance. Instead of saying “I don’t know” a scientist will disguise ignorance by arrogance. Permit me to give an example:
Hook a seismograph to the foot of a bed. Hit the mattress with a hammer and record the readings. Now hit the frame of the bed with the same hammer using the same amount of force. Record those readings. Are they the same? Are they even close? (If you don’t have a seismograph handy, put your hand under the bed post and perform the experiment. :>)
The surface of the earth will distort. The bedrock will not. To use seismic readings caused by an earthquake, and try to equate them to something that occurred on the surface is like hitting the mattress vs. hitting the frame. To claim that you have accounted for the energy without even acknowledging the difference is arrogant.
Drop the BS “isolated system” and you may start to see reality. To not drop it is to avoid reality.
Slarti,
I have no idea what you spoke to your ‘friend in the physics department’ about, but I’m sure, nay positive, that he would not agree with your theory when showed the methodology at how you arrived at your conclusions; what you ignored in your analysis, and how it falls far from being universal, even universal to the extent that it fails to explain the glaring anomalies per the third building within the single event — WTC 7 (a building whose pile of rubble was hotter than one of the towers.)
One point Buddha alluded to was the improbability of asymmetrical damage leading to a symmetrical collapse — twice and in the same symmetrical fashion despite having two distinct asymmetrical damage patterns.
What Buddha failed to bolster his argument with was the problem with your implicit assumption with your theory of the collapse; i.e. that the building somehow in that moment wasn’t DESIGNED to exert OPPOSING NEWTONS OF FORCE upwards so as to keep it standing for nearly three decades of existence.
Assuming, and I mean ASSUMING, an entire single floor magically gave way from all support simultaneously (i.e. symmetrically) and fell to the floor beneath, do you really think that amount of force wasn’t accounted for within the design? 47 vertical steel columns just began shredding away and kept on going till they hit bottom? And how did this ‘disaster waiting to happen’ building survive hurricanes?
Newton for newton, your theory of Pe becoming Te is a pyramid scheme begging the existence of FREE WORK; i.e. you ignore the basic maxims of architecture itself — ignoring the path of greatest resistance from the roof down to the basement foundation of said building necessitated by architecture itself.
You see the free fall and you assume no resistance in the fall because that’s what you saw. You never ask the question HOW. You’re like a liberal playing foot loose and fancy free with the constitution; i.e. you never give deference to the structure of the subject you’re analyzing.
And that’s where you put your foot in your mouth with your quick segue from Pe to Te by ignoring ALL THE ENERGY THEORETICALLY NECESSARY to rip through the PATH OF GREATEST RESISTANCE to account for the collapse in the first place.
No matter what you saw, it is not true that buildings merely shred themselves to pieces. Not even Disney would attempt a fiction like that.
Finally, your defense is relying more and more on my alleged ignorance of physics while claiming I’ve been insulting you. Does Byron, an engineer, share your view? Buddha? Robert? Intersubjectively speaking, you’re shit out of luck. Yet you continually fail to comprehend why an attorney would focus on something as non-dramatic as the molten metal existing for nearly six months and how the law Q=mc(delta-T) could be held in abeyance for that time by bureaucrats and those who support their falsehoods.
You’re so wrapped up in the bedtime story you’ve been fed, with the “oh let us cry for the people on flight 93 and the firemen and the policemen” appeal to emotion tripe that you didn’t even flinch when I showed you how NIST LITERALLY TAP DANCED around and denied the existence of a physical anomaly that even you were forced to concede.
And if NIST passed on what you’re attempting; i.e. didn’t dare attempt to construct an argument based on fallacious slights of hand like you, what makes you so sure you can get away with it?
One last thing; in the class that I read that book “Physics and its 5th Dimension” we had a little experiment regarding the universality of scientific theories. We took all Horoscopes for each sign and simply wrote out the text for each one, without an identifier, on a scrap of paper. After handing them out to the members of the class, it was amazing to see how many thought that horoscope applied to them even though the odds were 11:1 against. Why? Because just like you THEY WANTED TO BELIEVE.
Just imagine Slarti, how easy it would be to ‘strip the horoscope labels’ from the pseudo scientific crap regarding the collapse of the towers, and a whole host of stories regarding 9/11, i.e. kept the empirical facts the same but changed the names, faces and removed that 9/11 label for submission to a truly blind/impartial scientific panel for analysis?
How would they react to an attorney asking “what happened to Q=mc(delta-T) that day and for the next six months?” “Where is the requisite SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT?”
Do you really believe that any self respecting scientist would formulate an argument like the one you’ve set forth here? Remember, there’s no ‘fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist’ because they’re blind to the, how shall we say, ‘horoscope labels’–i.e. their sole desire would be to believe in the consistency of the scientific theories they’ve held so dear their entire lives in lieu of buying into a ‘political fairy tale’ holding itself above the laws of nature itself.
That’s why I start with Q=mc(delta-T) Slarti.
Problem: “A 100 kg block of steel is launched at 100m/sec to the north off the top of a 1000 meter tall building. What was the total energy of the block when it was launched, and what was the total energy of the block immediately before it hit the earth?”
Slarti’s answer: Neglecting friction wind resistance, the block (which may be launched in any direction, incidentally) will have 1.5 mJ of KE in the instant before it hits the ground if I haven’t dropped an order of magnitude somewhere. It will be going a factor of 3^(1/2) faster than when it was launched.”
Initially, the object had both potential and kinetic energy.
Kinetic Energy =1/2m(v^2)=1/2(100kg)(100m/sec^2)=500,000 Joules.
Potential Energy = Mass x Gravitational acceleration X Height = 100 x 9.8 x 1000 =980,000 Joules
The total energy of this block of steel was 500,000 joules + 980,000 joules = 1,480,000 joules of combined energy. (that would be about 1.5 MegaJoules, represented as 1.5 MJ, not 1.5 mJ(which would represent millajoules or 10^-3 joules)
You final analysis “It will be going a factor of 3^(1/2) faster than when it was launched” is not supported by any math. How did you arrive at this conclusion? Show your work! I didn’t ask how fast it would be going. I asked what the total energy would be immediately before impact with the earth. Your answer of 3^1/2 times (or 1.73) faster IS INCORRECT. If you would have shown your work, you’d probably see your error. Is there a point at which the object will be moving north as fast as it is moving towards the earth? Is the object going to hit the earth in the same amount of time as it would from simply being dropped? Does a bullet, fired out of a gun, fall to the earth in the same amount of time as a bullet that was dropped from the same height?
I presented you with a problem that involves an initial velocity of 100 m/sec in a horizontal direction, and a zero velocity in the vertical direction. (Velocity is speed in a direction) We know that the vertical velocity will increase, and the horizontal velocity will decrease. Your answer must include the horizontal and vertical velocities. You cannot eliminate one from the answer without accounting for it.
If the object was just dropped from a height of 1000 meters, (not accounting for friction), it would accelerate at a rate of 9.8 meters per second per second.
The formula is t = √(2x/g) = √(2(distance/gravitational acceleration)= √(2(1000/9.8)= 14.286 seconds (In reality, friction would determine terminal velocity, which occurs in roughly 5 seconds) The vertical speed immediately before impact can be calculated using this formula. v = gt = 9.8 (14.286) = 140 meters per second.
The rest should be an easy calculation for a scientist with a complete understanding of the forces acting upon the object. It requires you to consider momentum.
Bob Esq., said “Where is the requisite SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT?”
Bob, That is the problem with Slarti’s analysis. That is the problem with trying to conserve energy where it cannot be conserved. The fallacy of an isolated system. Slarti considers the energy to become PE in the rubble. It feeds itself like some chemical reaction. Why? Because he doesn’t comprehend where it went, and the books he read failed to exit the bogus isolated system.
If the universe is the isolated system; what energy arrived on Mars? Last time I checked, it was part of the “universe” and, therefore, fair game to place in the equation.
Robert said:
“Problem: “A 100 kg block of steel is launched at 100m/sec to the north off the top of a 1000 meter tall building. What was the total energy of the block when it was launched, and what was the total energy of the block immediately before it hit the earth?”
Slarti’s answer: Neglecting friction [my mistake fixed], the block (which may be launched in any direction, incidentally) will have 1.5 mJ of KE in the instant before it hits the ground if I haven’t dropped an order of magnitude somewhere. It will be going a factor of 3^(1/2) faster than when it was launched.
Initially, the object had both potential and kinetic energy.
Kinetic Energy =1/2m(v^2)=1/2(100kg)(100m/sec^2)=500,000 Joules.
Potential Energy = Mass x Gravitational acceleration X Height = 100 x 9.8 x 1000 =980,000 Joules
The total energy of this block of steel was 500,000 joules + 980,000 joules = 1,480,000 joules of combined energy. (that would be about 1.5 MegaJoules, represented as 1.5 MJ, not 1.5 mJ(which would represent millajoules [sic] or 10^-3 joules)”
Wow, you caught an actual mistake! Yes, I used mJ to indicate megaJoules instead of MJ (in my defense, earlier in the same post you will find the following ‘… megaJoules (mJ). It should be pretty obvious that I meant megaJoules (and used the same (incorrect) abbreviation that I had clearly used for megaJoules earlier in the post. I also used gJ for gigaJoules instead of GJ. I also used 10m/s^2 as the acceleration due to gravity (which is why I got 1.5 MJ instead of 1.48 MJ). This is certainly accurate enough for the spirit of the question. There is no substantial disagreement here – the block had about 1.5 MJ of KE + GPE immediately after it was launched. And in the spirit of this complaint, mJ is milliJoules, not millajoules.
Robert said:
“You final analysis “It will be going a factor of 3^(1/2) faster than when it was launched” is not supported by any math.”
As you will see below, it’s supported by your math.
Robert said:
“How did you arrive at this conclusion? Show your work! I didn’t ask how fast it would be going. I asked what the total energy would be immediately before impact with the earth.”
And I told you 1.5 MJ and added the additional information of its speed.
Robert said:
“Your answer of 3^1/2 times (or 1.73) faster IS INCORRECT. If you would have shown your work, you’d probably see your error.”
My answer is correct (and agrees with your answer) and I will show a calculation supporting it below. Originally, I merely calculated the total energy, set that equal to kinetic energy, and solved for velocity in the equation KE=1/2mv^2.
Robert said:
“Is there a point at which the object will be moving north as fast as it is moving towards the earth? [Yes] Is the object going to hit the earth in the same amount of time as it would from simply being dropped? [Yes] Does a bullet, fired out of a gun, fall to the earth in the same amount of time as a bullet that was dropped from the same height?” [Yes]
Robert said:
“I presented you with a problem that involves an initial velocity of 100 m/sec in a horizontal direction, and a zero velocity in the vertical direction. (Velocity is speed in a direction) We know that the vertical velocity will increase, and the horizontal velocity will decrease. Your answer must include the horizontal and vertical velocities. You cannot eliminate one from the answer without accounting for it.”
As you will see below, the answer only depends on the speed, not the velocity – as I indicated above, I got the correct answer only taking energy into account. I used an easier method to solve the problem without needing to decompose the velocity into horizontal and vertical components. Contrary to what you may have been taught in your physics and math classes, there are generally multiple ways to solve most problems and any legitimate methodology will yield the correct answer (like I got).
Robert said:
“If the object was just dropped from a height of 1000 meters, (not accounting for friction), it would accelerate at a rate of 9.8 meters per second per second.
The formula is t = √(2x/g) = √(2(distance/gravitational acceleration)= √(2(1000/9.8)= 14.286 seconds”
Yes. And the square root signs are a nice touch.
Robert said:
“(In reality, friction would determine terminal velocity, which occurs in roughly 5 seconds)”
Time out! In reality, terminal velocity is determined by shape and density. a 100kg pillow (that’s a big pillow!) will reach terminal velocity very quickly while a 100kg iron javelin dropped point-first will take much longer. If we’re talking about a 100kg iron sphere, I doubt it would reach terminal velocity if dropped from 1000m.
Robert said:
“The vertical speed immediately before impact can be calculated using this formula. v = gt = 9.8 (14.286) = 140 meters per second.”
Yes.
Robert said:
“The rest should be an easy calculation for a scientist with a complete understanding of the forces acting upon the object. It requires you to consider momentum.”
I already made the easy calculation and got the correct answer but I will answer a more general problem below and show my work:
Assume that a 100kg mass is fired at a speed of 100m/s and an angle of theta (th) to the horizontal off of the top of a 1000m building.
vh = vh0 = horizontal velocity = initial horizontal velocity (neglecting friction there are no horizontal forces acting on the mass)
vv = vertical velocity
vv0 = initial vertical velocity
vh0 = 100m/s x cos(th)
vv0 = 100m/s x sin(th)
xv0 = initial vertical position = 1000m
We may assume that vv0 0, the mass will rise before it begins to descend, but when it passes 1000m its vertical speed will be -vv0.
vertical acceleration (av) is -10m/s^2 . If you passed calc 1, you should be able to compute the vertical equation of motion as:
xv(t) = xv0 + vv0 x t + 1/2 x av x t^2
If you passed algebra 1, you can solve xv(t) = 0 for t, and get the time of impact (ti) as:
ti = (1/av)(-vv0 + √(vv0^2 – 2(av)(xv0))
Where I’ve eliminated the negative root as unphysical.
This gives a vertical impact velocity of:
vv(ti) = √(vv0^2 – 2(av)(xv0))
If you passed your pre-calc class, you know that to find the magnitude of the vector A+B (where vector A=(a1,a2) and vector B=(b1,b2)) you use the formula:
|A+B| = √((a1-b1)^2+(a2-b2)^2)
This yields an impact velocity of:
vi = √(vv0^2 – 2(av)(xv0) + vh0^2)
If you remember your basic trig identities (sin^2(th)+cos^2(th)=1), then you can simplify this as:
vi = √(v0^2 – 2(av)(xv0)) = √ (10000 + 20000) m/s = 173 m/s
This is the same velocity that results from a 100kg mass having 1.5 MJ of kinetic energy and equal to (√3)(100 m/s) just as I said. If the mass is fired horizontally (theta = 0) then we have:
vhi = 100 m/s
and
vvi = 142 m/s
or exactly the same as you computed. You will notice that impact velocity does not depend on theta (like I said) and that nowhere in this calculation have I considered momentum.
Slarti: “My original statement was that Ockham’s razor favored the hypothesis that no additional heat sources were required to account for the observed heat in the rubble. Your response was to lecture me about Ockham’s razor and imply that I was making a knee-jerk decision to ‘trust the man’. You told me that I was incorrect about what Ockham’s razor implied in this situation and obviously had no sound reasoning on which to base my assertion. The negation of my hypothesis is that additional heat sources would be required to account for the observed heat in the rubble. Thus these are the two hypotheses at bar – and by deriding the hypothesis I favored, you were asserting its negation.”
Bob: “On its face, Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of another entity to explain the contradictions.”
Slartibartfast: “Occam’s razor clearly points to flaws in engineering resulting from a failure to envision such a scenario (the towers being hit deliberately by an aircraft larger than any is service when they were built with full fuel tanks and an abundance of flammables (plastics) packing into the office space causing (a) the instant removal of the fire protection from the structural steel and (b) significant degradation in the strength of the steel due to heat, leading to (c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse). Also, the buildings did not collapse at free-fall speed and several skyscrapers have been destroyed due to fire and a couple have collapsed in a manner similar to controlled demolition. I don’t have the links handy as I looked into this years ago, but just google ‘9/11 truth debunked’ and you should be able to find plenty of good information.”
Bob: “First, you apparently wouldn’t know Ockham’s razor, or the law of parsimony, if you were pissing on it. “Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” ["It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less"]. Thus, according to Ockham, we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so.” You, like many others, interpret Ockham as saying “the simplest answer is most likely the correct answer.” Thus your tendency to create a ’simple’ mythical theory for yourself out of whole cloth and argue your way backwards in a piecemeal fashion; feigning true analysis.
Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion. Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…
…
Third, you may have noticed that the towers had two support systems; one internal, i.e. the 47 steel columns, and the exo-skeletal support forming the perimeter of the building itself. Note that when the architects discussed the 707 impact design, they made the analogy of poking a hole in a metal screen; the hole exists, but the screen remains in tact. Then there are those interior columns, like rail road spikes, that weren’t exactly designed to just collapse on themselves now were they? Accordingly, when you say: “(c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse” you’re adopting the pancake theory assumption that the building was a hollow box. (See the FEMA report) [i.e. you're adopting and fronting an intellectually dishonest answer]
Fourth, fires burn up, building fall down. How hot is a diffuse jet flame? If you poured jet fuel onto concrete and lit it with a match; what happens and why? Where is the steel losing its strength and how the hell does that affect the rest of the building below; [i.e. all those newtons of force that have been holding it up for nearly three decades]? Was it built upside down? Do you see buildings as nothing more than fancy forms of stacked boxes of equal strength? Do tree trunks on your planet go from small diameter to larger diameter as you travel upwards on the tree?
Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.
Once again…
Bob: “On its face, Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of another entity to explain the contradictions.”
So, yes, ‘your theory’ is far from complete and your accounting of the energy in a PRACTICAL sense is so fanciful as to make former employees of Enron blush.
I do so love this thread.
Robert: “Bob Esq., said “Where is the requisite SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT?”
“Bob, That is the problem with Slarti’s analysis. That is the problem with trying to conserve energy where it cannot be conserved. The fallacy of an isolated system. Slarti considers the energy to become PE in the rubble. It feeds itself like some chemical reaction. Why? Because he doesn’t comprehend where it went, and the books he read failed to exit the bogus isolated system.”
“If the universe is the isolated system; what energy arrived on Mars? Last time I checked, it was part of the “universe” and, therefore, fair game to place in the equation.”
Robert,
While I agree with your nit picking about what type of system we’re analyzing, in a PRACTICAL SENSE, wouldn’t you agree that the system that is the object of our analysis is called Ground Zero? Once the energy has has been accounted for in the Ground Zero equation, either by work completed, frictional heat residue, sound waves (dear God, talk about energy coupon clipping) or what have you, the main point is that energy is no longer useful. To put it another way, once the Pe is used up as Work (via a free fall collapse courtesy of Elfin Magic perhaps) it’s no longer available to be converted into heat except as a frictional byproduct.
Further, the fires existing before the collapse would be ‘blown out’ under the same theory that explains how candles and oil well fires are extinguished.
At the end of the event, and six months thereafter, there exists an unexplained surplus of thermal energy keeping metal at or near the heat of fusion. Instead of the pile of rubble, as you say, ‘feeding itself like a chemical reaction,’ it should have been seeking thermal equilibrium.
The same principle at work when you leave a spoon in a cup of soup to cool it down (i.e. heat sink) should have been cooling down the debris to ambient temperature. The energy would not only be escaping via the high thermal conductivity of the metal, but cold bedrock surrounded by the East & Hudson rivers would also have aided the process; not to mention all the water pumped onto the area by the fire department.
Yet after six months, lo and behold there’s still a sustained source of heat capable of keeping metal at its heat of fusion.
‘feeding itself like a chemical reaction’
Either that or the energy developed a mind of its own and simply decided to stick around for half a year; right?
In any case, the strongest argument against Slarti’s explanation is its failure to apply to the collapse of WTC 7; in that his theory is by no means universal or refutable.
Robert posted:
[Me] “I have accounted for all of the energy stored as gravitational potential in the WTC on the morning of 9/11. This energy is (like all energy existing that morning) still around (by which I mean in the universe).”
[Robert] “This is not acceptable accounting. It’s liken to a parent asking where the money was spent, and the child responding “on things”. To make matters worse, the child really does consider “on things” to be an acceptable answer and pats them-self on the back for being so honest.”
My repeatedly stated intent was to account for the GPE of the WTC (in order to demonstrate that this resulted in a large amount of thermal energy in the rubble of the WTC). To say that it is not acceptable to account for exactly what I said I was and no more is ridiculous. The question was, ‘Where was the GPE stored in the WTC on 9/10/01 spent?’. I gave an accounting of where every bit of it was spent. In your analogy, it’s like parents asking a child where he spent his money and the child replying, “I spent a quarter of it at a movie, a quarter of it on candy – like gum and chocolate and stuff, and half of it on fireworks (which converted chemical energy into electromagnetic, sonic and thermal energy when I lit them off).” The answer might not have been specific on every detail, but it is complete and accurate (and I’m patting myself on the back for the fireworks thing).
Robert said:
“Saying that the energy exists in the rubble pile is (a) a bullshit dismissive answer, or (b) a demonstration of the limits of the interactions at play in the real world. I suspect that in this case the answer is (b).”
The answer is (c) factually correct. Are you saying that there is no thermal energy contained in the pile of rubble? That none of that thermal energy was originally stored as GPE?
Robert said:
“Today, Professor Turley posted the high-speed video of a water droplet landing on a pool of water. Slarti would have called this an inelastic collision. In reality, the water droplet, just like the rubble from the WTC towers bounces. (unaccounted energy)”
I would not have called that an inelastic collision. I would, however, have told you that the kinetic energy contained in the drop of water was dissipated as the sound of the splash, the ripples, and heat in the water. I have explained in detail why I am justified treating the WTC collapse as an inelastic collision. I am correct (within the rough accuracy of the calculation) to do so. You may not agree that I’m accounting for the GPE correctly, but you cannot argue that I’m not accounting for all of it.
Buddha,
Glad you’re enjoying the show.
Robert said:
“Today, Professor Turley posted the high-speed video of a water droplet landing on a pool of water. Slarti would have called this an inelastic collision. In reality, the water droplet, just like the rubble from the WTC towers bounces. (unaccounted energy)”
In my response to this comment, I forgot to point out a passage from Wikipedia that I had quoted above:
“James Joule studied the relationship between heat, work, and temperature. He observed that if he did mechanical work on a fluid, such as water, by agitating the fluid, its temperature increased. He proposed that the mechanical work he was doing on the system was converted to “thermal energy”. Specifically, he found that 4200 joules of energy were needed to raise the temperature of a kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.”
Can you Guess what was named after James Joule? Is there any reason to think that he may have understood something about energy?
Robert said:
“Deal with one tower at a time. I know this makes your numbers lower, but it does a much better job of permitting unaccounted variables to withstand comparative tests.”
There are no differences in how my model treats WTC1 and WTC2. I generally refer to the ‘WTC’ meaning either WTC1 or WTC2. All of the numbers I have been referring to lately have been for one building.
Robert said:
“I thought we had accepted 400 billion joules of GPE as a realistic number.”
We did. I was lazy and didn’t change the cell in my spreadsheet. You can find all of the correct energies referred to above, if you like. Given the accuracy of the model (which I have discussed on several occasions), 400 GJ ~ 500 GJ. The point of the computation is to give ballpark estimates, not to be accurate to 10 decimal places.
Robert said:
“Look at this video and tell me what is happening to the energy. Is it all going down? Is some going up? Where is the Slarti calculation for energy expended to send rubble up and sideways?”
As I have said repeatedly, as much as half of the GPE of the WTC was used to destroy the structure of the building, pulverize materials and eject the pyroclastic flow. In my calculation, I consider debris flung from the collapse to be included in ejecting the pyroclastic flow – since I have made no statements (except for a guess here or there that was clearly identified as such) about what fraction of that 200 GJ went into each of those categories, it doesn’t really matter, but if you’d like, feel free to include ‘debris flung from the collapse’ as its own category.
Robert said:
“Look at the arc of the debris and tell me where in the “Slarti Calculations” it has been accounted for.”
I just did.
Robert said:
“I cannot accept “heat in the rubble pile” as an acceptable answer.”
Is there no thermal energy in the rubble pile? Does not every piece of rubble have a temperature? (Or a temperature profile if you prefer.)
Robert said:
“Nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE in the Slarti Calculations is energy simply transferred into the atmosphere.”
Energy transferred into the atmosphere is called sonic energy (or colloquially a ‘big kaboom’ [to be distinguished from an 'earth-shattering kaboom']) It is a trivial amount of energy (assuming that the sound of the collapse was as loud as a rocket engine or the Krakatoa eruption as heard from 100 miles away and lasted a minute), but I accounted for it anyway.
Robert said:
“That’s where most of the energy goes, and it happens instantaneously.”
What is this magical energy in the atmosphere of which you speak? And are you seriously suggesting that energy moves from the collapsing towers into the atmosphere at infinite speed? That’s pretty funny.
Robert said:
“However, the Slarti Calculations don’t account for it. It’s not what you see, it’s what you don’t see, that absorbs most of the energy.”
I see, it becomes ‘dark energy’. Show me some evidence that your ‘dark energy’ exists. Maybe they’ll give you some time on the large hadron collider.
Robert said:
“What happens to the Slarti Calculations when you consider that, unlike earthquakes that start in the bedrock, this started in the surface, and requires many times more energy to create the same seismic energy readings?”
The Richter scale is a measurement of the energy released in a seismic event. It takes the same amount of energy to cause a seismic event that measures 2.1 on the Richter scale no matter where it’s located on or in the Earth or how it is caused.
Robert said:
“Last but not least. The numbers for sound energy do not take frequency into account. Does anyone think it takes the same amount of energy to transmit a low frequency sound as it does a high frequency sound?”
As with the Richter scale, decibels are a measure of the power required to generate a particular sound. There is no need to take frequency into account – in any case, I have ridiculously overestimated the sonic energy (as loud as a rocket engine and lasting for 1 minute) and it is still a trivial amount of energy (5.9 MJ). It takes the same amount of power to create a 100 dB sound at 100 Hz as it does to create a 100 dB sound at 10 Hz.
Robert said:
“If I come across as frustrated, I am. I despise arrogance.”
Yes, I have been very arrogant in this discussion. Much of it was done deliberately to indicate contempt for some of Bob’s (and your) ideas. Some of it was due to my annoyance at the beginning of this conversation. If you recall (although it was hundreds of posts ago), I was commenting on a thread about the climate change deniers making a mountain out of a molehill with the researcher’s emails so, as a scientist, I was annoyed already. I was engaged in a congenial discussion with Byron about an honest and substantive policy disagreement. I made an offhand comment on some off-topic posts on a subject which I had investigated to my satisfaction several years before, but had not thought much about lately. I was immediately attacked (by Bob) and ridiculed as not understanding the physics or having a reasonable, rational argument (I have at the very least proved that I have reasons for my opinions, if nothing else). Bob took (or at least I feel he took) a very condescending tone with me from the beginning and while I generally try to remain polite, I took an extremely arrogant tone in response. You jumped into the fray with some comments that I considered silly, but took some time to debunk. From your perspective you probably then got hit by a freight train of arrogance that you didn’t deserve. For that I apologize. I will continue trying to explain the science that you are misunderstanding, but I’ll try and keep the arrogance to a minimum.
Robert said:
“One of the worst attributes of a scientist is arrogance. Instead of saying “I don’t know” a scientist will disguise ignorance by arrogance.”
Good scientists (and I like to consider myself one of them) have a tendency to speculate rather than say ‘I don’t know’. We usually try to qualify such speculation as opinion, and while I may have been somewhat lax about it at the beginning of this discussion, since it has gotten going I’ve been pretty careful. I agree that disguising ignorance with arrogance is wrong, but that’s not what I’ve been doing.
Robert said:
“Permit me to give an example:
Hook a seismograph to the foot of a bed. Hit the mattress with a hammer and record the readings. Now hit the frame of the bed with the same hammer using the same amount of force. Record those readings. Are they the same? Are they even close? (If you don’t have a seismograph handy, put your hand under the bed post and perform the experiment. :>)”
So you’re saying that the same amount of energy is dissipated in each impact. The difference between the two events is how the energy is dissipated. When you hit the frame energy is dissipated as sonic energy, seismic energy, and thermal energy, when you hit the mattress, the sonic and seismic energies generated are much lower and the thermal energy generated is a little higher (I’m assuming that you don’t let the hammer ‘bounce’ in either case – that is it remains in contact with the surface of the mattress until it comes to a rest, the mattress is allowed to ‘bounce’ – using energy that ultimately becomes heat in the mattress).
Robert said:
“The surface of the earth will distort. The bedrock will not. To use seismic readings caused by an earthquake, and try to equate them to something that occurred on the surface is like hitting the mattress vs. hitting the frame. To claim that you have accounted for the energy without even acknowledging the difference is arrogant.”
I am correct in how I’m accounting for this (this isn’t arrogance, it’s confidence
). If you measure the size of a seismic wave traveling through the earth at a particular location and calculate the distance from the source (both of which were done in this case), you can compute the energy required to generate that seismic shockwave (which is measured by the Richter scale – take a look at the ‘Richter scale’ article in Wikipedia, it gives a table of how much energy is required for integers on the Richer scale and the formula to determine the energy for other values). I’m assuming that the WTC collapse measured 2.1 on the richter scale which requires about 6 GJ or the energy contained in a metric ton of TNT. In both cases of your example, the seismic and sonic energy can be measured, the thermal energy is what’s left.
Robert says:
“Drop the BS “isolated system” and you may start to see reality. To not drop it is to avoid reality.”
I have been interested in accounting for the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC on 9/10/01. If I choose my system to be the universe I can establish that conservation of energy is in play, but since I’m interested in quantifying the thermal energy in the rubble, I can restrict my attention to ‘ground zero’ (more accurately, I would specify a region in spacetime containing ‘ground zero’ and the twin towers and spanning a couple of hours on the morning of 9/11). All of the energy that I am interested in is initially inside this system and either remains in the system or leaves the system. Since the energy which leaves the system does not return, I can deduct this energy from the total system energy and then ignore it. I’ve accounted for the sonic and seismic energy and the energy ejected in the pyroclastic flow*. The rest of the energy remains in the system as thermal energy in the rubble. If you suggest any other destination energy which I am not accounting for, I will either include it in the computation or explain to you why it should not be included. My choice of isolated system and accounting of energy here has been perfectly reasonable and consistent with good scientific practice.
*Admittedly, I don’t know how much of the up to 200 GJ of GPE that wasn’t turned into KE (or more accurately, was turned into kinetic energy and converted into some other form before impact) went into ejecting the pyroclastic flow. I am aware that there are estimates that imply that the energy required to do this was too high to be caused naturally (not withstanding the fact that it would require a significant fraction of 40 metric tons of TNT just to double the available energy). I believe that the particle size distribution used in these estimates was unrealistically low, resulting in a substantial overestimate of the energy required.
Bob said:
“I have no idea what you spoke to your ‘friend in the physics department’ about, but I’m sure, nay positive, that he would not agree with your theory when showed the methodology at how you arrived at your conclusions; what you ignored in your analysis, and how it falls far from being universal, even universal to the extent that it fails to explain the glaring anomalies per the third building within the single event — WTC 7 (a building whose pile of rubble was hotter than one of the towers.)”
Seeing that he does mathematical modeling and is a mentor of mine – meaning that many of my sensibilities when it comes to making modeling decisions come from him, I’m sure, nay positive, that he would find my model reasonable (and probably interesting). And, by the way, he’s not in the physics department, he just has a Ph.D. in physics – he has a joint appointment in the applied mathematics and pharmacology departments. I’ve explained that I choose to model the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 because it was easier than WTC7 and I get two for the price of one. This is not a flaw in the theory, every single scientific theory must have a carefully limited scope, and I’ve chosen a reasonable scope in which to investigate my hypothesis that ‘natural’ explanations are sufficient to explain the observed heat in the rubble of WTC1 and WTC2. While I’ve chosen not to include WTC7 in my model, that doesn’t mean that I believe that the WTC7 collapse can’t be explained by ‘natural’ means. Briefly, I believe that fires sprayed with high pressure diesel fuel that burned unfought for hours added significant heat to the system; I believe that the increasing bowing of WTC7 leading up to the collapse is indicative of progressive failure, not controlled demolition. The officials on the scene saw this as evidence that the building would collapse soon and consequently didn’t attempt to fight the fires. The collapse of WTC7, in my opinion, was consistent with gravitational collapse initiated by progressive failure caused by damage inflicted in the collapse of the twin towers. These are some of the reasons that I believe that the ‘natural’ explanation of the collapse of WTC7 is the most reasonable.
Bob said:
“One point Buddha alluded to was the improbability of asymmetrical damage leading to a symmetrical collapse — twice and in the same symmetrical fashion despite having two distinct asymmetrical damage patterns.”
I would say that similar damage led to similar collapses. These are clearly not symmetrical (identical) collapses – the first tower which was hit was the second to collapse and any number of details differed if you look closely enough. And all we can say about our statistical universe is that two skyscrapers were hit by 767s and both collapsed. It’s hard to get much information out of that (but clearly you’re trying…).
Bob said:
“What Buddha failed to bolster his argument with was the problem with your implicit assumption with your theory of the collapse; i.e. that the building somehow in that moment wasn’t DESIGNED to exert OPPOSING NEWTONS OF FORCE upwards so as to keep it standing for nearly three decades of existence.”
The structure of the building was not designed to match the forces involved in the progressing collapse of the buildings. Imagine if CD were used to sever the structural supports on a single floor of the building simultaneously. In CD this is typically done to the first floor of a building. If the 80th floor supports were severed by CD, the remaining 30-stories would begin a gravitational collapse. If we were talking about the first floor of a 30-story building, we would expect the building to (mostly) collapse into its own footprint. But this collapsing 30-story building is on top of an 80-story building. The descending 30-story building encounters the structure of the 80-story building and immediately overwhelms it with the enormous kinetic energy of the collapse. The collapse zone continues downward trading some of its increasing kinetic energy to destroy the structure of the building. We can estimate the amount of energy that was transformed from kinetic energy to thermal energy by doing work to destroy the structure of the building (and other things) from the difference between the time of collapse and free-fall time. All that is necessary to apply this scenario to the collapse of the WTC, is to believe that the airplane impact could initiate a progressive failure which led to the gravitational collapse of the structure above the impact. Given that the impact destroyed some of the structure of the building (increasing loads on the remaining structural members), displaced fire-resistent insulation on structural members (which wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t necessary), and started fires which as a result were able to heat the structural members that were already carrying increased loads. Once one of these over-stressed structural members fails, its neighbors would immediately receive an increased load and begin to fail leading to a progressive failure of the entire building structure (a failure covering the entire cross-section of the building in the impact zone).
Bob said:
“Assuming, and I mean ASSUMING, an entire single floor magically gave way from all support simultaneously (i.e. symmetrically) and fell to the floor beneath, do you really think that amount of force wasn’t accounted for within the design? [No floor of any building ever constructed is designed to withstand the impact of a descending 15-story building, let alone a 30-story building.] 47 vertical steel columns just began shredding away and kept on going till they hit bottom? [Yes, no building is designed to withstand its own gravitational collapse once initiated.] And how did this ‘disaster waiting to happen’ building survive hurricanes? [The buildings weren't a 'disaster waiting to happen', they failed as the result of some pretty extreme events - events, I might add, that are very different than hurricanes. And it's not like category 5 hurricanes have regularly hit New York since the WTC was built.]”
Bob said:
“Newton for newton, your theory of Pe becoming Te is a pyramid scheme begging the existence of FREE WORK; i.e. you ignore the basic maxims of architecture itself — ignoring the path of greatest resistance from the roof down to the basement foundation of said building necessitated by architecture itself.”
My theory accounts for all of the GPE that was unquestionably stored in the WTC on 9/10/01 and you haven’t suggested any legitimate destination energy that I haven’t accounted for. The building collapsed (mostly) into its own footprint precisely because of the principles of architecture. All of the forces causing and resisting the collapse of the building were vertical in nature, naturally they caused vertical acceleration once the resisting forces were overwhelmed (pun intended).
Bob said:
“You see the free fall and you assume no resistance in the fall because that’s what you saw. You never ask the question HOW. You’re like a liberal playing foot loose and fancy free with the constitution; i.e. you never give deference to the structure of the subject you’re analyzing.”
As I said above, the difference between collapse time and free fall time tells us the amount of energy diverted from the kinetic energy of the collapse. I’m being strictly orthodox with the laws of physics. And I’ve put an enormous amount of thought into the structure of the WTC – I’ve just reached different conclusions than you have.
Bob said:
“And that’s where you put your foot in your mouth with your quick segue from Pe to Te by ignoring ALL THE ENERGY THEORETICALLY NECESSARY to rip through the PATH OF GREATEST RESISTANCE to account for the collapse in the first place.”
Technically, it goes from PE to KE to TE. And I have said repeatedly that the lion’s share of 80-200 GJ was available to rip through the structure of the building. Furthermore, this energy ended up as (mostly) thermal energy in the rubble.
Bob said:
“No matter what you saw, it is not true that buildings merely shred themselves to pieces. Not even Disney would attempt a fiction like that.”
Show me an example of a building undergoing gravitational collapse that doesn’t shred itself.
Bob said:
“Finally, your defense is relying more and more on my alleged ignorance of physics while claiming I’ve been insulting you.”
Yes. And I’ve posted dozens of quotes in support of my allegations, none of which you’ve refuted. I care about the ignorance of physics, but I’m not going to let the insults pass without noting them.
Bob said:
“Does Byron, an engineer, share your view? Buddha? Robert?”
I believe that Byron generally agrees with me. I believe that Buddha has said his piece on what he cares about and is now sitting back and enjoying the fight while chortling with glee and I believe that Robert’s comments speak for themselves. All of them are capable of correcting me if I’m wrong or clarifying their positions if they want to.
Bob said:
“Intersubjectively speaking, you’re shit out of luck. Yet you continually fail to comprehend why an attorney would focus on something as non-dramatic as the molten metal existing for nearly six months and how the law Q=mc(delta-T) could be held in abeyance for that time by bureaucrats and those who support their falsehoods.”
You’ve never even attempted to explain how thermic materials could account for molten metal existing for nearly six months, while I’ve explained that the collapse resulted in an enormous amount of heat in the rubble, parts of which were already hot from the fires before the collapse. After the collapse there were pockets where fires continued to burn. In addition, water was being constantly sprayed onto hot iron (possibly well within the rubble pile – thus well insulated), resulting in the oxidation of the iron and the production of hydrogen gas (and heat). The hydrogen gas combined with oxygen yielding more steam (and more heat) which was then free to oxidize more iron (and generate more heat). In addition, other exothermic reactions could have occurred in the rubble and multi-fuel fires and airflow considerations may have turned areas of the rubble into furnaces. I believe that taken as a whole, these are a much better explanation of the molten metal (which you can’t quantify in any meaningful way) than your non-existant ‘thermite’ (or ‘thermate’) theory.
Bob said:
“You’re so wrapped up in the bedtime story you’ve been fed, with the “oh let us cry for the people on flight 93 and the firemen and the policemen” appeal to emotion tripe that you didn’t even flinch when I showed you how NIST LITERALLY TAP DANCED around and denied the existence of a physical anomaly that even you were forced to concede.”
I’ve said repeatedly that I’m not defending NIST and that I think that incompetence is a much more likely explanation than conspiracy in an investigation run by the Bush-era FEMA. I’m happy to concede the facts (how else could I construct and test theories to explain them?), I just wish you could quantify them better.
Bob said:
“And if NIST passed on what you’re attempting; i.e. didn’t dare attempt to construct an argument based on fallacious slights of hand like you, what makes you so sure you can get away with it?”
There have been no fallacious slights of hand in my analysis. I’ve used plain vanilla conservation of energy and mechanics. (I do like vanilla.
)
Bob said:
“One last thing; in the class that I read that book “Physics and its 5th Dimension” we had a little experiment regarding the universality of scientific theories. We took all Horoscopes for each sign and simply wrote out the text for each one, without an identifier, on a scrap of paper. After handing them out to the members of the class, it was amazing to see how many thought that horoscope applied to them even though the odds were 11:1 against. Why? Because just like you THEY WANTED TO BELIEVE.”
I don’t want to believe, I want to understand (well, I believe in the scientific method). And I do understand a lot better than you.
Bob said:
“Just imagine Slarti, how easy it would be to ’strip the horoscope labels’ from the pseudo scientific crap regarding the collapse of the towers, and a whole host of stories regarding 9/11, i.e. kept the empirical facts the same but changed the names, faces and removed that 9/11 label for submission to a truly blind/impartial scientific panel for analysis?”
I think an impartial analysis of the facts would reach the same conclusions I have.
Bob said:
‘How would they react to an attorney asking “what happened to Q=mc(delta-T) that day and for the next six months?” “Where is the requisite SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT?”’
I described a sustained source of heat above. Where is the sustained source of heat in your thermic theory?
Bob said:
“Do you really believe that any self respecting scientist would formulate an argument like the one you’ve set forth here?”
Seeing that I’m a scientist and I have self respect, yes.
Bob said:
“Remember, there’s no ‘fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist’ because they’re blind to the, how shall we say, ‘horoscope labels’–i.e. their sole desire would be to believe in the consistency of the scientific theories they’ve held so dear their entire lives in lieu of buying into a ‘political fairy tale’ holding itself above the laws of nature itself.”
Yes, if my analysis said that the ‘natural’ explanation of the collapse wasn’t sufficient to account for observations, I’d be banging the drum with you calling for investigations. But it doesn’t.
Bob said:
“That’s why I start with Q=mc(delta-T) Slarti.”
You should really start with basic principles (like conservation of energy) to understand the processes occurring and then apply the appropriate formulas as necessary.
Robert posted:
“Bob Esq., said “Where is the requisite SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT?”
Bob, That is the problem with Slarti’s analysis. That is the problem with trying to conserve energy where it cannot be conserved. The fallacy of an isolated system. Slarti considers the energy to become PE in the rubble. It feeds itself like some chemical reaction. Why? Because he doesn’t comprehend where it went, and the books he read failed to exit the bogus isolated system.”
I account for all the energy stored as GPE in the WTC before 9/11. You have yet to offer a valid criticism of my accounting or alternate destination energy. Energy is never destroyed, so it all has to end up somewhere. I have described what I consider the isolated system above and specified the energies that leave it.
Robert said:
“If the universe is the isolated system; what energy arrived on Mars? Last time I checked, it was part of the “universe” and, therefore, fair game to place in the equation.”
I think it’s fair to say that no significant portion of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC before 9/11 reached Mars before, during, or immediately after the WTC collapse.
Bob said:
“On its face, Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of another entity to explain the contradictions.”
I’ve used Ockham’s razor to decide between two preliminary hypotheses, which is the way that it is generally used in science.
Bob said: “First, you apparently wouldn’t know Ockham’s razor, or the law of parsimony, if you were pissing on it.”
This would be a example of your insulting me.
Bob said:
‘ “Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora” ["It is pointless to do with more what can be done with less"]. Thus, according to Ockham, we ought never to postulate the reality of any entity unless it is logically necessary to do so.” You, like many others, interpret Ockham as saying “the simplest answer is most likely the correct answer.” Thus your tendency to create a ’simple’ mythical theory for yourself out of whole cloth and argue your way backwards in a piecemeal fashion; feigning true analysis.’
As I have repeatedly said, I’ve used OR to choose between the hypothesis that ‘natural’ causes were sufficient to account for observations and the hypothesis that explosives/incendiaries were required. This is how the law of parsimony is used in science.
Bob said:
“Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion.”
I question the existence of ‘tons and tons’ of steel at or near the heat of fusion six months after ground zero. You have no evidence with which to corroborate this assertion and cannot quantify the time and amount of molten metal present except to say that it existed.
Bob said:
“Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…”
OR implies that there must be additional heat sources (or that portions of the rubble were initially impossibly hot). I’ve described several sustained sources of heat in the rubble, as well as a large amount of heat initially present in the rubble. You’ve given no explanation of how thermic materials could account for this heat.
Bob said:
“[i.e. you're adopting and fronting an intellectually dishonest answer]”
No, I’m accounting for the energy available for various jobs given a ‘natural’ theory of the collapse. Prove that it required more than 200 GJ to destroy the structure of the buildings, pulverize the materials, and eject the pyroclastic flow and you falsify my hypothesis. This is how Popper (and you) say science is supposed to work.
Bob said:
“Fourth, fires burn up, building fall down. [and we drive on the parkway and park on the driveway] How hot is a diffuse jet flame? [I don't know, how hot is a diffuse jet flame?] If you poured jet fuel onto concrete and lit it with a match; what happens and why? [Nothing, the match isn't sufficient to ignite the jet fuel in that state. What happens if you pour jet fuel on office carpeting and blast it with a fireball?] Where is the steel losing its strength and how the hell does that affect the rest of the building below;{steel beams deprived of their fire-resistant insulation were heated and lost strength. I described above how a single failure would have led to a progressive failure and initiated a gravitational collapse.} [i.e. all those newtons of force that have been holding it up for nearly three decades]? {The structural members were exerting forces that held the building up for nearly three decades.} Was it built upside down? [Um... No?] Do you see buildings as nothing more than fancy forms of stacked boxes of equal strength? [I already made the 'assume the building is a sphere joke earlier.] Do tree trunks on your planet go from small diameter to larger diameter as you travel upwards on the tree? [On Margrethea we build things to order.]”
Bob said:
“Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.”
As I said before, the statistical universe is that two buildings were hit with loaded 767s and both collapsed.
Bob said:
“On its face, Ockham’s razor demands the postulation of another entity to explain the contradictions.”
No it doesn’t. I’ve repeatedly explained how I’m using OR and posted quotes that support this practice as standard in science.
Bob said:
“So, yes, ‘your theory’ is far from complete and your accounting of the energy in a PRACTICAL sense is so fanciful as to make former employees of Enron blush.”
I’m sorry you think so, but you’re wrong.
Bob said:
“Robert, While I agree with your nit picking about what type of system we’re analyzing, in a PRACTICAL SENSE, wouldn’t you agree that the system that is the object of our analysis is called Ground Zero?”
I adopted the term ‘ground zero’ after I read this.
Bob said:
“Once the energy has has been accounted for in the Ground Zero equation, either by work completed, frictional heat residue, sound waves (dear God, talk about energy coupon clipping)”
Great googly-moogly! We agree about something – you get the big kaboom on the cheap!
Bob said:
“…or what have you, the main point is that energy is no longer useful.”
Yes, when energy is dissipated as heat, it can no longer be used to do work.
Bob said:
“To put it another way, once the Pe is used up as Work (via a free fall collapse courtesy of Elfin Magic perhaps) it’s no longer available to be converted into heat except as a frictional byproduct.”
See comment above. And it’s generally spelled ‘Elven’ (at least that’s the way Tolkien spelled it, and since he created the entire language it seems reasonable to do it his way…). You never know when you might get your chance to see Elf magic, Samwise.
Bob said:
“Further, the fires existing before the collapse would be ‘blown out’ under the same theory that explains how candles and oil well fires are extinguished.”
But the heat generated by those fires would still be around. And the temperatures present after the collapse would have likely re-ignited them.
Bob said:
“At the end of the event, and six months thereafter, there exists an unexplained surplus of thermal energy keeping metal at or near the heat of fusion. Instead of the pile of rubble, as you say, ‘feeding itself like a chemical reaction,’ it should have been seeking thermal equilibrium.”
Yes, I’ve suggested that chemical reactions were fed by the constant spraying of water on the rubble.
Bob said:
“The same principle at work when you leave a spoon in a cup of soup to cool it down (i.e. heat sink) should have been cooling down the debris to ambient temperature. The energy would not only be escaping via the high thermal conductivity of the metal, but cold bedrock surrounded by the East & Hudson rivers would also have aided the process; not to mention all the water pumped onto the area by the fire department.”
As I’ve been repeatedly telling you, the water being sprayed on the rubble was the most likely source of heat in the debris. They may have been better off spraying the debris with gasoline. Also, you seem to be assuming that the pile of rubble had the thermal conductivity of a lump of metal or solid rock. The extremely inhomogeneous nature of the debris would have made for a much lower thermal conductivity.
Bob said:
“Yet after six months, lo and behold there’s still a sustained source of heat capable of keeping metal at its heat of fusion. ‘feeding itself like a chemical reaction’”
A chemical reaction fed by the constant spraying of water on the rubble (plus eyewitness accounts of pockets with fires in your sources).
Bob said:
“Either that or the energy developed a mind of its own and simply decided to stick around for half a year; right?”
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Bob said:
“In any case, the strongest argument against Slarti’s explanation is its failure to apply to the collapse of WTC 7; in that his theory is by no means universal or refutable.”
I have discussed why I didn’t include WTC7 in my analysis and some of the reasons that I believe that the ‘natural’ explanation of the WTC7 collapse best fits the observed facts. I have clearly stated my hypothesis and outlined multiple ways in which my model can be falsified. No scientific theory is universal (unless you’ve got a GUT that you’ve been keeping to yourself). I have clearly and consistently stated what my theory is, provided detailed calculations, as well as numerous quotes supporting my interpretation of the physics. In the end, all you’ve got is an enormous amount of blind faith that ‘them bildins got blowed up…’.
“I have discussed why I didn’t include WTC7 in my analysis and some of the reasons that I believe that the ‘natural’ explanation of the WTC7 collapse best fits the observed facts. I have clearly stated my hypothesis and outlined multiple ways in which my model can be falsified. No scientific theory is universal (unless you’ve got a GUT that you’ve been keeping to yourself). I have clearly and consistently stated what my theory is, provided detailed calculations, as well as numerous quotes supporting my interpretation of the physics. In the end, all you’ve got is an enormous amount of blind faith that ‘them bildins got blowed up…’.”
Since WTC 7 was part of the same event and left the same molten pile of debris as the Towers, then all the principles you brought to bear in your explanation of the towers MUST explain the unique phenomena found at WTC 7 for this event as well.
Bob said:
“Since WTC 7 was part of the same event and left the same molten pile of debris as the Towers, then all the principles you brought to bear in your explanation of the towers MUST explain the unique phenomena found at WTC 7 for this event as well.”
The collapse of WTC7 was an event caused (in my opinion) by the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 that definitely occurred after serious damage was done to the building in the twin towers’ collapse and fires were allowed to burn unchecked for hours. It left a nearby pile of debris. And I would note the there is a big difference between a ‘molten pile of debris’ and a ‘pile of debris containing some molten metal’. And yes, the phenomena observed in the WTC7 debris must be explained using the same principles applied to the circumstances of the WTC7 collapse.
A ways upthread there was some discussion of what it would take to convince you that you are wrong. To the best of my recollection you never answered the question, so I put it to you again: what would it take to convince you that explosives/incendiaries were not involved in the WTC collapse?
[Robert] “This is not acceptable accounting. It’s liken to a parent asking where the money was spent, and the child responding “on things”. To make matters worse, the child really does consider “on things” to be an acceptable answer and pats them-self on the back for being so honest.”
Slarti: “My repeatedly stated intent was to account for the GPE of the WTC (in order to demonstrate that this resulted in a large amount of thermal energy in the rubble of the WTC). To say that it is not acceptable to account for exactly what I said I was and no more is ridiculous. The question was, ‘Where was the GPE stored in the WTC on 9/10/01 spent?’. I gave an accounting of where every bit of it was spent. In your analogy, it’s like parents asking a child where he spent his money and the child replying, “I spent a quarter of it at a movie, a quarter of it on candy – like gum and chocolate and stuff, and half of it on fireworks (which converted chemical energy into electromagnetic, sonic and thermal energy when I lit them off).” The answer might not have been specific on every detail, but it is complete and accurate (and I’m patting myself on the back for the fireworks thing).”
Bob: He’s referring to your post hoc ergo propter hoc method of accounting.
Robert said:
“Saying that the energy exists in the rubble pile is (a) a bullshit dismissive answer, or (b) a demonstration of the limits of the interactions at play in the real world. I suspect that in this case the answer is (b).”
Slarti: “The answer is (c) factually correct. Are you saying that there is no thermal energy contained in the pile of rubble? That none of that thermal energy was originally stored as GPE?”
Bob: Reductio ad absurdum; a rookie dodge if there ever was one. We all acknowledge the existence of thermal energy in the piles of debris; thus the discussion. Problem is its existence necessitates the violation of a few basic laws of macro-state physics; or some creative accounting.
Slarti: “At 6am September 11, 2001 that GPE was stored in the WTC. Later in the day all of that GPE was pretty much gone (there was still some GPE in the rubble pile). What happened to it? Upon structural failure of the building, it was transformed into kinetic energy (energy of motion). But the rubble pile didn’t have any of that kinetic energy, so where did it go? The answer is into pulverizing concrete (and other things) AND THERMAL ENERGY (i.e. heat). There is plenty of energy here (1/20th the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb) to do both. If you don’t think that kinetic energy can be converted into thermal energy in this way, ask yourself what happens when a meteor hits the earth. If all of this GPE were converted into kinetic energy, it would be sufficient to melt 1,000 metric tonnes of steel. (Additionally, the kinetic energy of the faster plane on its own would have been enough to melt 4 metric tonnes of steel. You should realize that this energy was stored in the aluminum hull of the aircraft – we’ll get back to that later.) This should convince you that GPE (and the kinetic energy of the planes) is a source of heat that must be considered.
Bob: Do you see what you did there? Do you see your pattern of argumentation yet? Do you see the wild fanciful theories of meteors striking earth and the grandiose assumption that ALL THE GPE would be available in an instant?
In lieu of acknowledging the architectural WORK put into the design and structure of the building, and thence the incredible amount of WORK required to tear it down, you emphasize THERMAL ENERGY so much as to put it in the tertiary spot in the analysis where THERMAL ENERGY VIA FRICTIONAL BYPRODUCT OF WORK actually belongs. Meaning, even your choice of words in your argument betrays your intent of getting Work on the cheap. Your comments about “there is plenty of energy here” and thence tossing up the Hiroshima assumptions only serves to illustrate just how much you’re willing to disregard the IMMENSE MAGNITUDE OF WORK REQUIRED TO CREATE THE F’N PILE OF RUBBLE. Because once you’ve ‘spent the money on Work’ it’s not available for Thermal energy. Any byproduct of work creating Thermal energy doesn’t reduce the amount of work necessary to shred the building, as your ‘ASSUMPTION’ requires, but is simply added on to the total energy required to create said molten rubble.
By beginning with your assumption regarding an unknown amount of tertiary byproduct, further predicated by a ballpark guess regarding how many joules it would take to melt a certain amount of metric tons of steel, you cannot logically work your way backwards to determine the finite amount of WORK required to be subtracted from the Pe in the buildings to tear it apart.
This is why your accounting is so offensive. Logically, the amount of WORK required to tear the building apart in the manner displayed on 9/11 is a CONSTANT. By your method of accounting, however, it’s a variable dependent on the amount of heat you find in the rubble.
Exactly how does one check for the probability that explosives were used or not used in a building collapse when your method of analysis couldn’t give a shit whether it fell naturally or not? By making thermal energy secondary (to Pe) and WORK a tertiary concern, you ignore the architectural constants of the building itself and always arrive at a theory of natural collapse with variable amounts of WORK thrown in as a tertiary concern to balance YOUR method of analysis.
And getting back to your grandiose assumption that ALL THE GPE would be available in an instant; do you see how you’re ignoring the architecture of the building? Going up floor by floor, inch by inch, does the potential energy remain the same? This is part of the naivete with the ‘pancake theory.’ Only a child would say that the entire portion of the building above the impact zone was pressing directly down on said area. Yet this is the implicit assumption conveyed in ‘the pancake theory.’
The question Slarti, seeing how each floor was anchored to a 47 steel column core and an exo-skeletal perimeter, is how much potential energy is contained in the floor about to magically collapse in a symmetrical fashion?
Did you guess that it’s NOT the total amount of GPE in the building? That it’s not even close? Do you understand that the architecture of the building creating all those opposing newtons of force from the floor of initial impact down to the basement are just waiting to stop that initial collapse? Symmetrical collapse of a floor of approx 12 feet takes out 47 steel columns and the perimeter support of the entire building ALL THE WAY DOWN?
Like I said
Bob: “You are aware that the NASA thermograph puts the rubble of Building 7 at more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse; aren’t you?”
Slarti: “I am now. That’s pretty hot (not like center of the sun hot but a lot warmer than high noon in the desert (except maybe on Mercury). So what?”
When you spend all that money on the WORK, you’ve got to rob another purse to pay for all those fireworks; unless you engage in ‘creative accounting.’
Slarti: “The collapse of WTC7 was an event caused (in my opinion) by the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 that definitely occurred after serious damage was done to the building in the twin towers’ collapse and fires were allowed to burn unchecked for hours.”
Are you aware of the witnesses trapped inside WTC 7 who believed they were about to die because of the explosions heard within WTC 7? Further, as I stated before:
“Actually, according to FEMA, there was no structural damage from the collapse of the North Tower. They said that a piece of debris from that collapse breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. That piece of debris had to travel across WTC6 and Vesey St., penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of WTC 7, including a concrete masonry wall.
And it was all that ‘burning fuel oil’ that not only managed to completely bring down a steel building for the first time in history, but its collapse was explained by the BBC 20 minutes before it ever happened.”
Slarti: “It left a nearby pile of debris. And I would note the there is a big difference between a ‘molten pile of debris’ and a ‘pile of debris containing some molten metal’.”
That’s about as cute as correcting my spelling. You know damn well what I meant; to wit: The debris of Building 7 registered more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse.
Slarti: “And yes, the phenomena observed in the WTC7 debris must be explained using the same principles applied to the circumstances of the WTC7 collapse.”
That’s my point; you can’t do it. Since you relied so heavily on qualitative descriptions of a massive amount of GPE available in the Towers, your theory simply does not and can not account for the collapse of WTC 7. And yet when you hear Ockham’s call to check your bullpen for another entity to explain the discrepancy, you ignore it like a petulant child.
Slarti: A ways upthread there was some discussion of what it would take to convince you that you are wrong. To the best of my recollection you never answered the question, so I put it to you again: what would it take to convince you that explosives/incendiaries were not involved in the WTC collapse?”
I didn’t answer because I objected to the form of the question. Slarti, in case I haven’t told you before, I’m a Meyers-Briggs INTP/INTJ. What does that mean? It means, for purposes here, that I’m normally an affable guy until someone violates a PRINCIPLE or calls a principle into question without foundation.
So, the short answer would be to hear an explanation that properly accounted for all the principles at play in this scenario.
The second problem I have with your form of question, and you should mark this down in your notebook for future reference, is that it screams of ‘outcome determinism.’ What you’re doing in that question is asking me for a desired outcome on my part so that you can, like an intellectually dishonest judge, can cobble together a few premises, sans syllogism, to create the illusion that you’ve arrived at said outcome by honest reasoning. (See Dred Scott)
Slarti: “The structure of the building was not designed to match the forces involved in the progressing collapse of the buildings.”
So the interior 47 Column support structure, as seen always standing on its own and higher than the rest of the building during construction, was just for show?
Slarti: “Imagine if CD were used to sever the structural supports on a single floor of the building simultaneously. In CD this is typically done to the first floor of a building. If the 80th floor supports were severed by CD, the remaining 30-stories would begin a gravitational collapse.”
Slarti, you stumbled upon one of my own thought experiments I created while trying to comprehend what happened. Problem with this one is, as Buddha would chime in, it’s impossible. The correct order of operations is not to assume CD, why? Because Ockham would not allow it until we’ve ruled out everything else. Here, you’re talking about the instantaneous availability of the GPE stored in 30 stories of a Tower; which as you conceded, could only be conceived of in a CD sense. Yet we know, in the absence of CD, the law of conservation of mass does not allow for the instantaneous disappearance of a single floor’s worth of perimeter steel as well as a single floor’s height section of the 47 steel column core. And ASSUMING that Elfin magic (I like Keebler elves better than Tolkien elves; despite the hype created by Leonard Nimoy’s music video about Bilbo Baggins) did kick in, i.e. removing the law of conservation of mass and allowing for an approximately 12 foot free fall of the 30 story structure; WOULD EVEN THAT BE SUFFICIENT TO SHRED THE 47 COLUMN CORE?
To give you an idea, let’s go one step further into imagination land. Imagine a hammer of the God; a giant sledge hammer in the form used to drive rail road spikes coming out of the sky and landing square on that 47 steel column core. Do rail road spikes shatter into little pieces when driven into the ground? Why is it easier to break a pencil by applying force to its mid-section than by applying force vertically down its length?
Beginning to see the problem yet?
Best.
Thread.
Ever.
Bob said:
“He’s referring to your post hoc ergo propter hoc method of accounting.”
I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system. Just because you don’t understand the principle of energy conservation doesn’t change the fact that I have completely accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC.
Bob said:
“Reductio ad absurdum; a rookie dodge if there ever was one. We all acknowledge the existence of thermal energy in the piles of debris; thus the discussion. Problem is its existence necessitates the violation of a few basic laws of macro-state physics; or some creative accounting.”
You’ve never provided any evidence of why ‘its existence necessitates the violation of a few basic laws of macro-state physics’ or specified what ‘laws of macro-state physics’ enable you to blatantly disregard conservation of energy. And when I learned about it in math class ‘Reductio ad absurdum’ or ‘proof by contradiction’ was a logical technique and I have made use of it only in showing that your theories lead to logical impossibilities or improbabilities.
Bob said:
“Do you see what you did there? [I made a sound scientific argument, carefully qualifying in and quantifying it as much as possible.] Do you see your pattern of argumentation yet? [Yes, I offer logically consistent theories which obey the laws of physics.] Do you see the wild fanciful theories of meteors striking earth and the grandiose assumption that ALL THE GPE would be available in an instant? [So you consider the idea of a meteor striking the Earth fanciful? GPE is converted to KE in a very well defined way, we can use the observed difference between the free-fall time and the collapse time to determine how much of this KE is diverted and used to do the work of destroying the structure of the building.]
Bob said:
“In lieu of acknowledging the architectural WORK put into the design and structure of the building [You are showing a misunderstanding here - the structure of the building doesn't do any work - work is force times distance and the whole point of the structure is to balance the force of gravity so it does not move (i.e. collapse)], and thence the incredible amount of WORK required to tear it down [As much as 200 GJ of work. I think that's a lot of work, don't you? And the by-product of all this work is heat.], you emphasize THERMAL ENERGY so much as to put it in the tertiary spot in the analysis where THERMAL ENERGY VIA FRICTIONAL BYPRODUCT OF WORK actually belongs [That's some nice techno-babble]. Meaning, even your choice of words in your argument betrays your intent of getting Work on the cheap [You just fundamentally don't understand that work dissipates energy. Work does not destroy energy - energy is never destroyed.]. Your comments about “there is plenty of energy here” and thence tossing up the Hiroshima assumptions only serves to illustrate just how much you’re willing to disregard the IMMENSE MAGNITUDE OF WORK REQUIRED TO CREATE THE F’N PILE OF RUBBLE. [I suggest that this 'immense magnitude of work' is 200 GJ - how much work do you think was required? Where are you getting energy in excess of the 200 GJ supplied by gravity?] Because once you’ve ’spent the money on Work’ it’s not available for Thermal energy [Once I've 'spent the money', I can't do any more work because the energy has been transformed into heat i.e. 'someone else has the money'.]. Any byproduct of work creating Thermal energy doesn’t reduce the amount of work necessary to shred the building [except insomuch as the heating of steel beams due to rapid bending will lower their strength, making it easier to 'shred' them.], as your ‘ASSUMPTION’ requires, but is simply added on to the total energy required to create said molten rubble. [Again you talk about 'molten rubble' in an effort to imply an impossible amount of heat (which you only explain with a vague reference to your mystical compound 'thermate'). There was some (unknown quantity) of steel at or near the heat of fusion in the rubble, it was not a vast cauldron of molten steel and debris.]”
Bob said:
“By beginning with your assumption regarding an unknown amount of tertiary byproduct, further predicated by a ballpark guess regarding how many joules it would take to melt a certain amount of metric tons of steel [I began with the agreed upon total GPE (400 GJ)* and then I did a calculation using constants from a source that Robert linked to. It takes about 0.9 MJ to melt 1 kg of steel at room temperature - a reasonably accurate computation, not a ballpark guess. (Robert, you have helped me enormously by citing all of these sources - I'm having some fun with the study you referenced establishing the GPE as 400 GJ that I'll talk about later. Thanks.)], you cannot logically work your way backwards to determine the finite amount of WORK required to be subtracted from the Pe in the buildings to tear it apart. [I used the difference between the collapse time and free fall time to estimate how much KE was present in the rubble immediately before impact, the rest of the energy stored as GPE was used elsewhere, i.e. to destroy the structure of the building.]”
* The estimate of 400 GJ GPE is low because it only takes into account the structure of the building itself (the ‘dead load’) as opposed to the ‘live load’ the building was carrying the morning of 9/11.
Bob said:
“This is why your accounting is so offensive. [Not nearly as offensive as your continuing hypocrisy and unjustified condescension.] Logically, the amount of WORK required to tear the building apart in the manner displayed on 9/11 is a CONSTANT. [A constant which I have estimated the value of as 80-200 GJ.] By your method of accounting, however, it’s a variable dependent on the amount of heat you find in the rubble. [The variability in the estimate is due to variability in the estimated collapse time of 10-13s. All of the energy that doesn't leave the system (via sound, seismic wave or the pyroclastic flow or other expelled debris) remains in the system as heat (and the GPE of the rubble pile).]”
Bob said:
“Exactly how does one check for the probability that explosives were used or not used in a building collapse when your method of analysis couldn’t give a shit whether it fell naturally or not? [I have repeatedly stated that my hypothesis is that 'natural' sources of heat were sufficient to account for observations. The purpose of making and testing this hypothesis is to determine whether or not the building fell naturally. And you should watch your language, small children may be reading though the nearly 900 posts here in order to discover the sunning wisdom contained in 'Physics according to Bob'.] By making thermal energy secondary (to Pe) and WORK a tertiary concern, you ignore the architectural constants of the building itself and always arrive at a theory of natural collapse with variable amounts of WORK thrown in as a tertiary concern to balance YOUR method of analysis. [Some more techno-babble. To clarify, work is the conversion of one form of energy into another form of energy - further work may be done by the same energy until that energy has been dissipated as heat and can no longer perform useful work. An example: Work is done by gravitation at the initiation of the collapse converting GPE to KE, some of this KE is used via the process of collision to bend and shear steel beams and converted into TE in the beams (which are now part of the debris).]”
Bob said:
“And getting back to your grandiose assumption that ALL THE GPE would be available in an instant; [I've not made any grandiose assumptions. GPE is converted to KE via the process of gravitation - do you have a problem with me using Newton's law of gravitation to compute the rate at which this occurs?] do you see how you’re ignoring the architecture of the building? [Robert linked an article estimating the total GPE of the WTC (398 GJ - or 400 GJ to the accuracy of their computation), it has a table of the GPE by floor taking into account the decreasing mass of structural steel as we go up the building. In what way is this 'ignoring the architecture of the building'?] Going up floor by floor, inch by inch, does the potential energy remain the same? [If you'd like to know, check out the table in the article Robert linked to - it ranges from 97 MJ for the first floor to 5.4 GJ for the 110th floor.] This is part of the naivete with the ‘pancake theory.’ Only a child would say that the entire portion of the building above the impact zone was pressing directly down on said area. Yet this is the implicit assumption conveyed in ‘the pancake theory.’”
Okay, we need to pause here to do a little computation and analysis. Using the table of floor by floor GPE, we find that the uppermost 15 floors of the WTC masses about 23 kilotons. This doesn’t include people, office furniture, computers, interior partitioning, or heavy equipment (I’m sure there was plenty of elevator machinery at the top of the building). Just for a sense of scale, 1000 people averaging 75 kg on the 95th floor would add about 270 MJ to the total GPE. This means that there was a static load of over 230 megaNewtons bearing on the remaining intact and damaged structural members in the impact zone. (The actual dynamic load would be even bigger.) Some of the damaged structural members were bearing more than their fair share of this load as well as being heated by fires. At some point the the yield strength of one of these members was decreased by heating to the point where it was below the load bearing on the member and it failed, increasing the load on the nearby (probably also damaged and heated) members causing them to fail. This progressive failure continued until structural members under sharply increasing loads had failed across the entire cross-section of the building. At this point the upper section of the building ‘fell’ 4 meters onto the 94th floor and impacted it. In its short fall it converted over 900 MJ of GPE to KE (and spend a little of that KE to collapse non-structural partitions or otherwise destroy materials). This is the equivalent of over 200 kg of TNT or 10 millionths of the Hiroshima bomb (that was just to bug you). There is no way that the 94th floor could stop this descending mass so it failed and became part of a bigger mass with more KE that impacted the 93rd floor and the collapse proceeded downwards (the 96th floor and above collapsed one by one as well). As the collapse descended, the energy increased until the energy of the descending debris exerted huge forces very quickly and generated significant heat in the increasingly more massive structural steel. Thus the biggest forces were acting in the center of the lower floors of the building where there was a higher density of steel per floor, thus generating the the most heat in a mass of iron at the bottom of the rubble where it was concentrated and best insulated (thermally) from the outside. Please tell me again how my analysis is childish.
Bob said:
“The question Slarti, seeing how each floor was anchored to a 47 steel column core and an exo-skeletal perimeter, is how much potential energy is contained in the floor about to magically collapse in a symmetrical fashion?”
I think I’ve pretty clearly stated how I think the collapse happened and what the forces and energies involved were.
Bob said:
“Did you guess that it’s NOT the total amount of GPE in the building? [I didn't guess, I calculated it.] That it’s not even close? [Something like 1 GJ has been converted from GPE to KE.] Do you understand that the architecture of the building creating all those opposing newtons of force from the floor of initial impact down to the basement are just waiting to stop that initial collapse? [No structure on earth could come close to withstanding the impact of a 23 kiloton mass impacting it with 1 GJ of kinetic energy. Things get even worse the farther down you go.] Symmetrical collapse of a floor of approx 12 feet takes out 47 steel columns and the perimeter support of the entire building ALL THE WAY DOWN? [Yup. One by one (more or less).]”
Bob said:
“When you spend all that money on the WORK, you’ve got to rob another purse to pay for all those fireworks; unless you engage in ‘creative accounting.’”
After you spend money, it still exists – you just don’t have it any more. GPE paid KE to ‘get the ball rolling’ and continued to pay out all the way down (he had 400 GJ to start with). KE spent some along the way to smash the floors one by one (paid to TE in the structural steel), pulverize debris (paid to TE in the debris), and to eject the pyroclastic flow and various debris (paid to various parties outside the system) – and the big kaboom (paid to sonic energy – and ultimately TE in the atmosphere) this totals 80 – 200 GJ. When the collapse hit the ground, KE blew his wad with a little ending up with seismic energy (5.9 GJ) but most ending up with TE in the rubble. When the ‘dust cleared’ so to speak, GPE had a 30-story pile of rubble left, KE was flat broke and except for the money that got spent out of the system, everything else ended up with TE in the rubble (the lion’s share of 400 GJ). Just how am I engaging in ‘creative accounting’?
I’m sorry to say, Bob, that when it comes to knowledge and understanding of science, you’re just graduating from T-ball and I’m just getting started in the Show (That’s the major leagues if you’ve never seen ‘Bull Durham’). This isn’t a fair fight are you’re on the wrong side – I might be the Goliath in this story, but you’re no David.
Slarti: “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system. Just because you don’t understand the principle of energy conservation doesn’t change the fact that I have completely accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC.”
Now you’re getting arrogant. If I didn’t understand the principle of energy conservation, why would I be so damned annoyed at your attempt to get work on the cheap by beginning with the thermal energy you guestimated to be in the rubble, subtracting it from the total Pe of the building and arriving at the Work force used to tear that entire building apart as a trivial remainder??
You say you accounted for all the the energy in the tower and how it was spent; yes, yes you did make a deductive argument. However, I say your selection & ordering of your premises has lead you to believe the moon is made of green cheese.
To wit:
All celestial bodies are made of green cheese.
The moon is a celestial body.
Therefore the moon is made of green cheese.
Deductively speaking, the foregoing is a sound argument. Yet it’s ultimately bullshit because of a counter-factual premise; e.g. like your deducing the amount of work required to tear down the building based on your left-field guestimate of the energy within the rubble and the implicit assumption that ALL of the Pe could be immediately converted to Ke for your cosmic inelastic impact; which the gravitational constant of Earth simply does not allow.
The burden is upon he who affirms; not he who denies. I’m asking why there was molten metal in the debris for WTC 1, 2 & 7 for nearly six months after the event. And the reason I’m asking is I don’t believe the moon is made of green f’n cheese.
One last note for tonight (it’s getting late)
Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers?
Q=mc(delta-T)
Six months Slarti. Six months at or near the heat of fusion for molten metal.
Slarti: “The collapse of WTC7 was an event caused (in my opinion) by the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 that definitely occurred after serious damage was done to the building in the twin towers’ collapse and fires were allowed to burn unchecked for hours.”
Bob,
Here is an email from the commander on the scene at WTC7 (from debunking911.com):
“Regarding WTC 7: The long-awaited US Government NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report on the collapse of WTC 7 is due to be published at the end of this year (although it has been delayed already a few times). That report should explain the cause and mechanics of the collapse in great detail. Early on the afternoon of September 11th 2001, following the collapse of WTC 1 & 2, I feared a collapse of WTC 7 (as did many on my staff).
The reasons are as follows:
1 – Although prior to that day high-rise structures had never collapsed, The collapse of WTC 1 & 2 showed that certain high-rise structures subjected to damage from impact and from fire will collapse.
2. The collapse of WTC 1 damaged portions of the lower floors of WTC 7.
3. WTC 7, we knew, was built on a small number of large columns providing an open Atrium on the lower levels.
4. numerous fires on many floors of WTC 7 burned without sufficient water supply to attack them.
For these reasons I made the decision (without consulting the owner, the mayor or anyone else – as ranking fire officer, that decision was my responsibility) to clear a collapse zone surrounding the building and to stop all activity within that zone. Approximately three hours after that order was given, WTC 7 collapsed.
Conspiracy theories abound and I believe firmly that all of them are without merit.
Regards, Dan Nigro
Chief of Department FDNY (retired)”
Is the retired fire chief in on the conspiracy, or can we take this at face value?
Bob said:
“Are you aware of the witnesses trapped inside WTC 7 who believed they were about to die because of the explosions heard within WTC 7?”
You don’t think that there were things in a major skyscraper (electrical substations, elevator machinery, etc.) that could possibly explode after damage in the collapse of WTC1 and unfought fires?
Bob said:
“And it was all that ‘burning fuel oil’ that not only managed to completely bring down a steel building for the first time in history [If you're not totally stupid, you know that I'm alleging that a combination of 'natural' factors led to a progressive failure like I described in my previous post.], but its collapse was explained by the BBC 20 minutes before it ever happened.”
You don’t think that in an extremely stressful situation, when discussing a building that everyone had been expecting to collapse for 3 hours, a BBC reporter could have misspoke? Rather, you think that a BBC reporter was in on the conspiracy and accidentally revealed secret information? Yes Bob, that’s a fine tinfoil hat you’re wearing.
[Me] “It left a nearby pile of debris. And I would note the there is a big difference between a ‘molten pile of debris’ and a ‘pile of debris containing some molten metal’.”
[Bob] “That’s about as cute as correcting my spelling. You know damn well what I meant; to wit: The debris of Building 7 registered more than 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit five days after the collapse.”
And at what temperature would you expect the rubble pile to be and how fast would you expect it to cool? You have absolutely no evidence that this is an anomaly. The entire point that I’ve been trying to make is that it was to be expected that there would be a lot of heat in the rubble.
[Me] “And yes, the phenomena observed in the WTC7 debris must be explained using the same principles applied to the circumstances of the WTC7 collapse.”
[Bob]: “That’s my point; you can’t do it. [I can certainly construct a model of the WTC7 collapse in an attempt to determine if a 'natural' collapse scenario could account for observations. Due to several factors this would be a more difficult undertaking with fewer observations than the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2. I would probably get an inconclusive result. But I could do it.] Since you relied so heavily on qualitative descriptions of a massive amount of GPE available in the Towers, your theory simply does not and can not account for the collapse of WTC 7. [You have no evidence which contradicts my theory nor do you have any evidence (or numbers of any kind) to support your theory that explosives/incendiaries added heat to the rubble.] And yet when you hear Ockham’s call to check your bullpen for another entity to explain the discrepancy, you ignore it like a petulant child. [We clearly disagree on who is behaving like a petulant child.]”
[Me] “…what would it take to convince you that explosives/incendiaries were not involved in the WTC collapse?”
[Bob] “I didn’t answer because I objected to the form of the question. Slarti, in case I haven’t told you before, I’m a Meyers-Briggs INTP/INTJ. What does that mean? It means, for purposes here, that I’m normally an affable guy until someone violates a PRINCIPLE or calls a principle into question without foundation.”
Well, I suppose that you should know that I am also a normally affable guy until someone violates a principle (the specific one you violated was conservation of energy). Apparently, I crossed you when I suggested Ockham’s Razor favored the ‘natural’ hypothesis, violating your ‘philosophy of science’ view of how OR should be used. I was, however, using OR in the standard way that it is used in science: to decide between preliminary hypotheses. I have provided multiple quotes suggesting that this is the standard usage of OR in the scientific community. I have clearly laid out my hypothesis and the evidence I have in support of it (in GREAT detail). I have computed or estimated as many of the values as I reasonably could and have presented a fairly complete description of how I believe the entire collapse
happened as well as a complete accounting of all of the GPE in the WTC on 9/11. In short, you’ve wandered out of philosophy of science and into the weeds of plain old science. I know that you wandered past the door and heard something that you thought was wrong, but you were mistaken. Then, in trying to explain the error that you perceived, you said something very wrong about science. After that, as a friend of mine likes to say, it was ‘go time’. If you’ve been reading my posts, it should be clear by now that I am an actual scientist and that I am really ‘doing the math’, so to speak. I’ve spent a lot of time laying our a nuanced analysis of what I hypothesize happened in the collapse and I’ve provided evidence for my hypothesis in the form of a falsifiable quantitative model. In other words, I understand that you came here full of what you thought was justified anger, but you were mistaken. Unfortunately, you have inspired a justified anger in me and while you are formidable in your arena, you’ve stumbled into Cameron Indoor now and Duke is about to go to town on you. If you will just admit that I was using Ockham’s Razor in a way completely consistent with standard (scientific) usage and have a reasonable theory of the collapse that is consistent with the laws of physics and which I have evidence to support, you will spare yourself whatever unpleasantness awaits.
Bob said:
“So, the short answer would be to hear an explanation that properly accounted for all the principles at play in this scenario.”
I have presented a detailed explanation of the collapse of the WTC which conforms to the principles of physics at play in this scenario. You may argue that other scenarios are more likely, but I have evidence for my argument and you have none. In science debates are not won with rhetoric, but with evidence.
Bob said:
“The second problem I have with your form of question, and you should mark this down in your notebook for future reference, is that it screams of ‘outcome determinism.’ What you’re doing in that question is asking me for a desired outcome on my part so that you can, like an intellectually dishonest judge, can cobble together a few premises, sans syllogism, to create the illusion that you’ve arrived at said outcome by honest reasoning. (See Dred Scott)”
I’ve asked the question: Were ‘natural’ causes sufficient to account for observations of WTC1 and WTC2 on and after 9/11? I’ve made the hypothesis: Natural causes were sufficient to account for observations of heat in the WTC collapse. I have constructed a falsifyable quantitative model in support of my hypothesis and I’ve suggested that, in the standard scientific usage, Ockham’s razor favors my hypothesis over it’s negation: Additional sources of heat (explosives, incendiaries, etc.) were necessary to account for observations on and after 9/11. I don’t know how a judge (good or bad) behaves, but this is how a good scientist behaves. By the way, if at some point in all of this you start to get the feeling that you’re in way over your head, just let me know and I’ll back off.
Bob said:
“Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers? Q=mc(delta-T) Six months Slarti. Six months at or near the heat of fusion for molten metal.”
I made a similar mistake once and it contributed to my failing my qualifying exam on my first try. I was asked to prove that the backwards heat equation was unstable and basically choked (if you’ve never been dragged through a proof in an oral exam before, it’s pretty brutal). You can’t start at molten metal and go backwards to find out where the heat came from – that’s violating the laws and principles of both mathematics and physics (and I can PROVE it! now
). Causality follows the entropy arrow and to suggest otherwise is totally unscientific.
[Me] “The structure of the building was not designed to match the forces involved in the progressing collapse of the buildings.”
[Bob] “So the interior 47 Column support structure, as seen always standing on its own and higher than the rest of the building during construction, was just for show?”
No, it was overwhelmed by the gravitational collapse of the WTC.
[Me] “Imagine if CD were used to sever the structural supports on a single floor of the building simultaneously. In CD this is typically done to the first floor of a building. If the 80th floor supports were severed by CD, the remaining 30-stories would begin a gravitational collapse.”
Slarti, you stumbled upon one of my own thought experiments I created while trying to comprehend what happened. Problem with this one is, as Buddha would chime in, it’s impossible. The correct order of operations is not to assume CD
You are completely misunderstanding the point of my scenario and probably misunderstanding how CD works. The point was that I didn’t want to argue about how the supports were severed – later, I could (and did) replace that part of the scenario with the supports being severed by progressive failure and defend that on its own merits. In controlled demolition, explosives are used to sever the supports of a building (generally on the bottom floor). While additional explosives are sometimes used to ensure the building comes down in its own footprint, no explosives are used to destroy any additional structure or pulverize any materials, that happens exactly as I described. The supports of the upper 15 stories were cut (by whatever means) and the upper 15 stories began to collapse as any building would, from the bottom up. In addition this was all crashing down on the 94th floor and while the intact structure below it would have resisted much better than the 96th floor, It was ripped away in about 1/10th of a second. From there, as I have said, the forces of the gravitiational collapse (both above and below the impact zone) only become larger. The only possible need for explosives in the gravitational collapse is to cut the supports in the impact zone (which, I believe, is better explained by progressive failure). I keep using the term ‘gravitational collapse’ to remind you that even in controlled demolition, the gravitational collapse is merely triggered by explosives (and a very small amount of explosives relative to the energies involved, I might add…). This small amount of explosives would add negligible heat to the debris. Do you begin to understand why the controlled demolition theory is guilty of multiplying entities beyond necessity?
Bob said:
“The correct order of operations is not to assume CD, why? Because Ockham would not allow it until we’ve ruled out everything else. Here, you’re talking about the instantaneous availability of the GPE stored in 30 stories of a Tower; which as you conceded, could only be conceived of in a CD sense. [No, I merely used that to secure the assumption that the supports were cut so I could go on to talk about gravitational collapse. I later replaced CD with a different mechanism (progressive failure) in order to defend it separately.] Yet we know, in the absence of CD, the law of conservation of mass does not allow for the instantaneous disappearance of a single floor’s worth of perimeter steel as well as a single floor’s height section of the 47 steel column core. [As I've said, I find progressive failure the most reasonable mechanism to initiate the collapse.] And ASSUMING that Elfin magic (I like Keebler elves better than Tolkien elves; despite the hype created by Leonard Nimoy’s music video about Bilbo Baggins) [The man created the elven language. You have to give him props for doing something so completely geeky and pointless. And would you please post a link to said video.] did kick in, i.e. removing the law of conservation of mass and allowing for an approximately 12 foot free fall of the 30 story structure; WOULD EVEN THAT BE SUFFICIENT TO SHRED THE 47 COLUMN CORE? [Yes. It probably didn't really start to shred until it got going, but it was enough to cause the structure of the first few floors to fail and quickly became strong enough to easily shred (it took an average of 1/20th of a second to tear loose each floor - it would have been slower in the beginning and faster as it neared the end).]
Bob said:
“To give you an idea, let’s go one step further into imagination land. Imagine a hammer of the God; a giant sledge hammer in the form used to drive rail road spikes coming out of the sky and landing square on that 47 steel column core. Do rail road spikes shatter into little pieces when driven into the ground? Why is it easier to break a pencil by applying force to its mid-section than by applying force vertically down its length?”
The first floor that was asked to try and stop the collapse (the only one with a chance) faced a massive dynamic load from the impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy. It didn’t have a prayer.
Bob said:
“Beginning to see the problem yet?”
Yes, you don’t understand the physics of the situation.
[Me] “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system. Just because you don’t understand the principle of energy conservation doesn’t change the fact that I have completely accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC.”
[Bob] “Now you’re getting arrogant. [I'm arrogant a lot (or at least I have been to you), but that's not what I'm doing here. I'm trying to carefully specify what I did (and taking a shot at you).] If I didn’t understand the principle of energy conservation, why would I be so damned annoyed at your attempt to get work on the cheap by beginning with the thermal energy you guestimated to be in the rubble, subtracting it from the total Pe of the building and arriving at the Work force used to tear that entire building apart as a trivial remainder??”
If you understood the principle you wouldn’t violate it. I began with the energy that Robert and I agreed was stored as GPE in the WTC on 9/11 (400 GJ). I went on to use observations to determine roughly how much of this energy had been used to destroy structure, pulverize material and eject flow and how much was KE immediately before impact and TE in the rubble immediately after. The energy (not force – doing calculations with energy is generally much easier than doing calculations with force, didn’t you learn that in your physics classes?) used to tear the entire building apart is as much as half the total GPE, 200 GJ. Hardly a ‘trivial remainder’.
Bob said:
“You say you accounted for all the the energy in the tower and how it was spent; yes, yes you did make a deductive argument. However, I say your selection & ordering of your premises has lead you to believe the moon is made of green cheese. To wit: All celestial bodies are made of green cheese. The moon is a celestial body. Therefore the moon is made of green cheese.”
All energy is conserved.
The GPE stored in the WTC on 9/11 is energy.
The GPE stored in the WTC on 9/11 is conserved.
Sounds fine to me.
Bob said:
“Deductively speaking, the foregoing is a sound argument. Yet it’s ultimately bullshit because of a counter-factual premise; e.g. like your deducing the amount of work required to tear down the building based on your left-field guestimate of the energy within the rubble [I haven't made a 'left-field guesstimate' here. I have taken an agreed upon value for the GPE and accounted for its conservation.] and the implicit assumption that ALL of the Pe could be immediately converted to Ke for your cosmic inelastic impact [I've pretty clearly described the rate at which GPE is converted to KE and it's consistent with Newton's law of gravitation.]; which the gravitational constant of Earth simply does not allow.[now you've just descended into techno-babble again. 'Gravitational constant of Earth'?]”
Bob said:
“The burden is upon he who affirms; not he who denies. I’m asking why there was molten metal in the debris for WTC 1, 2 & 7 for nearly six months after the event. And the reason I’m asking is I don’t believe the moon is made of green f’n cheese.”
I’m quite confident that I am the one meeting my burden of proof here. Please consider the possibility that I know what I’m talking about and you really have violated the law of conservation of energy and used the heat equation backwards. That you have continually and egregiously abused the laws of physics while being condescending and mocking of my patient (if arrogant) attempts to correct your ignorance and misunderstanding. How sure are you that you’re on the right side of this? Because I know two Ph.D.s (including myself and a physicist and fellow scientist) who are certain that my interpretation of the physics is the correct one. I may not have a degree in physics, but I studied it for several years and know as much about classical mechanics as just about anyone. Are you positive that you know better than me?
Bob,
Some more fun facts about steel – at 700 C it has 50-70% of its room-temperature strength, at 1000C it’s only 10-30%. That progressive failure theory is starting to look pretty sweet right now, isn’t it? Or do you think that a column that was at 10% strength should have been able to bear a heavier than normal load?
This is a quote from an article titled ‘The Physics of 9/11′ (www.counterpunch.org/thermo11282006.html):
“NIST concentrated its resources on the greatest uncertainty: what initiated the collapse? It was understood that once an upper block of the building was in motion the structure below would be unable to counter the dynamic forces, and collapse would proceed to the ground.”
Doesn’t this sound awfully similar to what I’ve been saying? And how about:
“Pancaking versus NIST is a nonexistent technical argument only to be found in the imagination of some conspiracy-minded people. The technical community migrated from early hypotheses of the initiation, like pancaking, to the NIST conclusions as a consequence of doing the hard work required. And, there was always unanimity on what drove the collapse once it was initiated: excess dynamic force produced from the gravitational potential energy contained within even one level spacing. Once the top began to fall, it was going to crush the building below it, regardless.”
And these comments from Pierre Sprey:
“There is not the slightest need to postulate pre-placed explosive charges to explain why the towers collapsed at near free fall speeds. Let me note a few practical aspects of explosive demolitions that make the explosive charge hypothesis improbable to the point of absurdity:
1. Any demolitions expert concocting a plan to hit a tall building with an airplane and then use pre-placed explosives to UNDETECTABLY ensure the collapse of the building would never place the explosives 20, 30 and 60 floors below the impact point. Obviously, he would put the explosives on one or more floors as close as possible to the planned impact level.
2. It is inconceivable that our demolitions expert would time his surreptitious explosions to occur HOURS after the aircraft impact. He couldn’t possibly be absolutely certain that the impact fires would even last an hour. Quite the opposite: to mask the booster explosions, he’d time them to follow right on the heels of the impact.
3. To ensure collapse of a major building requires very sizable demolition charges, charges that are large enough to do a lot more than emit the “puffs of smoke” cited as evidence for the explosives hypothesis. I’ve seen both live and filmed explosive building demolitions. Each explosion is accompanied by a very visible shower of heavy rubble and a dense cloud of smoke and dust. Just that fact alone makes the explosives hypothesis untenable; no demolitions expert in the world would be willing to promise his client that he could bring down a tall building with explosions guaranteed to be indistinguishable from the effects of an aircraft impact.”
How, exactly, does your controlled demolition theory work?
Also on this site, I found some information about the fires before the collapse. The fire in WTC1 supplied about 2 gigaWatts (GW) of heat for the first 40 minutes. This is more than enough to power the flux capacitor which, as we all know, is what makes time travel possible. This supplied a total of 8 TERAJOULES of heat to the building – 20 times the total GPE of the building or the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT (more than 1/10th the energy of the Hiroshima bomb – and that devastated an entire city!). WTC2′s fires burned at around 1 GW for the first 40 minutes supplying a ‘mere’ 3 teraJoules of energy. I’m beginning to think that it was a miracle that the buildings stood for as long as they did. This analysis suggest that the entire impact zone AWAY from the fires would have been between 200 C and 700 C within a half hour after impact. All in all, this article makes it seem like while my arguments are somewhat simplistic, they capture the spirit of what happened. I’ll end with a final passage from this article, which I think sums up thermite nicely:
“Did patches of thermite form naturally, by chance, in the WTC Towers fires? Could there really have been small bits of melted steel in the debris as a result? Could there have been “thermite residues” on pieces of steel dug out of the debris months later? Maybe, but none of this leads to a conspiracy. If the post-mortem “thermite signature” suggested that a mass of thermite comparable to the quantities shown in Table 3 was involved, then further investigation would be reasonable. The first task of such an investigation would be to produce a “chemical kinetics” model of the oxidation of the fragmented aluminum airframe, in some degree of contact to the steel framing, in the hot atmosphere of hydrocarbon fires in the impact zone. Once Nature had been eliminated as a suspect, one could proceed to consider Human Malevolence.”
Bob Esq.,
The reason I don’t permit ground zero to be treated as an isolated system (for the purposes of applying energy conservation laws) is that it is not and never will be an isolated system. To consider it to be such is to invite fantasy into scientific analysis.
I surprised that you didn’t blast Slarti in your response. He deserves to be blasted. Slarti has dismissed/completely avoided all issues that defeat his analysis.
1. The core of the buildings consisted of vertical steel columns. While it is possible to estimate the energy required to shear the columns (included in my 14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement), nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. These were vertical columns. It would require a horizontal force to shear those columns. IF a horizontal force was present, in the magnitude necessary to shear the vertical columns, instantaneously, the momentum would have caused the building to continue off in that direction. We have no indication of any lateral shift during the collapse.
As you mentioned earlier, it would take many times more vertical force to take down those columns than it would to shear them. (Your pencil example makes that easily recognizable.)
2. Slarti does not account for any deformation of the earth upon impact. He does not account for the earth being “compressible” at the surface, but not in the bedrock, when he calculates the energy necessary to generate a seismic event.
He does not consider the energy necessary to consider different frequencies of sound at different distances, or the effect of multiple sources. (adding a second source (and we know there were millions of sound sources at the collapse) does not provide a linear increase (decibels), but does require much more energy.)
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-leveladding.htm
I could continue, but why waste my time. Slarti is not subject to peer review. He has declared himself to be a superior being. All he has managed to accomplish is to demonstrate his arrogance, and that he does not have what it takes to perform complex forensic analysis. If you throw a peanut up in the air, and it lands on the coffee table, and the table breaks, Slarti will, just like he has done here, show you that the peanut caused the table to break. Then he will declare you to be inferior because you don’t agree.
BTW. Your pencil analogy brought it home. At that point I recognized that no source for a shearing force was present.
Here’s the best part!!!!
If we completely remove the plane and the fires from the picture. If we just pretend that nothing hit the building, and that no fires were involved. All we have is that the building collapsed, in the amount of time that it did. Slarti’s calculations still permit the collapse of the building.
Bob,
First, you accused me of misunderstanding Ockham’s Razor by applying it in a way which I’ve documented as standard scientific practice; then you argued that I wasn’t allowed to use a fundamental principle of physics, which was bad enough as classical mechanics is one of my favorite subjects and I know quite a bit about it; but now you have suggested I should analyze energy in a way that is mathematically unsound. I know that it is mathematically unsound because I failed my first qualifying exam due in part to not being able to prove that this particular technique was mathematically unsound. Well, I’ve passed my qualifying exam and gotten my Ph.D. and you better believe that I know how to prove this now! Let me more carefully explain what you did wrong:
Bob said:
“Did you ever, I mean EVER, consider that your beginning your analysis with the thermal energy in the rubble could be so far off as to leave you with a negative total GPE for the Towers?”
No, I never did. I know better. Not only are you misrepresenting my analysis (I begin my analysis with 400 GJ of GPE in the WTC on 9/10/01), but in suggesting that I use the heat in the rubble to work backwards to the GPE of the WTC (for which we have an agreed upon value based on solid research – thank you Robert), you have suggested that I use an analysis technique that is mathematically unsound. Do you understand why you CANNOT TRACE HEAT FLOW BACKWARDS? Mathematically speaking this is an ILL-POSED PROBLEM! You have stumbled into suggesting something that I not only know to a certainty is bad practice, but I can prove it (not prove it in a court of law, but prove it as a mathematical fact).
The heat equation describes thermodynamic heat flow (the transfer of thermal energy between thermally conductive bodies). It is the prototypical parabolic partial differential equation (this means that it is the primary object of study of an entire branch of mathematics). The heat equation is:
d^2u/dt^2 = (alpha) (del)^2 u
(where (del)^2 represents the Laplacian operator). The function u gives an object’s temperature at a point in space and time. The standard type of problem that you use the heat equation to solve (say in the type of differential equations course for engineers which I’ve taught in the past) is the case of determining the temperature profile (how the temperature changes over time) of an iron rod given its starting temperature profile (say it had a hot spot in the middle but otherwise a constant temperature). For (alpha) > 0, using this equation is trying to determine how the temperature of an iron rod changes over time if you start out with hot spots at both ends. If (alpha) < 0 then this equation is trying to determine what the temperature profile of the bar was in the past given that it is at constant temperature now. You can't do this – the bar could have had a hot spot in the middle or a hot spot at either end (or any other profile with the requisite amount of heat) and ended up at the same constant temperature. You cannot solve this problem mathematically – analytically it does not have a unique solution and so any numerical solution is merely one of an infinite number of possibilities. There is a branch of mathematics that considers ill-posed problems but believe me when I say you're nowhere near ready to understand that. If you cannot admit that I am correct here then you are clearly uninterested in having a scientific debate and you will force me to prove that I am correct which will bore everyone to tears (myself included). You don't want to make the Buddha cry, do you?
Bob and Robert,
In trying in vain to refute specific points of my argument, you may not have taken a look at the big picture lately. In case you missed it in my posts last night, with an estimate (from the article I linked) of the heat generated by fires in both towers in the first 40 minutes after impact (8 teraJoules in WTC1 and 3 teraJoules in WTC2) I’m up to something like 12 teraJoules of heat in the WTC system(both buildings) which is the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT or 1/5th to 1/10th the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. It is sufficient energy to raise the ENTIRE MASS of WTC1 by 549 C and WTC2 by 309 C (WTC7 had sufficient energy for a 339 C temperature rise). Mind you, that does not account for the difference between the ‘dead’ load and the ‘live’ load (people, stuff, and equipment in the building had GPE, too), the heat from the fires after the first 40 minutes, heat from the kinetic energy of the airplane impacts or the ensuing fireball (although we’ve considered the fires that were lit), heat from fires observed in the rubble, heat from exothermic reactions in the rubble (one of which occurs when water is sprayed on hot steel and in addition to heat produces hydrogen gas), not to mention another chemical reaction which occurs when water is sprayed on hot aluminum (want to bet that no water lines were broken in the airplane impacts?) and also produces hydrogen gas. I suddenly have an embarrassing wealth of thermal energy, structural steel at 10-70% of its rated strength carrying additional loads due to structural damage under circumstances where the failure of a single member would certainly initiate a progressive failure spanning the cross-section of the building*, and the x-factor that it is a certainty that there were many unusual situations in the collapse and rubble, even though individually those situations are improbable. As for WTC7, I’ve got 12,000 gallons of burnt diesel fuel (That’s 1.5 teraJoules of heat if you’re scoring at home), significant damage in the WTC1 collapse, fires burning unfought for hours on multiple floors, a ConEd substation on the first three floors, and unusual support and truss design in the area of the building that failed (not to mention the fires and reactions in the rubble and the GPE of WTC7). A collapse scenario for WTC 7 which I find reasonable can be seen at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/darkfire11282006.html
*[actually, its a lot more complicated than I have described due to the interactions of structural elements in the central core (which had been damaged and had fireproofing dislodged), the perimeter (one face of which had been severed) and the 5-story roof truss, but the principle is sound. I know this happens pretty quick, but one beam fails first - if one beam is stressed to the point of failure under the kind of catastrophic circumstances we have here (incredibly high dynamic loads) then its neighbors and ultimately the whole structure will fail as well. All three of these buildings were literally as strong as their weakest part. That wasn't strong enough.]
My scenarios of the collapse and sources of heat in the rubble are well-reasoned, scientific, and well-supported. You have assertions that you cannot even build a reasonable theory around. You’re getting to the point where if you want significant additional heat, you’re going to need to slip an atomic explosion into the collapse unnoticed. The use of explosives to trigger the collapse is unnecessary, the use of explosives to continue the collapse goes against all of our understanding of how gravitational collapse works (and would be impossible to plant, hide, and precisely detonate and ridiculously so in the case of sufficient explosives to increase the expected heat in the rubble), and it would take 2 kilotons of TNT to merely double the thermal energy in the rubble.
Can you not see that the inclusion of explosives is multiplying entities beyond necessity?
What exactly is your theory that you think Ockham’s razor favors?
What exactly have I not taken into account?
Early in this thread you mocked Byron as being sheepish that he had supported me. I suspect that he is feeling pretty justified right now.
[Can I get an 'amen', Byron?]
I rest my case.
[Face Buddha and bow.]
““NIST concentrated its resources on the greatest uncertainty: what initiated the collapse? It was understood that once an upper block of the building was in motion the structure below would be unable to counter the dynamic forces, and collapse would proceed to the ground.”
Doesn’t this sound awfully similar to what I’ve been saying? And how about:”
Not if it took 14 GJ per floor to take it down. The total GPE was only enough to take out 29 floors (the reason the building stood for more than 30 years). You ran out of energy. To add insult to injury, a good amount of that energy would have had to take a 90 degree turn to shear the core columns.
Slarti, Your “tons of TNT” and “Hiroshima” references are salesmanship. That’s all. All you have have managed to accomplish is to verify that the building fell. I’ll bet you can’t even tell us how much energy was required to shear one core column.
And what is this terajoules bullshit from the airplanes? Are you trying to get the planes to perform double duty? Or are you trying to use your application of energy conservation to increase the GPE? Heck, if we used your methods of accounting there would be no reason to look for alternate energy sources. Everything we need would be conserved.
I want you to be the expert witness for a two-car head-on collision, where one car was doing 60 and the other 50. I would ask you which car was towed away with more energy.
Robert said:
“The reason I don’t permit ground zero to be treated as an isolated system (for the purposes of applying energy conservation laws) is that it is not and never will be an isolated system. To consider it to be such is to invite fantasy into scientific analysis.”
By your reasoning we could never use conservation of energy. There were 400 GJ (dead load – live load would be significantly higher) of GPE in one of the twin towers. I assume that you will allow that this energy is conserved in the universe (if you wont, go take a freshman physics class and stop bothering me). Since it is conserved, we can account for it. Since what we are concerned about here is the thermal energy in the rubble (My intent has always been to show that significant heat in the rubble pile is what was to be expected scientifically) we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total. Since energy that leaves the system doesn’t return, once we’ve subtracted this energy, we can ignore it. Does that sound like fantasy to you?
Robert said:
“I surprised that you didn’t blast Slarti in your response. He deserves to be blasted. Slarti has dismissed/completely avoided all issues that defeat his analysis.”
Unlike you, Bob may have realized how far out on limb he was. I’ve been considering all of the objections you raise and refuting them point by point. This post is but the latest example of me considering a post of yours or Bob’s line by line. Find a physicist and make him read this thread (I recommend using the Clockwork Orange eye thingies…) and ask him what he thinks of the analysis I’ve presented.
Robert said:
“1. The core of the buildings consisted of vertical steel columns. [Yes, it did.] While it is possible to estimate the energy required to shear the columns (included in my 14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement [Which is ridiculously high for reasons I've given previously. If you could prove it, you would falsify my model - not to mention proving that controlled demolition is impossible.]), nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. [Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load) needed to be exceeded - resulting in its failure and initiating a progressive collapse. The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions] These were vertical columns. It would require a horizontal force to shear those columns. IF a horizontal force was present, in the magnitude necessary to shear the vertical columns, instantaneously, the momentum would have caused the building to continue off in that direction. We have no indication of any lateral shift during the collapse. [There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to 'boil over' and slide down the sides of the building - exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.]”
Robert said:
“As you mentioned earlier, it would take many times more vertical force to take down those columns than it would to shear them. (Your pencil example makes that easily recognizable.)”
As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.
Robert said:
“2. Slarti does not account for any deformation of the earth upon impact. He does not account for the earth being “compressible” at the surface, but not in the bedrock, when he calculates the energy necessary to generate a seismic event.”
A 2.1 seismic event is generated by converting 5.9 GJ to seismic energy. Since we are measuring the actual total energy here, nothing is being ignored. You’ll be happy to know that the other collapse registered 2.3 on the Richter scale, so that’s 12 GJ you don’t have to worry about… you’re one-thousanth of the way there!
The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile (much of the debris fell on other rubble), I just simplified matters and said it was in the rubble pile.
Robert said:
“He does not consider the energy necessary to consider different frequencies of sound at different distances, or the effect of multiple sources. (adding a second source (and we know there were millions of sound sources at the collapse) does not provide a linear increase (decibels), but does require much more energy.)
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-leveladding.htm”
I have made an estimate of the noise, to wit: as loud as a rocket and lasting for one minute. I think that this is a comfortable overestimate, if you think otherwise, tell me what you think is reasonable. Fair warning, my estimate only gives 60 MJ, so even a substantially louder sound isn’t going to buy you much.
Robert said:
“I could continue, but why waste my time. Slarti is not subject to peer review.”
Not formally, but as I said, I did discuss my analysis with a colleague who has a Ph.D. in physics as a reality check. What kind of reality check have you done?
Robert said:
“He has declared himself to be a superior being.”
No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.
Robert said:
“All he has managed to accomplish is to demonstrate his arrogance, and that he does not have what it takes to perform complex forensic analysis.”
I was doing a preliminary scientific analysis to estimate the amount of heat that we would expect to find in the rubble (sans explosives). The answer is an awful lot. I acknowledged my arrogance (as a response to Bob’s condescension) and apologized for what has been unfairly leveled in your direction. What you’re getting now, you deserve.
Robert said:
“If you throw a peanut up in the air, and it lands on the coffee table, and the table breaks, Slarti will, just like he has done here, show you that the peanut caused the table to break.”
If the peanut was carrying 12 teraJoules of energy? You bet your ass. As a thought experiment for homework, why don’t you consider what would happen if a peanut hit the Earth carrying 12 teraJoules of kinetic energy (it would be traveling at 50,000 km/s or about 1/6 the speed of light). To begin with, please explain why the peanut would instantly vaporize and something that looked an awful lot like an explosion 1/5th the size of the Hiroshima bomb would occur.
Robert said:
“Then he will declare you to be inferior because you don’t agree.”
No, I will say that you don’t understand the physics of the situation.
Robert said:
“BTW. Your pencil analogy brought it home. At that point I recognized that no source for a shearing force was present.”
As I’ve described, progressive failure is initiated by the failure of a single structural member. If you are asserting that this is impossible, you are saying that it is not possible for a beam that was carrying a load significantly greater than normal with as little as 10% of its strength remaining to have failed. If you are saying that either building should have been able to resist the gravitational collapse of its upper section, you are out of your mind.
Robert said:
“Not if it took 14 GJ per floor to take [the WTC] down. The total GPE was only enough to take out 29 floors (the reason the building stood for more than 30 years). You ran out of energy. To add insult to injury, a good amount of that energy would have had to take a 90 degree turn to shear the core columns.”
I have said that I believe that this is a significant overestimate. I have said why. None the less, if you can prove that it took 14 GJ per floor to tear loose the floors in the manner that happened on 9/11 then you will falsify my model. You will also prove that controlled demolition is impossible.
Robert said:
“Slarti, Your “tons of TNT” and “Hiroshima” references are salesmanship.”
That doesn’t change the fact that my statements about TNT and Hiroshima are accurate.
Robert said:
“That’s all. All you have have managed to accomplish is to verify that the building fell. I’ll bet you can’t even tell us how much energy was required to shear one core column.”
No, I can’t. And since nothing in my model predicts or assumes this energy (other than saying that the entire structure of a floor can’t resist a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy), it has no relevance with which to impeach my model.
Robert:
“And what is this terajoules bullshit from the airplanes? [8 TJ (and 3 TJ for WTC2) are estimates of the heat generated by fire in the first 40 minutes after impact. Not included in this (but adding heat) is the kinetic energy of the airplane or heat generated by the fireball.] Are you trying to get the planes to perform double duty? [No.] Or are you trying to use your application of energy conservation to increase the GPE? [No, I am accounting for another acknowledged source of heat. Or are you saying there weren't any fires after the impacts?] Heck, if we used your methods of accounting there would be no reason to look for alternate energy sources. [Here in the reality-base world we do use my method of accounting. It's called the principle of conservation of energy.] Everything we need would be conserved. [Energy is always conserved, the problem is that when it becomes heat, it can no longer be used to do work.]”
Robert said:
“I want you to be the expert witness for a two-car head-on collision, where one car was doing 60 and the other 50. I would ask you which car was towed away with more energy.”
I actually witnessed a head on collision of this sort once. Assuming 2 cars traveling in opposite directions at 55 mph that remain together after impact, 0.6 MJ of kinetic energy is dissipated, mostly as heat in the car frames – a by-product of work done smashing the cars. That’s a lot of energy if you’re in one of the cars (and it’s doing work on you), but on the scales we’ve been talking, it’s peanuts.
Robert,
Once again, I have answered all of the issues you’ve raised in you posts. Just because you don’t like the answers (and can’t refute them) doesn’t mean I’m being dismissive, quite the opposite in fact. I have considered all of your points and found them wanting. Re-read what I’ve said. Does it sound to you like I’m making this up?
“By your reasoning we could never use conservation of energy.”
No. By my reasoning, you could never use conservation of energy on anything other than an isolated system.
The problem is your approach. You have attempted to demonstrate energy conservation on a system of which it is not intended to apply. The question here is whether or not there was enough available energy to perform the work needed to cause the towers to collapse due to the impact of the plane and the subsequent fires. This is simply a question of whether or not you have enough money in your wallet to pay for all the groceries in your cart.
((((As to your attempting to call this an “isolated system”: Have you ever read a scientific demonstration of energy conservation in which the universe was claimed to be the isolated system, or did you just read of the possibility on wikipedia and adopt it?)))
“we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total.”
Do you read what you write? Nothing can leave an isolated system. Not energy. Not mass.
“14 Gigajoules per floor energy requirement [Which is ridiculously high for reasons I’ve given previously.”
What is your number? Byron agreed with my number for floor load.
“nothing (that deserves repeating) NOTHING has been presented that would introduce a shearing force. [Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load)”
Steel is weakened by carrying additional load? Sorry. I’m not buying into that.
“The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions”
What is the source for this force in various directions? You do realize that every different direction requires more energy? Have you come up with a method of directing this energy, or is it going to take the path of least resistance?
“There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to ‘boil over’ and slide down the sides of the building – exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.”
Balanced? This collapsing outer ring of the building managed to direct enough energy towards the center columns to shear them, but didn’t eject other available material outside of the building with nearly the same force? Who’s directing this storm? Somebody is directing the energy to the places it is needed the most.
“As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.”
Now your just making stuff up for effect.
“The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile”
No. The majority is transferred into kinetic energy in the air between the soil (that permits the compression) and is ejected into the atmosphere.
Do you just read books? These are not difficult deductions to make. You seem to be anal about energy conservation. Two things end up with all of our energy; the earth and the atmosphere.
“No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.”
You’ve shown yourself to be an arrogant ass. You need to let your argument stand on it’s own merit. If it is strong, others will concur. Your declaration of superiority, on the basis of your own opinion of yourself warrants may preceding statement.
Robert,
Have you ever noticed how I answer your entire posts point-by-point while you choose a couple of straw men to attack that you find by misinterpreting what I say? Well, this is the last time. I’ve shown that I can answer any point you make, so from now on, I will only answer your comments if they contain a reasonable argument or are particularly inane. If I don’t answer one of your arguments, it means that I don’t consider it important or pertinent enough to debunk. Yes, that is arrogant, but I just don’t have the time to correct every silly notion you throw against the wall.
Robert said:
“No. By my reasoning, you could never use conservation of energy on anything other than an isolated system.”
The truth is that you can use conservation of energy on any system as long as you account for all energy flows into and out of the system. In the time frame I’m considering (from the initiation of the progressive failure until the rubble was at rest) no significant energy flowed into the system (remember I’m testing the hypothesis that ‘natural’ causes were sufficient, so it is appropriate to assume no explosives). I’ve accounted for energy flowing out of the system. No one has suggested a destination of energy outside the system that I haven’t accounted for. Please stop making fool of yourself.
Robert said:
“The problem is your approach. You have attempted to demonstrate energy conservation on a system of which it is not intended to apply.”
Energy is conserved universally. If we carefully account for it all (which I am), we are not violating energy conservation.
Robert said:
“The question here is whether or not there was enough available energy to perform the work needed to cause the towers to collapse due to the impact of the plane and the subsequent fires. This is simply a question of whether or not you have enough money in your wallet to pay for all the groceries in your cart.”
12 terajoules were spent on groceries (that’s a big twinkie), the grocery store (thermal energy in the rubble) has all the money now – Where do you think the money went? (Or did it leave the universe?)
Robert said:
“((((As to your attempting to call this an “isolated system”: Have you ever read a scientific demonstration of energy conservation in which the universe was claimed to be the isolated system, or did you just read of the possibility on wikipedia and adopt it?)))”
It was an (obviously unsuccessful) attempt to convince you that the law of conservation of energy can be applied (since it obviously can be applied to the universe as a whole). And no, I didn’t see it in Wikipedia, I thought it up all on my own (although it is a standard technique).
[Me] “…we may account for any energy leaving the system by subtracting it from the total.”
[Robert] “Do you read what you write? Nothing can leave an isolated system. Not energy. Not mass.”
Lately I reread everything I post twice – I know that should I make so much as a trivial misstatement that you or Bob will jump on it and that takes a lot more time to clear up. I have defined my system. I have carefully accounted for all of the energy flows out of the system (there are no significant flows of energy into the system – if you’d like to take sunshine into account, be my guest). Neither you nor Bob has suggested any legitimate energy (originating as GPE in the WTC) that I’m not accounting for (we’ll get to your notion of kinetic energy being dissipated into the atmosphere, it’s a hoot!). The main way in which energy (and mass – technically this is redundant since mass is a form of energy) leaves the system is via the pyroclastic flow and other ejected debris. If you can show that ripping loose the floors and ejecting the flow took more than 200 GJ, you will falsify my theory – but I will critique any values you give and ridiculous overestimates like 14 GJ to rip loose a floor don’t falsify anything.
Robert said:
“What is your number? Byron agreed with my number for floor load.”
Saying that under a dynamic stress of 14 GJ the floor will fail but it can withstand a lower energy impact is saying that the structure can’t withstand a 23 kiloton mass (the upper 15 stories of WTC1) impacting it at 35m/s (as if dropped from a height of over 62m) but it could possibly withstand it if it were only dropped from 60m and 50m is no problem whatsoever. It doesn’t pass the laugh test. If you do an accurate calculation (and I’m not suggesting this is a test for accuracy, just what an accurate calculation will yield) you will get a value comfortably below the 1 GJ of KE that the 23 kiloton mass had when it impacted the 94th floor. Byron can disagree with this if he likes.
[Me] “…Initially, the yield strength of a single structural beam (presumably weakened by heating and carrying additional load)…”
[Robert] “Steel is weakened by carrying additional load? Sorry. I’m not buying into that.”
Sigh. Your reading comprehension isn’t that good, is it? The parenthetical should be parsed this way:
presumably (weakened by heating) and (carrying additional load)
There were fires that were estimated to be between 700 C and 1000 C. At 700 C steel has 50-70% of the strength it has at room temperature, at 1000 C it is 10-30%. Due to damage to the surrounding structure, the beams that were being heated were also carrying a higher than normal load to make up for the missing structure. I don’t think my statement is in any way untrue.
[Me] “The initial failures do not involve shearing, but by the time the collapse had gone a dozen or so floors, there would be plenty of massive shearing forces in various directions”
[Robert] “What is the source for this force in various directions? You do realize that every different direction requires more energy? Have you come up with a method of directing this energy, or is it going to take the path of least resistance?”
It was the gravitational collapse of a freaking 110-story building – I don’t think the forces in the collapse zone were neat and orderly, do you? While the driving force was down (gravity), things were being smashed, ripped apart, and pulverized every which way.
[Me] “There was initially no horizontal momentum and the primary force (gravity) had no horizontal component, so the total horizontal momentum of the collapse would be zero. We would expect the collapse zone to ‘boil over’ and slide down the sides of the building – exactly what happened. That being said, there were plenty of lateral forces once the collapse was well underway, they were just balanced.”
[Robert] Balanced? This collapsing outer ring of the building managed to direct enough energy towards the center columns to shear them, but didn’t eject other available material outside of the building with nearly the same force? Who’s directing this storm? Somebody is directing the energy to the places it is needed the most.
The central core would have been the most resistant (followed by the perimeter which probably kept the collapse from spreading outward more than it did), but it had the next best thing to the fist of god smashing into it and it failed under that massive load. The highest energy density would be where the structure of the building was offering the most resistance to the descending debris.
[Me] “As I said before, no structure on earth could stop the collapse of a 15-story building and progressive failure is a reasonable (and favored) initiation hypothesis.”
[Robert] “Now your just making stuff up for effect.”
What structure could remain standing if a 15-story building were collapsed on top of it? The idea that if a region of the superstructure were stressed to near the point of failure then the failure of a single element and the attendant increase in stress to neighboring elements could lead to a collapse of the entire structure isn’t something I made up (I wish I had). What untrue or misleading effect do I get out of this?
[Me] “The earth (and the rubble) is being deformed upon impact by work which is converting kinetic energy into thermal energy. This generates heat in the ground below the collapse as well as in the rubble. Since this heat is at the bottom of and in the rubble pile”
[Robert] “No. The majority is transferred into kinetic energy in the air between the soil (that permits the compression) and is ejected into the atmosphere.”
This is my favorite – it’s hard to decide just how I want to tear this idiotic statement apart. Let’s count the ways:
1) Energy ejected into the atmosphere is sound, I’ve accounted for it and it isn’t all that much energy.
2) What would happen to the kinetic energy if this collision took place in a vacuum?
No atmosphere to eject that kinetic energy into, I guess the collapse will just have to keep going.
3) The air permits the compression of the soil? Just how does that work on the moon? Kinetic energy is expended to do the work of compressing the soil and is thereby dissipated in the soil.
You need to take a time out and think about this one. It’s not as bad as Bob’s suggestion that I use the backwards heat equation, but it really makes you look like you don’t understand.
Do you just read books? [I got my scientific education from all sorts of sources - I just started out with a desire to understand the universe and a facility for mathematics. If you're interested in learning about what a scientist is like, I highly recommend the autobiography of Richard Feynman ('Surely You Must Be Joking Mr. Feynman'). This Nobel laureate truly exemplified what it is to be a scientist.] These are not difficult deductions to make. [Yes, you seem to be having a lot of problems, though.] You seem to be anal about energy conservation. [Yeah, it's one of the down sides to being a scientist, we tend to be picky about following physical laws.] Two things end up with all of our energy; the earth and the atmosphere. [All energy ultimately ends up as heat. You can do work with energy until it has become evenly distributed heat. Quite frequently that heat ends up in the earth or the atmosphere (like it did this time if you count the rubble pile as part of the earth.)]”
[Me] “No, I have shown myself to be a superior scientist.”
You’ve shown yourself to be an arrogant ass. [That, too. It doesn't change the fact that I'm correct and you are not.] You need to let your argument stand on it’s own merit. [My arguments do stand on their own merits - the dozens of quotes I've made that neither you nor Bob has even attempted to refute, the detailed computations and explanations of the physics involved, etc. The arrogance was originally a counter to Bob's condescending attitude and an indication that I held your misinformation in contempt, now it's just to amuse myself.] If it is strong, others will concur. [I've put science out there to combat disinformation. I expect people to decide what to believe base on the relative merits of our arguments. Despite my arrogance, my arguments stand fine on their own.] Your declaration of superiority, on the basis of your own opinion of yourself warrants may preceding statement. [I probably should have said 'I have shown myself to be THE superior scientist' meaning that I am a better scientist than you (which shouldn't be surprising since I am a professional scientist and you are not). I didn't mean to imply that I was a superior person. Oh, well...]”
I know you find me arrogant and dismissive, but I’ll point out that I’ve just had to spend the better part of three hours to debunk the crap that you spewed over the course of half an hour. Stop saying such idiotic things and I’ll lighten up.
“It was an (obviously unsuccessful) attempt to convince you that the law of conservation of energy can be applied (since it obviously can be applied to the universe as a whole). And no, I didn’t see it in Wikipedia, I thought it up all on my own (although it is a standard technique).”
You thought it up on your own (although i is a standard technique)????
Please provide a reference to an accepted work of an event that took place on earth where the universe was considered to be the isolated system for the purposes of energy conservation. Just one will do.
Slarti,
Watch this video of the impact of the jet on WTC2. Look at the fireball. How much energy was used to create the fireball and where did all of that energy end up? Why do the fireball, and subsequent cloud, go up? Look at the distance the debris traveled. How much energy was used to send all of that debris flying?
Slarti,
How did the top half of the building accelerate to 32m/sec? The first impact would have been with the floor below, and it happened in less than a second. It took less than 14 seconds for it to happen 75 times. The top section probably took about .5 seconds to hit the floor below. This is hardly enough time to accelerate to 32m/sec. The top section was probably traveling at about 2 m/sec when it struck the floor below.
A story (floor) is about 10 ft. (3 meters)
Slarti decided to quote Pierre Sprey. Let’s examine what Pierre said, and see if it holds up.
Who is Pierre Sprey? Is he a demolition expert? No. He designed airplanes. What makes him an expert on where charges should be placed? Nothing.
And these comments from Pierre Sprey:
“There is not the slightest need to postulate pre-placed explosive charges to explain why the towers collapsed at near free fall speeds. Let me note a few practical aspects of explosive demolitions that make the explosive charge hypothesis improbable to the point of absurdity:
1. Any demolitions expert concocting a plan to hit a tall building with an airplane and then use pre-placed explosives to UNDETECTABLY ensure the collapse of the building would never place the explosives 20, 30 and 60 floors below the impact point. Obviously, he would put the explosives on one or more floors as close as possible to the planned impact level.
–Pierre ASSUMES that those who flew the planes into the building and those who may have installed a means of collapsing the building were working together, but presents nothing to link them together. Pierre then goes on to make a statement without supporting it. Did anyone think to ask the OBVIOUS question of why?
2. It is inconceivable that our demolitions expert would time his surreptitious explosions to occur HOURS after the aircraft impact. He couldn’t possibly be absolutely certain that the impact fires would even last an hour. Quite the opposite: to mask the booster explosions, he’d time them to follow right on the heels of the impact.
Again, Pierre ties the explosions to the attackers without support. Is he trying to sell something? Who said that the collapse explosions were intended to be hidden?
3. To ensure collapse of a major building requires very sizable demolition charges, charges that are large enough to do a lot more than emit the “puffs of smoke” cited as evidence for the explosives hypothesis. I’ve seen both live and filmed explosive building demolitions. Each explosion is accompanied by a very visible shower of heavy rubble and a dense cloud of smoke and dust. Just that fact alone makes the explosives hypothesis untenable; no demolitions expert in the world would be willing to promise his client that he could bring down a tall building with explosions guaranteed to be indistinguishable from the effects of an aircraft impact.”
Again, Pierre is trying to claim that the explosions were meant to be hidden. Why? It gets better. Pierre claims that the explosions must be very visible and would emit “visible shower of heavy rubble and a dense cloud of smoke”
Pierre, Watch this video, and tell me about the shower of heavy rubble and the dense cloud of smoke caused by the explosions.
Slarti: “Not only are you misrepresenting my analysis (I begin my analysis with 400 GJ of GPE in the WTC on 9/10/01), but in suggesting that I use the heat in the rubble to work backwards to the GPE of the WTC”
Your exact words: “So how much kinetic energy was in the rubble the instant before impact? The gravitational potential energy of one of the twin towers is estimated at 500 billion joules. If the towers had fallen at free fall speed, all of this gravitational energy would have been converted into kinetic energy. Assuming that the towers fell in 6.6 seconds and free fall took 6 seconds gives us a free fall speed of 60 m/s and a terminal velocity of 54 m/s for the rubble. Using the fact that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of the velocity (KE = 1/2 m v^2), we calculate that the rubble retained 82.6% of the original gravitational potential energy as kinetic energy the moment before impact. This implies that 400 billion joules of kinetic energy were transformed into other types of energy at the moment of impact.”
See that? “we calculate that the rubble contained 82.6% of the original gravitational potential energy as kinetic energy before impact”
You started with the rubble and worked your way back to the 17.4% Work.
You did it again here:
“I calculated that 17.4% of the original gravitational potential energy went into collapsing and pulverizing the building. [aka WORK] Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow. The rest of it remained in the debris as heat (I didn’t include this energy in my analysis – effectively assuming that all of this energy left in the pyroclastic flow). Consider an imaginary box that completely contains the WTC (from the subbasement to the tip of the radio masts). Initially, this box contains approximately one trillion joules of gravitational potential energy. All of this energy either remains in the box or is transferred out of the box – I have kept track of the energy that stayed in the box and estimated that enough of it was converted into heat to liquify approximately 1,000 metric tons of iron at room temperature. I have not in any way violated the law of conservation of energy.”
And you didn’t engage in the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc here how??
Slarti: “re conservation of energy and closed systems. I defined the closed system to be the universe as there are no energy flows into or out of the universe (by definition), thus it is clearly a closed system. Neither Bob nor Robert can tell me where the KE goes when the rubble hits the ground in this system either.”
That’s about as meaningful for our purposes as subtracting infinity from infinity; i.e. you’ve defined the object of your analysis in such an ‘all inclusive way’ as to define it out of meaningful existence.
Here’s another vague statement:
Slarti: “*The 17.4% drop from the gravitational potential energy to the kinetic energy before impact is the energy that went into pulverizing and accelerating the debris, it remained in the debris as thermal energy. This source of heat is neglected in the analysis.”
Work is NOT heat! Work may create heat as a frictional byproduct, but it is not heat. Accordingly WORK does not ‘remain in the debris as thermal energy.’
Do you also see the problem your GENEROUS assumption regarding the thermal energy ‘naturally’ residing in the debris determining the amount of work required to tear down the building?
Ask yourself this: How many buildings are able to stand with an 82.6% GPE to 17.4% opposing force construction? Hard to picture isn’t it? Imagine a building with the first few floors created out of balsa wood and the remaining floors created out of lead. Silly? Perhaps, but that’s exactly how your theory, DEMANDING the existence of FREE WORK, comes across as.
Thus the reason I said, in so many different ways:
“So 17.4% of the total GPE, i.e. that representing the existence (mass, height (& g)) of the entire building, was capable of shredding said entire building? That’s all the Work that was required to create the pile of rubble? Tell me, other than wishful thinking, what forces were holding up the building for the thirty years of its existence and where did they go on 9/11? And given this oddly excessive amount of free Ke, why don’t your calculations support the theory of controlled demolition? If demolition devices weren’t removing the supports (i.e. forces opposing collapse) of the building, then how did it fall at near free fall speed?”
Do you really contend there were no shearing forces necessary to bring down the 47 Column core?
Me w/ your bracketed notations: “Yet we know, in the absence of CD, the law of conservation of mass does not allow for the instantaneous disappearance of a single floor’s worth of perimeter steel as well as a single floor’s height section of the 47 steel column core. [As I've said, I find progressive failure the most reasonable mechanism to initiate the collapse.] And ASSUMING that Elfin magic (I like Keebler elves better than Tolkien elves; despite the hype created by Leonard Nimoy’s music video about Bilbo Baggins) [The man created the elven language. You have to give him props for doing something so completely geeky and pointless. And would you please post a link to said video.] did kick in, i.e. removing the law of conservation of mass and allowing for an approximately 12 foot free fall of the 30 story structure; WOULD EVEN THAT BE SUFFICIENT TO SHRED THE 47 COLUMN CORE? [Yes. It probably didn't really start to shred until it got going, but it was enough to cause the structure of the first few floors to fail and quickly became strong enough to easily shred (it took an average of 1/20th of a second to tear loose each floor - it would have been slower in the beginning and faster as it neared the end).]
No Slarti, the core was an independent structure that, in the absence of shearing forces which a vertical collapse does not account for, would have been left standing like a spindle on a 45 record player.
Robert,
Could you repost that link to the paper that Slarti accepted as valid?
Bob,
This link should provide a link to the article Slarti accepted, and some rebuttal.
http://911review.com/reviews/counterpunch/markup/physic11282006.html
Slarti,
Regarding this post:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-103456
Consider if you will the following:
If the goal of Al Qaeda (with our without the assistance of inside help) was to take down the towers, wouldn’t the plane impacts provide a perfect diversion from those explosions taking place in the basements and lower floors? This is what bothered me about the removal of all evidence from the crime scene; long before all the other nonsensical crap making me skeptical of any ‘official story’ came out.
Finally, your contention that the progressive collapse of the building at free fall speed brought down the core without the aid of any cutting forces violates the law of contradiction; the law of contradiction being used by analogy in this situation. The things that are allegedly failing via the failure of those bolts that were allegedly weakened sufficiently by the heat were connected to, by necessity, SOMETHING STRONGER–else they wouldn’t do the job they were designed to do.
Robert,
I found it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Slarti did assent to the arguments contained within this paper; didn’t he?
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/ProfMorroneOnMeltingWTCsteel.pdf
Bob,
I’m not really sure what studies Slarti has been willing to accept. All I know is that he thinks the mass (which was demonstrated in the video below to be leaving the scene) remained available to do work. Not only does the “system” lose mass, it also loses energy.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/621039/9_11_mysteries_building_7/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/621327/9_11_mysteries_facts_about_steel/
Pancake collapse? I don’t think so.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/621332/9_11_mysteries_pancake_collapses_gravity/
Slarti, Take notice. This is a physics professor.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/624979/9_11_mysteries_molten_metal/
Here’s a bio on Steven Jones.
Jones earned his bachelor’s degree in physics, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University in 1973, and his Ph.D. in physics from Vanderbilt University in 1978. Jones conducted his Ph.D. research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (from 1974 to 1977), and post-doctoral research at Cornell University and the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.
This one is pretty good too.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/625282/9_11_mysteries_controlled_demolition/
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wtc_charges.html
GO ahead Slarti, explain the angular cut beams with remnants of molten iron. How did this naturally occur?
This one is just for fun. I want to see Slarti apply his “conservation of energy”. We’ll call this an isolated system. :>)
You’ve said the burden of proof lies on he who asserts, not he who denies – Well, you’re asserting that ‘natural’ causes weren’t sufficient – I”m denying it.
Have you lived up to your burden of proof? No.
You explained how, due to your personality type, I offended you by, in your opinion, misusing Ockham’s Razor. I explained that I was using Ockham’s Razor in the way it is most frequently used in science (and explained exactly how I had used it in that context).
Your response: nothing.
I explained that in your self-riteous anger you had violated the principle of conservation of energy (thus offending me) not just once, but repeatedly and willfully.
Your response: Specious arguments attacking straw men.
I further explained that how in your suggested analysis (which shows how you are thinking about the situation) you had suggested doing something that I not only know to be bad mathematical practice, but can actually PROVE is bad. (Which offended me even more.)
Your response: Falsely accusing me of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. (I’ll address this in a separate post.)
I’ve outlined a version of events which may not be completely accurate in every detail, but I believe to be a pretty good general framework of what happened.
Your version of events: ‘They musta blow’d them bildin’s up cuz that there rubbel were HOT!’
I’ve shown that to double the thermal energy in the collapse (of all three buildings) you would need the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT – that’s 1.5 kilotons of Robert’s hole-punching C4 charges (oops, no residue!) or 3/4 kilotons of the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known to Wikipedia, Octanitrocubane. Assuming (generously) that your mythical ‘thermate’ is equally powerful, your explanation of how something on the order of 750 metric tons of explosives were covertly planted and precision detonated?
Your response: nothing.
When I explained how controlled demolition (generally) only uses explosives to cut supports on lower floors to initiate gravitational collapse and how any building will collapse under its own weight in this manner – be it the upper 15 floors of WTC1 after a progressive failure caused by airplane impacts and the attendant fires, or WTC7 after the failure of truss #1 or truss #2 following damage and fire in the wake of the collapse of WTC1.
Your response: nothing.
I’ve explained how spraying water on hot iron causes a reaction which in addition to being exothermic on its own, creates hydrogen gas as a by-product.
Your response: nothing.
12,000 gallons of diesel fuel was pumped into the burning WTC7 from underground tanks generating 1.5 teraJoules of heat (that’s just the added heat from the diesel fuel, the total heat generated by fire is larger) which is enough to raise the entire mass of the building 339 C by itself.
Your response: nothing.
You make straw men of my arguments and question some of the values that I’m using.
My response: Point by point refutation of your arguments complete with calculations and citations in support of my interpretations.
Can you answer ALL of my arguments here, like I’ve done with yours?
Your response:
Slarti,
You need to start paying attention.
1. Screw your conservation of energy bullshit. This is not an isolated system. This is not a conservation of energy problem. It is a work problem.
2. How hot does the fire need to be before steam can release oxygen to fuel the fire?
You need to do some lab work.
“750 metric tons of explosive”
Where did you come up with that number?
Slarti: “You’ve said the burden of proof lies on he who asserts, not he who denies – Well, you’re asserting that ‘natural’ causes weren’t sufficient – I”m denying it.”
Puerile sophistry. If I’m asserting anything it’s that your explanation is illogical.
Slarti: “You explained how, due to your personality type, I offended you by, in your opinion, misusing Ockham’s Razor. I explained that I was using Ockham’s Razor in the way it is most frequently used in science (and explained exactly how I had used it in that context).”
If this is true, why did you thank me for enlightening you as to the proper use of the Ockham’s razor (law of parsimony)?
Slarti: “I explained that in your self-riteous anger you had violated the principle of conservation of energy (thus offending me) not just once, but repeatedly and willfully. Your response: Specious arguments attacking straw men.”
Show me Mr. Argumentation. Show me where I’ve done what you’re accusing me of doing. Furthermore, framing the conservation of energy argument with the universe as ‘the system’ is not only sophomoric but idiotic as well. It serves absolutely no definitive practical purpose whatsoever; unless you’re making a point to a 7th grade science class.
Slarti: “I further explained that how in your suggested analysis (which shows how you are thinking about the situation) you had suggested doing something that I not only know to be bad mathematical practice, but can actually PROVE is bad. (Which offended me even more.)
Your response: Falsely accusing me of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. (I’ll address this in a separate post.)”
How did you arrive at the 17.4% Slarti? What assumption in your reasoning caused you to ‘reach for the stars and comets and asteroids’ to fill a major gap? Why were you spending so much time discussing liquification via inelastic collisions when you know that Earth’s gravitational acceleration makes it ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for steel to liquify on impact; even if it all fell from the height of the Towers. What is that if not argument by verbosity?
Even more infantile is how you don’t own up to what you did. By denying that you ever said the steel liquified upon impact (as you did above) you sound like Bush when he denied making any connections between 9/11 & Iraq/Saddam.
Slarti: “I’ve outlined a version of events which may not be completely accurate in every detail, but I believe to be a pretty good general framework of what happened.”
Your version of events: ‘They musta blow’d them bildin’s up cuz that there rubbel were HOT!’”
No Slarti, you cobbled together a bunch of faulty premises & assumptions and created a crystal clear mathematical deduction of a bullshit argument. My response has always been quite articulate and can be summed up as me constantly explaining to you why I don’t believe your argument that the moon is made of green cheese. Making me sound like a redneck would be fine; however when you do it while attributing to me arguments I”ve never made, that makes you intellectually dishonest.
Slarti: “I’ve shown that to double the thermal energy in the collapse (of all three buildings) you would need the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT – that’s 1.5 kilotons of Robert’s hole-punching C4 charges (oops, no residue!) or 3/4 kilotons of the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known to Wikipedia, Octanitrocubane. Assuming (generously) that your mythical ‘thermate’ is equally powerful, your explanation of how something on the order of 750 metric tons of explosives were covertly planted and precision detonated?”
Further evidence that you’ve never studied the art of argumentation. Resolved, that the explanations offered for the existence, for nearly six months, of molten metal and high temperatures within the rubble of Towers 1, 2 & most importantly 7, are untruthful; i.e. there is a huge lack of agreement between said knowledge and its object of analysis.
Slarti: “I’ve explained how spraying water on hot iron causes a reaction which in addition to being exothermic on its own, creates hydrogen gas as a by-product.”
Okay Mr. Boyle, where did you get the superheated steam from to start said reaction and by what mechanism was the equilibrium shifted to maintain your alleged exothermic reaction? (Uh, Alex, I’ll take ‘Question Begging’ for $200)
Slarti: “12,000 gallons of diesel fuel was pumped into the burning WTC7 from underground tanks generating 1.5 teraJoules of heat (that’s just the added heat from the diesel fuel, the total heat generated by fire is larger) which is enough to raise the entire mass of the building 339 C by itself.”
There you go again, tossing around big numbers without any focus whatsoever. All of the fuel was burned? Diffuse diesel fuel flames burn how hot? 339 C? And you know how many joules were released from the fuel burning in WTC 7? A man’s got to know his limitations Slarti.
Slarti: “You make straw men of my arguments and question some of the values that I’m using.”
Don’t look now, but you’re whining.
Slarti: “Can you answer ALL of my arguments here, like I’ve done with yours?”
I have replied to your arguments; over and over. In lieu of answering those questions I ask you, i.e. those elements that if you convince me you’d win the argument by winning my assent, you just repeat yourself, toss out more of your assumptions and declare your arguments immaculate by your own authority while denigrating me.
BTW, I’m not the only one who has a problem with your method of debate.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-99415
“1. Screw your conservation of energy bullshit. This is not an isolated system. This is not a conservation of energy problem. It is a work problem.”
As I have repeatedly tried to explain to you, work is the process by which energy is converted from one form to another. Energy is ALWAYS conserved. In isolated systems there is no energy flow into or out of the system (making tracking energy easier), but if we account for energy transfer into (which is insignificant) and out of (which I have) the system, conservation of energy applies.
Robert said:
“2. How hot does the fire need to be before steam can release oxygen to fuel the fire?”
Fire fighters were continually spraying water on the rubble. You and Bob are alleging that there was a lot of hot steel in the rubble (regardless of the source of the heat, we are all agreed that there was steel in the rubble ‘at or near’ the heat of fusion). The reaction I specified will occur when water is sprayed on heated steel.
Robert said:
“Where did you come up with that number?” [750 metric tons of explosives]
I have estimated (or borrowed estimates) of the agreed on sources of energy in the collapse:
400 GJ of GPE per tower plus WTC7′s unknown GPE – I’d guess about 100 GJ (which I contend mostly ended up in TE in the rubble).
8 teraJoules (TJ) of TE generated by fire in WTC1 in the first 40 minutes after impact (you can argue with the number, but you can’t deny this was a source of TE).
3 TJ of TE generated by fire in WTC2 in the first 40 minutes.
1.5 TJ of TE generated by the burning of 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel that was pumped from underground storage tanks into WTC7*, none of it remained in the rubble, ergo it was burned (the black smoke billowing from WTC7 is further evidence of this).
*Some of the burning diesel fuel would likely have been pooled around truss #2, one of the 3 massive trusses needed to support the building due to its unusual construction around a 3-story ConEd substation.
I totaled this up as 12 TJ (being conservative in my estimates – I can easily justify 15 TJ and might be able to get to 20 TJ or more if I include everything (see below). 12 TJ is the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT – since we don’t know what the relative equivalent of ‘thermate’ is, I’ve used the numbers for Octanitrocubane, the most powerful non-nuclear explosive listed in Wikipedia, to estimate that it would take 750 metric tons of ‘thermate’ to double the TE in the pile of rubble.
What I have NOT included (but adds heat none the less):
The additional GPE contained in the ‘live’ load of the buildings (non-structural walls, machinery, furniture, computers, people, etc.)
Exothermic reactions in the rubble (see above).
Heat originating in kinetic energy of the planes.
Heat released by the fireball.
Heat from the fires in WTC1 and WTC2 after the first 40 minutes and in WTC7 (I’ve counted the added heat of burning 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but that’s only a part of the total heat generated by fire in WTC7).
Heat from fires observed in the rubble.
You can argue about these sources if you like (and I reserve the right to argue for any or all of them), but they are not included in my numbers and thus do not effect them.
Robert said:
“You need to do some lab work.”
You need to suck it up and admit that despite my arrogance and condescension, I’m the one who is correct here (this isn’t a court of law or a scientific paper, if you can’t handle arrogance and condescension on a blog, you should probably stay off the internet). I’ve spent the last few weeks laying a solid scientific foundation while you and Bob have been fighting straw men and nitpicking numbers. I can now draw on the entire arsenal I’ve built – all of which I can defend as well as I have here. Because my foundation is solid, I can integrate new facts and analysis seamlessly and quickly into my theory. When I causally throw a number into my argument, I’m not trying to slip a fast one by you, I’m laying a trap to force you to justify your unscientific, unqualitative notions in the face of a computation showing them to be ridiculous. This will continue until you stop taking the bait or I get bored.
So how did someone slip 750 metric tons of ‘thermate’ into the WTC and precision detonate it without anyone (strike that) EVERYONE noticing?
Bob,
This will be the last time that I respond to one of your posts point-by-point. I’ve shown that I can refute any particular point you make, but I don’t have the time to refute ALL of them so, like I told Robert, I’ll limit myself to responding to points I consider valid or inane (I’m betting on more of the latter).
Note: Some of the numbers that Bob cites or quotes me as using are from early in this discussion and are not necessarily accurate – I am assuming for the purposes of this post that the numbers are correct. Correcting the numbers does not affect the arguments in this post (Bob’s or mine) in any way.
[Me] “Your exact words: “…we calculate that the rubble retained 82.6% of the original gravitational potential energy as kinetic energy the moment before impact. This implies that 400 billion joules of kinetic energy were transformed into other types of energy at the moment of impact.*”
[Bob] “You started with the rubble and worked your way back to the 17.4% Work.”
*A second here to clear up something stated poorly: I should have said, “…transformed into other types of energy BY the impact.” The ‘impact’ of the rubble is a complex set of events, and I spoke imprecisely while treating it in aggregate.
First of all, it’s energy, not work (work is the transformation of energy from one form to another). And I haven’t worked backwards at all. I started with 400 GJ of GPE. Given the time of collapse (10-13 s) we can estimate the velocity of the rubble before impact (65-85 m/s). By comparing this to the free-fall velocity from that height, we can determine the energy stored as kinetic energy in the rubble immediately before impact (200-335 GJ). Therefore 65-200 GJ of energy was converted to other forms BEFORE impact. This energy was used to collapse the structure of the building and pulverize materials, and some of it was ejected in the pyroclastic flow (and various debris). You must account for energy by first determining where it started and tracing its path to determine where it ends up. That’s what I’ve done. Saying that there was a 1300 degree pile of rubble on 9/16 which can’t be explained by GPE is making an assertion based on an ill-posed question*. The correct question is ‘how much heat did GPE contribute to the 1300 degree pile of rubble?’, which is what I’ve endeavored to estimate.
*The problem with this is there is no way to determine how much heat came from which source by considering the pile of rubble. You need to determine how much heat each given source produced separately and then compare that to observations.
[Me] “I calculated that 17.4% of the original gravitational potential energy went into collapsing and pulverizing the building. [aka WORK] Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow. The rest of it remained in the debris as heat (I didn’t include this energy in my analysis – effectively assuming that all of this energy left in the pyroclastic flow). Consider an imaginary box that completely contains the WTC (from the subbasement to the tip of the radio masts). Initially, this box contains approximately one trillion joules of gravitational potential energy. All of this energy either remains in the box or is transferred out of the box – I have kept track of the energy that stayed in the box and estimated that enough of it was converted into heat to liquify approximately 1,000 metric tons of iron at room temperature. I have not in any way violated the law of conservation of energy.”
[Bob] “And you didn’t engage in the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc here how??”
As I said, I have tracked 200-335 GJ of GPE transformed (via KE) into TE in the rubble. I have given a comparison in order to help determine the scale of that energy. I have described the processes via which these transformations take place. My links of causality are clear. (Or do you contend that GPE was NOT converted into KE which was then used to do more work?)
[Me] “re conservation of energy and closed systems. I defined the closed system to be the universe as there are no energy flows into or out of the universe (by definition), thus it is clearly a closed system. Neither Bob nor Robert can tell me where the KE goes when the rubble hits the ground in this system either.”
[Bob] “That’s about as meaningful for our purposes as subtracting infinity from infinity; i.e. you’ve defined the object of your analysis in such an ‘all inclusive way’ as to define it out of meaningful existence.”
‘The universe’ is a valid closed system, I am free to use it if I wish. Energy is conserved in this system, so I can assume that any energy I can identify (say 400 GJ of GPE in the WTC) will have an unbroken existence in spacetime in some form or other. I have tracked all of this energy until it was converted to heat or it left the region that I am concerned with (ground zero). EVERYTHING that I have done is totally consistent with the laws of physics.
Bob posted:
“Here’s another vague statement:
Slarti: “*The 17.4% drop from the gravitational potential energy to the kinetic energy before impact is the energy that went into pulverizing and accelerating the debris, it remained in the debris as thermal energy. This source of heat is neglected in the analysis.”
Work is NOT heat! Work may create heat as a frictional byproduct, but it is not heat. Accordingly WORK does not ‘remain in the debris as thermal energy.’”
Wikipedia says:
“In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance. Like energy, it is a scalar quantity, with SI units of joules.”
Kinetic energy does work to compress or otherwise deform the rubble and the ground which results in thermal energy in the rubble and the ground. In addition, kinetic energy does work to power a seismic event and a big kaboom. There is no other work powered by the kinetic energy in the impact and after the impact the kinetic energy is all gone. After subtracting out the seismic and sonic energy, what’s left is the thermal energy.
Bob said:
“Do you also see the problem your GENEROUS assumption regarding the thermal energy ‘naturally’ residing in the debris determining the amount of work required to tear down the building?”
GPE was being continually converted to KE during the collapse (via work done by gravity) some of this kinetic energy remained to the bottom and some was diverted elsewhere. You can compute this (given the collapse time). I did.
Bob said:
“Ask yourself this: How many buildings are able to stand with an 82.6% GPE to 17.4% opposing force construction? [I'm not really sure what you're talking about here, I'm talking about how much of the GPE that was converted to KE remained KE until impact and how much was used before impact to do other work.] Hard to picture isn’t it? Imagine a building with the first few floors created out of balsa wood and the remaining floors created out of lead. Silly? Perhaps, but that’s exactly how your theory, DEMANDING the existence of FREE WORK, comes across as.”
You have completely misunderstood what I’m trying to say. I’ve done absolutely nothing improper.
Bob said:
“So 17.4% of the total GPE, i.e. that representing the existence (mass, height (& g)) of the entire building, was capable of shredding said entire building? [I'm computing, based on a 10-13s collapse time, that 70-200 GJ of energy were converted or transferred from KE in the descending debris (itself converted from GPE) into other forms. Primarily, this energy went into the work of destroying the structure of the building, pulverizing debris, ejecting the pyroclastic flow, and the sound of the collapse (trivial). This is one of the things that makes the model falsifyable - If you can show that it took more than 200 GJ worth of work to do all this, my model is wrong - but you don't get to make up ridiculous numbers like Robert's 14 GJ/floor without me attacking them.] That’s all the Work that was required to create the pile of rubble? [Yes. How much work do you think that it should take?] Tell me, other than wishful thinking, what forces were holding up the building for the thirty years of its existence and where did they go on 9/11? And given this oddly excessive amount of free Ke, why don’t your calculations support the theory of controlled demolition? If demolition devices weren’t removing the supports (i.e. forces opposing collapse) of the building, then how did it fall at near free fall speed? [As I've repeatedly said, knowing the speed of the collapse is what allows us to determine where the energy went. I've been using values (10-13s) out of one of your (or Robert's) sources.]”
Bob said:
“Do you really contend there were no shearing forces necessary to bring down the 47 Column core?”
Do you really contend that the 47 column core could withstand the impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy without buckling?
Bob posted:
“Me w/ your bracketed notations:” [I'm just trying to place my responses near your arguments, if you would prefer other notation, please let me know.]
Bob said:
No Slarti, the core was an independent structure that, in the absence of shearing forces which a vertical collapse does not account for, would have been left standing like a spindle on a 45 record player.
Shearing is not the only mode of failure possible. As I’ve said, the upper section of both buildings was the next best thing to the fist of god smashing into that spindle and causing it to buckle. What head-on force is necessary to buckle those columns? (If I can’t account for a solid estimate of that force, that would also falsify my model.)
Slarti,
I’ve done my best to educate you. You are too arrogant to learn. I deal with physics on a daily basis. I have to determine whether the radiation is from a point source, a line source, or a plane source. Do you know what radiation is? It’s energy. You can’t even comprehend the difference between point, line, and plane sources.
It’s kind of ironic that this discussion is taking place ant a legal blog. You’re complaining that we’re not following Italian Law in a U.S. Court. Guess what? Just like Italian Law is not applicable in U.S. Court, Energy Conservation Law is not applicable in an open system. Why do you need to rely so heavily on energy conservation? Because it’s the only way that would permit your calculations to work. Unfortunately, the same calculations would permit the building to collapse without the plane or the fire.
Here’s a part of Wiki for you: “Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_system
Where have you heard that from before? Oh yeah, I’ve been repeating it over and over.
“So how did someone slip 750 metric tons of ‘thermate’ into the WTC and precision detonate it without anyone (strike that) EVERYONE noticing?”
Who said that 750 metric tons would be required? Show your calculations. Are you now a demolition expert?
“I haven’t worked backwards at all. I started with 400 GJ of GPE. Given the time of collapse (10-13 s) we can estimate the velocity of the rubble before impact (65-85 m/s).”
You’re getting an estimate by using the time it took for the building to collapse, but you’re not working backwards? BULLSHIT!
“Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow.” Energy left your isolated system? BULLSHIT!
“Do you really contend that the 47 column core could withstand the impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy without buckling?” YES
“Shearing is not the only mode of failure possible. As I’ve said, the upper section of both buildings was the next best thing to the fist of god smashing into that spindle and causing it to buckle. What head-on force is necessary to buckle those columns? (If I can’t account for a solid estimate of that force, that would also falsify my model.)”
You’re right, so EXPLAIN THE F-ING 45 degree cuts, and the evidence of molten metal at those cuts.
And Slarti, I ran your premise past a few engineers. They all got a laugh out of your attempt to treat this as an isolated system. You see, every time you talk about energy and mass leaving, it violates the law on which you base your assumptions.
Slarti: “First of all, it’s energy, not work (work is the transformation of energy from one form to another).
Energy is the capacity for doing work; Work refers to an activity involving a FORCE and movement in the direction of the FORCE (e.g. vector); Power is the rate of doing work or the rate of using energy. Work is not the ‘transformation of energy.’ Why? Because WORK IS THE USE OF ENERGY. Assuming a-symmetrical damage precipitated a symmetrical collapse, neither crash cut through the core and obliterated the perimeter walls. IOW, the damage didn’t allow for the possibility of all the floors above coming down on the area of impact. The floors above the impact zones were securely anchored to the 47 column core and the perimeter steel walls. Accordingly, in the North Tower, i.e. the South Tower Core was virtually untouched, the only symmetrical collapse capable of miraculously happening is the collapse of one floor at once; possibly a second. That’s not enough downward vertical force to shred the 47 column core or the steel perimeter. Because if it was the building would never have survived construction in the first place.
That aside, assuming that which did not and could not have happened, i.e. an entire floor’s worth of core and perimeter steel just vanished, which just a glance at the perimeter steel shows it didn’t, then even that force of falling 10-12 feet on to the internal core and perimeter steel structure intact below would remain standing like a railroad spike. That straight down vector of Work force is BEREFT OF ANY SHEARING FORCE VECTORS needed to shred the columns and perimeter steel. Robert, and I believe Buddha, also alluded to this problem in earlier posts.
Slarti: “And I haven’t worked backwards at all. I started with 400 GJ of GPE. Given the time of collapse (10-13 s) we can estimate the velocity of the rubble before impact (65-85 m/s).”
Don’t you see how your framing of the issue precludes the problem of Work? What you call ‘rubble before impact’ is necessarily the byproducts of downward vertical Work allegedly used to shred the columns and the perimeter steel sans reasonable shearing forces. Further, the immense speed at which the Work was completed by the ‘collapse’ is also indicative of the immense amount of Power required.
Slarti: “By comparing this to the free-fall velocity from that height, we can determine the energy stored as kinetic energy in the rubble immediately before impact (200-335 GJ).”
I need to get to sleep and will follow up on this tomorrow. But you need to examine that statement “the energy stored as kinetic energy in the rubble immediately before impact” and ask yourself if it’s truly a phrase befitting the observation. Work is a FORCE and movement in the direction of the FORCE; i.e. Newton-meter. Your hypothetical ‘piston’ is performing Work at an immense speed (power). The rubble just before the end of the event is still a byproduct of the work (in progress) and the rubble at the end of the event is no longer moving (i.e. no v^2 component), therefore containing no kinetic energy. But, I hear you ask, “where did it go?” And once again I remind you that the rubble owes its existence to WORK. There is no meaningful Ke in the rubble per se, the rubble is in a state of creation as a byproduct of WORK. And due to the fact that Earth’s gravitational acceleration does not permit the possibility of the liquification of steel, any thermal energy within the rubble must be attributed (for the most part) to the Te stored in the steel before collapse due to fire and the friction created during the Work process creating said rubble; neither one of which, separately or combined, would ever reach the heat of fusion for molten metal.
And per WTC 7, the autoignition temp for type 2 diesel (i.e. for generators) is 257 C
Must sleep now.
Bob said:
“I’m not the only one who has a problem with your method of debate.”
I agree that this debate has gotten quite heated. We have both leveled an enormous amount of disrespect at each other and I’m sure we would both point to the other as the cause of our anger. In an attempt to tone down the discussion and establish where we agree and where we disagree, I have written long posts to both you and Robert. I have endeavored to be civil, humble (admittedly not my strongest trait), and clam in addressing both your and Robert’s points and clarifying my assertions and process. I greatly prefer this discussion to proceed in a rational fashion to establish where we have common ground and debate where we don’t. I have tried to present a complex and nuanced theory in a forum ill-suited while simultaneously debating several issues. My theory is more or less complete now and both you and Robert (and Buddha and Byron) are responsible for forcing me to think this through far more thoroughly than I ever would have on my own. All I ask is that before you post an answer to this you read both of my next two posts and that we try to address the issues one at a time instead of all at once. I suggest we start with work and conservation of energy (which I address at the beginning of my post to you) and the related topic of my calculation of how much GPE is converted to TE in the rubble (which I address in detail in my post to Robert). On the subject of Ockham’s razor, I would appreciate it if you would let me know if you still believe that I have used OR inappropriately, or if you just believe that I am incorrect as to its conclusion.
Sincerely,
Kevin Kesseler, Ph.D.
(I would also appreciate it if you continued to call me Slarti…)
Bob,
First, I’d like to clear up the definition of work. You said:
“Work is not the ‘transformation of energy.’ Why? Because WORK IS THE USE OF ENERGY”
The Wiki entries on mechanical and thermodynamic work say:
“In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance.”
“In thermodynamics, work performed by a system is the quantity of energy transferred by the system to another”
Both definitions refer to energy being ‘transferred’. What does this mean? In the cleanest HHGTTG-related metaphor I can think of, imagine a whale (we’ll neglect the pot of petunias) coming into existence 5 miles above a planet (assume the whale is initially at rest with respect to the planet). Initially, the whale has GPE but no KE. Through the process of gravity, work is done to accelerate the whale. This work transforms the GPE stored in the whale into KE stored in the whale at a rate equal to the acceleration due to gravity times the distance traveled times the mass of the whale. One type of energy has become another type of energy through the process of doing work. Notice that the LOCATION of the energy has not changed – it remains in the whale. We can do this sort of accounting whenever work is done, this is how conservation of energy works (pun intended
). When the whale goes ‘splat’, more work is performed. We can tell this because a large amount of kinetic energy has disappeared. Several kinds of work are done. Since all of the kinetic energy is used by this work, the total of all of the new forms of energy must be equal to the kinetic energy at impact (which is equal to the acceleration due to gravity times the weight of the whale times 5 miles neglecting air resistance – which is work which transfers KE in the whale to TE in the whale and in the atmosphere, btw). This work powers a shockwave through the earth (seismic energy), a shockwave through the atmosphere (sonic energy), and compression or other destruction of the structure of the earth and the whale. The result of the work used for compression/destruction is thermal energy in the earth and the whale (bits).
I admit that it has been very frustrating to me not to be able to take fundamental things like the definition of work for granted. If you still disagree with my interpretation of how work transfers energy, please do it within the context of this metaphor. The whimsical nature will help me keep my annoyance down. Thank you.
[Me] “You’ve said the burden of proof lies on he who asserts, not he who denies – Well, you’re asserting that ‘natural’ causes weren’t sufficient – I”m denying it.”
[Bob] Puerile sophistry. If I’m asserting anything it’s that your explanation is illogical.
I’ve done my best to clearly lay out my thinking so that we can address what you think is illogical.
[Me] “You explained how, due to your personality type, I offended you by, in your opinion, misusing Ockham’s Razor. I explained that I was using Ockham’s Razor in the way it is most frequently used in science.”
[Bob] “If this is true, why did you thank me for enlightening you as to the proper use of the Ockham’s razor (law of parsimony)?”
Initially, I used Ockham’s Razor as I was accustomed to in science. You jumped on me for using it incorrectly so I apologized for misusing it (on the assumption that you knew what you were talking about) and thanked you in an effort to offer an olive branch. I explained the manner in which I was using ‘OR’ and the specific hypotheses that I was applying it to. After you refused my olive branch, I looked into OR and discovered that the way I was using it was the generally accepted way that scientists use it. After that I felt justified in my usage and have said so.
In the interest of clarifying what part of our argument is semantics and misunderstanding and what part of if is substantive, let me lay out my view of the argument (if I incorrectly attribute any argument to you, please correct me). You raised the issues of heat and thermic residue as reasons to believe that controlled demolition brought down the WTC. I believe that OR favors the the hypothesis that ‘natural’ causes are sufficient to explain the collapse. I focused on the issue of heat and asked the question: “Were ‘natural’ causes sufficient to account for observations at ground zero?” and stated that I thought that the hypothesis: ‘natural causes are sufficient to explain the observed heat at ground zero’ was favored by OR over it’s contradiction: ‘explosives/incendiaries (or other outside sources) are necessary to account for the observed heat at ground zero’. To support (or falsify) this thesis, I needed to figure out how much heat would be expected in the rubble to determine if the heat observed in the rubble was an anomaly. Without knowing this we have no basis to determine if the heat observed in the rubble is unreasonably high (my assertion being that it is not).
To put this in legal terms, I had to establish a ‘chain of evidence’ for the thermal energy in the rubble. I have established a complete chain for all of the GPE in the WTC that remains in the system (ground zero) and have a chain for the rest of the energy until it leaves the system. I have several other chains of evidence for thermal energy, some quantified (8 TJ in WTC1 from 40 minutes of fire) and some not (heat produced by the oxidation of iron sprayed by water in the rubble and oxidation of aluminum sprayed by water in the impact zone). I have a complete theory of the crime based on solid scientific principles (conservation of energy, mechanics). I have supported my theory with evidence in the form of a falsifyable model of energy flow and with proper citations of law (I know Wikipedia isn’t the US Constitution, but it tends to be pretty accurate when it comes to things like the the definitions of scientific terms) and precedent (citing independent analysis like 400 GJ of GPE in the WTC). I’ve made extensive arguments on multiple grounds (no need for additional heat, impossibility of hiding the quantity of explosives necessary to significantly increase thermal energy, no need for explosives to explain collapse, etc.) as to why my theory of the crime is preferred over its negation. In short, I feel I’ve presented a pretty thorough case.
One of the necessary traits for a scientist is the need to constantly question the veracity of your work. This is not because one must be a superior person to be a scientist, but because other scientists (both in peer review and in independent labs repeating your experiments) will attack any flaw in your theory if you don’t identify and correct it beforehand. While I have not been presenting this for peer review, I have put my name on it because I have questioned its veracity and found it valid. I understand that in the judicial system, you employ the adversarial system and never concede any point until you are forced to, but we’re dealing with a scientific question here (‘were explosives used to collapse the WTC?’), not a legal one (we need to decide if there was a crime here before we argue about how to prosecute it). Accordingly I am trying (in this post and my post to Robert) to clearly state my arguments and explicate my process so we can establish what we agree on and clarify what we don’t.
[Me] “I explained that in your self-riteous anger you had violated the principle of conservation of energy (thus offending me) not just once, but repeatedly and willfully. Your response: Specious arguments attacking straw men.”
[Bob] “Show me Mr. Argumentation. Show me where I’ve done what you’re accusing me of doing. Furthermore, framing the conservation of energy argument with the universe as ‘the system’ is not only sophomoric but idiotic as well. It serves absolutely no definitive practical purpose whatsoever; unless you’re making a point to a 7th grade science class.”
Above I gave definitions for mechanical and thermal work and explained how work is used to transfer energy. I believe the way in which I’ve framed this is consistent with the laws of physics. If you disagree please tell me why. In my post to Robert I have explicated my assumptions and logic. Please tell me which of my steps you believe to be incorrect.
[Me] “I further explained that how in your suggested analysis (which shows how you are thinking about the situation) you had suggested doing something that I not only know to be bad mathematical practice, but can actually PROVE is bad. (Which offended me even more.) Your response: Falsely accusing me of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. [I addressed this in an earlier post.]”
[Bob] “How did you arrive at the 17.4% Slarti? [I explained this in my post to Robert.] What assumption in your reasoning caused you to ‘reach for the stars and comets and asteroids’ to fill a major gap? Why were you spending so much time discussing liquification via inelastic collisions when you know that Earth’s gravitational acceleration makes it ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for steel to liquify on impact; even if it all fell from the height of the Towers. What is that if not argument by verbosity?”
I never said (and was very careful never to say) that steel would have been liquified in the rubble impact* (unless it was already at or near the heat of fusion). My point is only that an enormous amount of energy was transformed by the impact into heat in the rubble. It is a known fact that iron meteors may not just liquify but vaporize in a terminal velocity impact. This would be an impact powered solely by the earth’s gravitational acceleration. In order to avoid misunderstanding and to aid myself in correcting misunderstanding I’ve tried to qualify everything I’ve said very carefully. Unfortunately this makes my arguments dry and verbose. Sorry.
*It is possible (I’m not going to go back to look) that I implied something of this sort at the beginning of this argument. If so, it was incorrect.
Bob said:
“Even more infantile is how you don’t own up to what you did. By denying that you ever said the steel liquified upon impact (as you did above) you sound like Bush when he denied making any connections between 9/11 & Iraq/Saddam.”
As I said iron meteors (basically the same thing as steel) will liquify in high-speed impacts. In the WTC collapse this ‘impact heat’ would not (generally) be sufficient to melt steel, but it does add a significant amount of heat to the rubble that would contribute to keeping steel at or near the heat of fusion (or pushing it over). My assertion is that ALL of the heat sources present combined (impact heat, fire, exothermic reactions, etc.) were sufficient to account for the observed heat and molten metal in the rubble.
[Me] “I’ve outlined a version of events which may not be completely accurate in every detail, but I believe to be a pretty good general framework of what happened.” Your version of events: ‘They musta blow’d them bildin’s up cuz that there rubbel were HOT!’”
[Bob] “No Slarti, you cobbled together a bunch of faulty premises & assumptions and created a crystal clear mathematical deduction of a bullshit argument. [My premises and logic are enumerated in my post to Robert. Which steps are bullshit?] My response has always been quite articulate and can be summed up as me constantly explaining to you why I don’t believe your argument that the moon is made of green cheese. Making me sound like a redneck would be fine; however when you do it while attributing to me arguments I”ve never made, that makes you intellectually dishonest. [We've both been rude to each other, but you have yet to put forth a theory of the collapse which explains (even in general terms) how explosives could have been used to increase the heat in the rubble.]”
[Me] “I’ve shown that to double the thermal energy in the collapse (of all three buildings) you would need the equivalent of 2 kilotons of TNT – that’s 1.5 kilotons of Robert’s hole-punching C4 charges (oops, no residue!) or 3/4 kilotons of the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known to Wikipedia, Octanitrocubane. Assuming (generously) that your mythical ‘thermate’ is equally powerful, your explanation of how something on the order of 750 metric tons of explosives were covertly planted and precision detonated?”
[Bob] “Further evidence that you’ve never studied the art of argumentation. [No, I haven't. I studied science and math.] Resolved, that the explanations offered for the existence, for nearly six months, of molten metal and high temperatures within the rubble of Towers 1, 2 & most importantly 7, are untruthful; i.e. there is a huge lack of agreement between said knowledge and its object of analysis.”
This is certainly not resolved. I believe that my explanations are sufficient to account for said temperatures. I have sources of more that 12 TJ of thermal energy in the rubble. My assertion is that 12 TJ (more than 1/10th the energy released in the Hiroshima explosion) plus additional known or extremely probable heat sources in addition to the thermal insulation provided by the rubble (I think that the many small pockets of air would be a very good insulator in the rubble) are sufficient to explain the presence and duration of heat at ground zero. In the case of WTC7, I believe that the 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel pumped onto the fires in addition to the extended length of time that significant portions of the building were on fire is a much better explanation of the hot spots you mention than explosives. Finally, I believe that any theory which posits explosives as necessary to generate additional heat is multiplying entities beyond necessity (which has been my point from the start).
[Me] “I’ve explained how spraying water on hot iron causes a reaction which in addition to being exothermic on its own, creates hydrogen gas as a by-product.”
[Bob] “Okay Mr. Boyle, where did you get the superheated steam from to start said reaction and by what mechanism was the equilibrium shifted to maintain your alleged exothermic reaction? (Uh, Alex, I’ll take ‘Question Begging’ for $200)”
“What is water sprayed onto steel at or near the heat of fusion?”, Alex. The reaction could continue as long as the steel stayed hot (not likely a problem with the heat of reaction in addition to the probable oxidation of the hydrogen by-product) or they stopped spraying water on the debris (which they didn’t for a very long time).
[Me] “12,000 gallons of diesel fuel was pumped into the burning WTC7 from underground tanks generating 1.5 teraJoules of heat (that’s just the added heat from the diesel fuel, the total heat generated by fire is larger) which is enough to raise the entire mass of the building 339 C by itself.”
[Bob] “There you go again, tossing around big numbers without any focus whatsoever. [I have a basis for all of the numbers that I toss around.] All of the fuel was burned? [There were two 6,000 gallon tanks in the basement of WTC7 to power emergency generators, they were full the morning of 9/11 and empty thereafter (and none leaked into the ground beneath them). Other tanks under the WTC complex were found to be intact and full after the collapse. No diesel fuel was found in the debris, ergo it all burned.] Diffuse diesel fuel flames burn how hot? [I believe the fires were estimated to be as hot as 1100 C, but I'm not really sure.] 339 C? [This is an estimate (from the source I linked last night) of how much the temperature of the entire ferrocrete mass of WTC7 would increase with the addition of 1.5 TJ of thermal energy.] And you know how many joules were released from the fuel burning in WTC 7? [1.5 TJ is the amount of thermal energy released by burning 12,000 gallon of diesel fuel. If it was not all burned they would have found diesel fuel in the debris.] A man’s got to know his limitations Slarti. [I believe that I do and I stand behind everything I've said here.]”
[Me] “You make straw men of my arguments and question some of the values that I’m using.”
[Bob] “Don’t look now, but you’re whining.”
Whining, arrogance, and condescension aside, my arguments stand on their own. I don’t say you’ve done it deliberately, but you’ve frequently misrepresented my statements, creating straw men. (Questioning any of my values is perfectly legitimate and its inclusion here is snarky, sorry.)
[Me] “Can you answer ALL of my arguments here, like I’ve done with yours?”
[Bob] “I have replied to your arguments; over and over. [On this one, I have conflated you with Robert (who will frequently pick at one or two points in a massive post). Thinking back, you have answered pretty much every post directed at you, frequently point-by-point as you have here. I apologize for the mischaracterization.] In lieu of answering those questions I ask you, i.e. those elements that if you convince me you’d win the argument by winning my assent [What are these elements], you just repeat yourself, toss out more of your assumptions and declare your arguments immaculate by your own authority while denigrating me. [We definitely have a mutual denigration society going on here. In my posts tonight, I've tried my best to lay out exactly what my assumptions and arguments are. I am happy to clarify or defend any of it.]
In the end what I’m asserting boils down to this:
I believe that I applied Ockham’s Razor correctly in a way that is standard practice in science. To wit, using it to decided between the ‘natural’ and ‘explosive’ theories of heat at ground zero. I believe that OR favors the ‘natural’ hypothesis and have made extensive arguments as to why.
Robert said:
“I’ve done my best to educate you. You are too arrogant to learn.”
You cannot teach me anything because I do not believe that you have a better understanding of the physics of this situation than I do. If you want to convince me that I’m wrong you will need to show that I’ve made a mistake in my analysis. To help you out I have numbered all the steps that go into my estimate that 2-300 GJ of energy was transformed from gravitational potential energy in the WTC into thermal energy in the rubble below.
Robert said:
] You can’t even comprehend the difference between point, line, and plane sources. [Please correct me if I was wrong in my assumptions.] It’s kind of ironic that this discussion is taking place ant a legal blog. You’re complaining that we’re not following Italian Law in a U.S. Court. [To me the question is a scientific one and I'm appealing to physical law.] Guess what? Just like Italian Law is not applicable in U.S. Court, Energy Conservation Law is not applicable in an open system. [I have detailed my logic below. Please indicate which step contains a false statement about energy conservation.] Why do you need to rely so heavily on energy conservation? [Because when looking at a physics problem (especially one involving a form of energy like heat), energy conservation is generally the best place to start.] Because it’s the only way that would permit your calculations to work. [Yes, my calculations depend on the assumptions and logic below.] Unfortunately, the same calculations would permit the building to collapse without the plane or the fire. [No, in this analysis I'm just assuming that the building collapsed as it was observed to do (for whatever reason) and trying to determine how much GPE in the building became TE in the rubble (and what work it did along the way), elsewhere I postulate how the collapse might have occurred given the damage in the airplane impact. I know that I have said a lot of different things here and there are many overlapping theories. I have tried my best to carefully qualify the meaning and context of all of my statements - my listing of the logic of my analysis below is another attempt.]
“I deal with physics on a daily basis. [And I deal with science on a daily basis.] I have to determine whether the radiation is from a point source, a line source, or a plane source. [I would assume that a point source would be like a heated object emitting black box radiation, a line source would be like a radio transmitter, and a plane source would be like the cone of a speaker.] Do you know what radiation is? It’s energy. [I don't seem to be the only arrogant, condescending person here.
Robert said:
“Here’s a part of Wiki for you: “Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality”. Where have you heard that from before? Oh yeah, I’ve been repeating it over and over.”
Yes, truly isolated systems do not exist in reality. However if you read on, you would find:
“However, real systems may behave nearly as an isolated system for finite (possibly very long) times. The concept of an isolated system can serve as a useful model approximating many real-world situations. It is an acceptable idealization used in constructing mathematical models”
So I’m making an ‘acceptable idealization’ to construct a mathematical model (and I remind you that I have a Ph.D. in mathematics and my area of specialization is modeling). I have explicated my logic below and I believe that I have in no way violated conservation of energy (or any other physical law), if you feel otherwise, please explain why.
[Me] “So how did someone slip 750 metric tons of ‘thermate’ into the WTC and precision detonate it without anyone (strike that) EVERYONE noticing?”
[Robert] “Who said that 750 metric tons would be required? Show your calculations. Are you now a demolition expert?”
This is my estimate of the amount of the most powerful (non-nuclear) explosive it would take to double the expected thermal energy in the rubble pile of all 3 buildings. If you can show me data for the energy released by ‘thermate’, please do.
[Me] “I haven’t worked backwards at all. I started with 400 GJ of GPE. Given the time of collapse (10-13 s) we can estimate the velocity of the rubble before impact (65-85 m/s).”
[Robert] “You’re getting an estimate by using the time it took for the building to collapse, but you’re not working backwards? BULLSHIT!
[Me] “Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow.”
[Robert] “Energy left your isolated system? BULLSHIT!”
Again, my process is below, please explain any mistakes you feel I’ve made.
[Me] “Do you really contend that the 47 column core could withstand the impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy without buckling?” [Robert] “YES”
I don’t think that a structural engineer would tell you that the central core (and perimeter structure) of the 94th floor of WTC1 could withstand the dynamic impact of a 23 kiloton mass with 1 GJ of kinetic energy (the amount it would gain by falling a single floor). What we need to know here is the yield strength of the core columns on the 94th floor (the steel gets thinner as you go up). Remember that due to damage from the airplane impact and fire (and complex dynamics between the central core, the perimeter structure, the 5-story ‘hat truss’, and the damaged area) the structure of the 94th floor had less than its ‘normal’ strength to ‘catch’ the falling building. If (when) it failed, the 93rd floor faced an even more energetic impact and so on. The magnitude of the forces would have risen much more quickly than the structural strength of the building increased as the collapse proceeded downwards.
[Me] “Shearing is not the only mode of failure possible. As I’ve said, the upper section of both buildings was the next best thing to the fist of god smashing into that spindle and causing it to buckle. What head-on force is necessary to buckle those columns? (If I can’t account for a solid estimate of that force, that would also falsify my model.)”
[Robert] “You’re right, so EXPLAIN THE F-ING 45 degree cuts, and the evidence of molten metal at those cuts.”
By the time that the collapse was nearing the ground there was a mass of debris with something like 200 GJ of kinetic energy slamming through the remaining structure. This kinetic energy powered massive forces which were able to bend, buckle and shear beams very quickly. The kinetic energy used to do this work was transformed into thermal energy in the beams resulting in (in the extreme cases) melting.
Robert said:
“And Slarti, I ran your premise past a few engineers. They all got a laugh out of your attempt to treat this as an isolated system. You see, every time you talk about energy and mass leaving, it violates the law on which you base your assumptions.”
As I implied above with the quote from Wikipedia above, my treatment is consistent with standard scientific practice. If you or your friends think otherwise, please let me know what errors I’ve made in the steps below:
1) The universe is a closed system.
2) Energy is conserved in a closed system.
3) Therefore energy is conserved in the universe.
4) The energy stored as GPE in the WTC (henceforth GPE) is in the universe, therefore conserved.
5) Since the GPE is conserved it exists in the universe for all time.
6) Since the GPE exists for all time, its location and form at any particular time is well-defined.
7) I wish to determine how much of the GPE ended up as TE in the rubble (which is a well-defined amount somewhere between 0 and 400 GJ) .
8) To determine (7), I have tracked the work done with the GPE to determine how and when the energy was transferred.
9) All of the GPE (less the GPE of the rubble pile which I’ve omitted and would estimate at (well) under 50 GJ) is converted into KE via work done by gravitation throughout the collapse.
10a) Some of this KE is transferred into TE in the structural steel by the work done to collapse the structure of the building (i.e. buckling and shearing beams).
10b) Some of the KE is transferred into TE in the building materials by the work done to pulverize those materials (this mostly remains with the dust). Much of this energy is ejected from the system in the pyroclastic flow.
10c) Some of the KE is transferred into sonic and seismic energy which leaves the system. (I’ve accounted for the sonic energy in 16b although it is trivial, and lumped the seismic energy in with the seismic event caused by the impact in 16a).
10d) Some of the KE along with some of the TE from 10a is ejected from the system with energetic debris (hot I-beams).
10e) Some of the KE along with some of the TE from 10b leaves the system in the pyroclastic flow.
11) The remaining GPE is tied up in KE of the descending debris immediately before impact.
12) From the time of collapse (assuming constant acceleration) I can calculate the the velocity of collapse just before impact.
13) By comparing the velocity of collapse to the free-fall velocity I can determine how much of the GPE remains KE in the rubble and how much was used for work in 10a-e (or potentially other work that I haven’t accounted for).
14) After the impact all of the KE in the rubble in 13 is gone.
15) Since GPE is conserved, it must have been transferred.
16a) Some of the KE was used to do work to emit waves of seismic energy – the magnitude of this can be computed via seismic readings of the collapse.
16b) Some of the KE was used to do work to emit waves of sonic energy – I estimated this energy as ‘as loud as a rocket engine for 1 minute’ (which is a trivial amount of energy).
16c) The rest of the KE from 13 was used to do work compressing or otherwise distorting the structure of the ground or the rubble and is transformed into TE in the ground and the rubble.
This is how I arrived at my estimate that roughly 2-300 GJ of GPE was converted into TE in the rubble (16c). Which steps do you believe are unjustified?
Slarti: “First, I’d like to clear up the definition of work. You said: “Work is not the ‘transformation of energy.’ Why? Because WORK IS THE USE OF ENERGY”
That’s not what I said; and context is key here. Before those sentences I said: “Energy is the capacity for doing work; Work refers to an activity involving a FORCE and movement in the direction of the FORCE (e.g. vector); Power is the rate of doing work or the rate of using energy.”
Slarti: “The Wiki entries on mechanical and thermodynamic work say: “In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance.”
“In thermodynamics, work performed by a system is the quantity of energy transferred by the system to another”
The foregoing are not equivalents. The concept of a transfer of energy does not necessitate an analysis of opposing force.
Slarti: “If you still disagree with my interpretation of how work transfers energy, please do it within the context of this metaphor.”
Let’s place the whale at the height of the Towers. In fact, let’s place it on the top of a tower on or before 9/11 because the lack of sufficient damage done by the plane makes it irrelevant.
Is the tower collapsing from the weight of the whale? No. Why? Because the entire purpose of architecture is to arrange structures in a mechanical fashion so that they are always pushing more newtons upwards than are being pushed downwards. Anything less would necessitate collapse.
Now let’s further imagine we have a magical device whereby with the turn of a potentiometer, we can gradually increase the density/mass of the whale. Imagine the whale and all its blubber completely covering the roof. What’s going to fail first and why? The perimeter steel, the 47 Column core or the roof and floors?
The roof and floors will go first because the whale will eventually create enough shearing force to break them before coming anywhere close to being able to crush the perimeter steel or core. The whale, in essence would get skewered by the perimeter steel and the core while crushing a few floors.
And if we turned the whale’s density/mass up to eleven, what then? How much force is being exerted upward by the square/vertical 47 column core and the square/vertical perimeter steel? How massive would that whale have to become before either skewering itself all the way down or forcing either support structure to bend?
While I consider the whale to be a ‘skewered’ example (pun intended) the point is that your definition regarding a simple transfer of energy is insufficient to explain the phenomena. The work done is not just the work of gravity moving said whale downwards, it’s more importantly the work done AGAINST the opposing forces upward; i.e. those forces put in place by virtue of its architecture.
The mere existence of a sufficient opposing Work force to collapse the core & perimeter necessitates its subtraction from the GPE of the Tower first, since it’s amount will greatly exceed any Ke due to free fall. And it’s the free fall part of this problem that poses the real problem; doesn’t it Slarti.
Slarti,
The reason I introduced point, line, and plane sources is to illustrate how measurements can be deceptive. A point source would be like a valve body. A line source would be like a contaminated/radioactive section of pipe. And a plane source is generally what would occur from a spill of radioactive material over an “area”, or maybe the reactor vessel. As you increase the distance from a line source, it will act like a point source. As you increase the distance from a plane source, it will first act like a line source, and then a point source. As you can probably imagine, you will need to get further from a plane source than a line source before it begins to resemble a point source.
An example:
One speaker would be a point source. 10 speakers in a row would be a line source, and 10 speakers wide by 10 speakers high would be a plane source. Your cabinet speaker for your home stereo probably contains a woofer, a mid-range, and a tweeter. From where you sit, it appears to be a point source. But in reality, it is more like a line source. If you get real close to the cabinet, you can identify all three sources.
As I pointed out in a previous post, adding a speaker will not double the decibel level, but it would require twice the energy to drive two identical speakers at the same level than it does one.
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-leveladding.htm
Knowing that the rumble from the WTC collapse was, in reality, caused by numerous sources (millions of collisions) , there is no way to calculate the energy USED to create a decibel level at a given distance. The deviation from reality would be exponential. This can best be represented by considering the SOURCE to be a plane source.
The easiest way for me to demonstrate the difference is to consider it a radiation source.
1 Curie of Cobalt-60 will yield 1.3 Rem/hr at 1 meter from a point source. (We use (1 at one yields 1) as a rule of thumb) Increasing the distance follows an inverse square rule. As such, the dose rate will square as you get closer. (i.e. at 3 meters the dose rate is .143 R/hr, and at half a meter the dose rate is 5.18 R/hr.) A line source is treated as a point source at a distance of half the length of the line source and beyond. At a distance of less than half the length of the line source, the does rate is inversely proportional. (i.e. a 10 ft long line source will act as a point source at a distance of 5 ft. At less than 5 ft, the radiation levels increase proportionally.
I’ll skip the calculations for a plane source because that would require calculus, and I think you already get the idea. At least I hope you do. (To accurately calculate a line source requires calculus too, but the simplified math is much closer than that of a plane source.)
In my previous post I pointed out that radiation is energy. The same can be said of heat. Fifty 400 degree fires are only going to produce a temperature reading of 400 degrees. However, it doesn’t take an expert on physics to understand that it takes 50 times more energy to burn 50 fires. A temperature reading observed for an area cannot be used to interpret the amount of energy used. (notice I said used? Fires are doing work. They are heating the environment. Since we don’t have a good way to recover that energy we refer to it as used. Isolated systems don’t “use” energy.)
When calculating the amount of energy required to cut through a steel column, it is not enough to know the material and the thickness. That would only permit you do determine how much energy is required to cut through a pinpoint cross-section. In addition, if you don’t have a means of directing the energy (i.e. a shaped charge) you must assume that the energy is omni-directional. When you’re talking about lateral force during a vertical collapse, that would require you to assume a (for lack of better term) buttload of energy was wasted.
Bob,
Thank you for following my requests in your response. I think that we should stay away from the physics of the failure (natural or induced) which led to the WTC collapse for now. As we do not yet have common ground on the physics of work and energy, I don’t think that there is anything to be gained by debating this now (neither of us are going to convince the other, although I will respond to your comment if you ask me to).
I dug up this from my first-year physics text. This is a passage from ‘Physics: Foundations and Applications’ by Eisberg and Lerner. The event under consideration is a ball being dropped on the floor. I have replaced the word ‘ball’ with the word ‘whale’ and the word ‘floor’ with the word ‘ground’ in keeping with our metaphor – all other text is verbatim:
“Consider the whale-plus-earth system after the whale hits the ground, assuming it does not rebound. The whale is a rest at ground level . Therefore the system has neither kinetic energy nor potential energy. The constant total mechanical energy which the system had during the flight of the whale has vanished. What has happened to the mechanical energy?
This is what happens. When the whale hits the ground, the molecules in the surface of the whale collide with the molecules in the surface of the ground, setting the surface molecules in both bodies into vibrational motion. Their vibration sets adjacent molecules into vibration, and so on. So the vibrational motion propagates into the two bodies. The molecules are not vibrating in unison, however. There is still energy present, even though the whale as a whole is at rest on the ground. But it is an energy of random vibrational motion.
Just before the whale hits the ground the system has mechanical energy which is all in the form of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is an organized energy of motion. It is organized in the sense that all the molecules of the whale are moving in unison – in the same direction at the same speed. After the whale hits the ground there is still motion of molecules, and there is energy associated with this motion. But it is the disorganized energy of randomly vibrating molecules. This energy is called thermal energy. So when the whale hits the ground, the mechanical energy of the system is transformed into thermal energy.”
How can we find out how much thermal energy we get? Well, it turns out that James Joule did an experiment. From the ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’ entry in Wikipedia:
“In the history of science, the mechanical equivalent of heat was a concept that had an important part in the development and acceptance of the conservation of energy and the establishment of the science of thermodynamics in the 19th century.
The concept stated that motion and heat are mutually interchangeable and that in every case, a given amount of work would generate the same amount of heat, provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy. [...] Central to these developments, however, was Joule’s famous 1843 paper, entitled “The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat”, in which he published the value A for the amount of work W required to produce a unit of heat Q. Joule contended that motion and heat were mutually interchangeable and that, in every case, a given amount of work would generate the same amount of heat.”
Your original quote about energy was:
“Energy is the capacity for doing work [Yes.]; Work refers to an activity involving a FORCE and movement in the direction of the FORCE (e.g. vector) [This applies specifically to mechanical work, but it is correct.]; Power is the rate of doing work or the rate of using energy [Yes.]. Work is not the ‘transformation of energy.’ Why? Because WORK IS THE USE OF ENERGY.”
If by ‘use of energy’ you mean the transfer of energy from one form to another via a force acting over a distance, I agree with you. If you mean the energy is destroyed or leaves the system, I couldn’t disagree more strongly.
Robert,
Let’s talk speakers. As you said, the power required to generate a particular sound is measured in decibels (dB). Let’s say we have a bunch of speakers putting out 120 dB of sonic energy each. The sound from each speaker will be about as loud as a jackhammer and will require 1 Watt of power to generate. Your line of 10 speakers requires 10 W and generates a sound of 130 dB and your bank of 100 speakers requires 100 W and generates a 140 dB sound (as loud as a rock concert). Now let’s put 100 W through a single speaker, 10 W each through our line of speakers and leave our bank of speakers at 1 W each. In all three cases we are using 100W of power to generate a 140 dB sound. As you correctly point out, if we are sufficiently far away, we can’t tell the difference between these three cases. Also, if we measure the volume from a known distance away from the source, we can determine that we a hearing a 140 dB sound (at the source) that requires 100W of power to generate, but not which of the three cases we are hearing. The WTC collapse is exactly the same. From a distance, it is a point source. All of the sonic energy has formed a single pressure wave in the atmosphere and by measuring its volume a known distance away we can calculate the power that went into generating it. Now, as far as I know, no one measured the dB level of the WTC collapse, but I think that ‘as loud as a rocket for one minute’ probably requires more power. In any case, this is such a small amount of energy on the scale we’re talking about (5.9 MJ), that it’s pretty much a moot point. Seismic energy works exactly the same way, except in the case of the seismic energy we do have accurate measurements (2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale for the WTC1 and WTC2 collapses – I’m not sure which is which).
I don’t think that Cobalt-60 is a good example since it undergoes beta decay. While the emitted electron is technically energy (by e=mc^2), I think that it kind of muddies the water here.
Slarti,
You quoted the Wikipedia entry for “The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat”. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mechanical_equivalent_of_heat&action=historysubmit&diff=335572387&oldid=333502650
“In the history of science, the mechanical equivalent of heat was a concept that had an important part in the development and acceptance of the conservation of energy and the establishment of the science of thermodynamics in the 19th century.
The concept stated that motion and heat are mutually interchangeable and that in every case, a given amount of work would generate the same amount of heat, provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy. [...] Central to these developments, however, was Joule’s famous 1843 paper, entitled “The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat”, in which he published the value A for the amount of work W required to produce a unit of heat Q. Joule contended that motion and heat were mutually interchangeable and that, in every case, a given amount of work would generate the same amount of heat.”
But you left off the last part of that paragraph. Why? Why did you put a period (you put the period in the quote) instead of quoting the last part of the sentence that said “provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy.”?
That’s dishonest!
You left off the qualifying statement in order to sell your bag of bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Slarti said “Your line of 10 speakers requires 10 W and generates a sound of 130 dB and your bank of 100 speakers requires 100 W and generates a 140 dB sound (as loud as a rock concert).”
It would require 100 Watts to power 100 speakers, and it would sound as loud as a rock concert? Somebody should tell the sound people that run these rock concerts. How far from the speakers was the sound measurement taking place? Does it take the same amount of energy to drive a 20″ woofer as it does a 2″ tweeter? Is that 100 watts per millisecond? or nanosecond? All you did is put numbers in a statement. You didn’t support your numbers with math. You provided us with off the wall babble. Provide links to your source.
“Now, as far as I know, no one measured the dB level of the WTC collapse”
Previously you had stated “Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the decibel level of the WTC collapse was, but it requires one megawatt of power to produce a 180dB sound. This is the sound of a rocket engine or the sound of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption as heard from 100 miles away. Given that 1 million joules per second produces this volume of sound, the sonic energy produced by the collapse is negligible in this calculation.”
Notice that you gave a distance for the measurement of Krakatoa (100 miles), but did not for the rocket engine. Do you think the sound level is the same at the source as it is at a distance of one mile? 10 miles? 100 miles?
“Seismic energy works exactly the same way, except in the case of the seismic energy we do have accurate measurements (2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale for the WTC1 and WTC2 collapses – I’m not sure which is which).”
As I told you before. The collapse of the WTC(s) CANNOT be directly related to the energy of an earthquake. The buildings hit the surface of the earth. An earthquake is an event in which the earths crust moves or crumbles. You’re not comparing apples to apples.
“I don’t think that Cobalt-60 is a good example since it undergoes beta decay. While the emitted electron is technically energy (by e=mc^2), I think that it kind of muddies the water here.”
The decay of Cobalt-60 also produces 2 gammas. (not that it matters for my example) Point, line, and plane sources are used to represent energy, and how measurement of that energy cannot be used to calculate the source without defining the source to be a point, line, or plane, NOT the type of energy. I think you’re purposely trying to miss the point. If we were talking about shielding, then the type of radiation we were trying to address would be important.
HERE IS SLARTI’s SCIENCE
I asked “so EXPLAIN THE F-ING 45 degree cuts, and the evidence of molten metal at those cuts.”
Slarti responded; “By the time that the collapse was nearing the ground there was a mass of debris with something like 200 GJ of kinetic energy slamming through the remaining structure. This kinetic energy powered massive forces which were able to bend, buckle and shear beams very quickly. The kinetic energy used to do this work was transformed into thermal energy in the beams resulting in (in the extreme cases) melting.”
You think that just because you have available energy, that explains cuts (on multiple beams) at a 45 degree angle, and remnants of molten metal next to those cuts? You have lost all credibility as a scientist.
Slarti,
You’re not a scientist. You’re a story teller. When the laws don’t apply, you just disregard the required parameters and decide to apply them anyway.
I performed an analysis (using YOUR numbers) based on the premise that a child used a slingshot to hit both buildings with rocks, which somehow caused WTC 1 and 2 to collapse in the same amount of time that we have accepted. Guess what? IT COULD HAPPEN. That’s what happens when you apply JUNK SCIENCE.
“7) I wish to determine how much of the GPE ended up as TE in the rubble (which is a well-defined amount somewhere between 0 and 400 GJ) .”
How did the GPE (of which some remained as KE when the pieces of the WTC hit the earth) get converted to TE? Is this some kind of “Poof Cheeze-It” process?
Rub your hands together. That’s one way of converting kinetic energy to thermal energy. It’s called friction. You’ll notice that it only heats the contact surface.
What causes this energy to go into the rubble instead of the earth and the atmosphere? (Try to give a scientific answer backed up by reliable sources) Wikipedia (without citation) is not a reliable source.
Slarti: “If by ‘use of energy’ you mean the transfer of energy from one form to another via a force acting over a distance, I agree with you. If you mean the energy is destroyed or leaves the system, I couldn’t disagree more strongly.”
While I agree with everything you cited from your text book, I thought I might mention that you’re committing the fallacy of composition. You are arguing from a part to the whole. That moment of impact is a part of and not the whole event. You are ignoring Newton’s second law entirely by stopping the video, so to speak, at the moment of impact; ignoring the opposing forces and the rest of the event entirely.
Furthermore, the fact that no one with a scintilla of a clue about the principles of thermodynamics would ever use the phrase that ‘energy is destroyed’ makes your statement thoughtlessly dismissive; and your insistence that no energy leaves ‘the system’ which you define as the universe is childishly absurd.
Epistemically speaking dear doctor, the only system you’re capable of analyzing is the one you’re capable of perceiving with empirical data. Using the premise that the system for purposes of our analysis is defined as ‘the universe’ is as counter-factual as “All cellestial bodies are made of green cheese.”
Oh my.
This is indeed a feast of logic.
Please, carry on gentlemen! Don’t mind the smiling green fat man in the corner. He’s just enjoying the show. (Flags down the beer guy.)
I also have to say that I agree with Robert’s rebuttals to Slarti’s less than honest replies to legitimate questions.
BIL,
You rang?
Robert said:
“You quoted the Wikipedia entry for “The Mechanical Equivalent of Heat”. [...] But you left off the last part of that paragraph. Why? Why did you put a period (you put the period in the quote) instead of quoting the last part of the sentence that said “provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy.”? That’s dishonest! You left off the qualifying statement in order to sell your bag of bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Considering that I have accounted for the other significant forms of energy in the impact (sonic and seismic) all along, I don’t feel that I have been dishonest. I was trying to establish the fact that kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy by impact (which, I believe, you have just implicitly agreed to and Bob explicitly agreed to) and that the amount of energy transferred is calculable (which, according to Joule’s experiment, it is). That being established we can now talk about HOW MUCH kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy (about 90-95% of it by my calculation).
Speaking of intellectually dishonesty, why did you quote: “Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality” without including:
“(except perhaps for the universe as a whole), because, for example, there is always gravity between a system with mass and masses elsewhere. However, real systems may behave nearly as an isolated system for finite (possibly very long) times. The concept of an isolated system can serve as a useful model approximating many real-world situations. It is an acceptable idealization used in constructing mathematical models of certain natural phenomena;”
Which not only explicitly sanctions my usage (constructing a mathematical model), but validates my assertion that the universe can be treated as an isolated system. I added the period when I was double-checking my post and you are correct that I should not have, sorry (it’s especially bad given my fondness for ellipses…).
[Me] “Your line of 10 speakers requires 10 W and generates a sound of 130 dB and your bank of 100 speakers requires 100 W and generates a 140 dB sound (as loud as a rock concert).”
[Robert] “It would require 100 Watts to power 100 speakers, and it would sound as loud as a rock concert? [A sound with 100 Watts of power is a 140 dB sound (regardless of how it's generated), 'loud as a rock concert' is the equivalent of 140 dB in Wikipedia, I include it for some idea of scale, but it doesn't affect the numbers. I would assume this means 'as loud as being in the crowd at a rock concert, not 'the total speaker power at a rock concert' (Which I would imagine to be in the kilowatts).] Somebody should tell the sound people that run these rock concerts. How far from the speakers was the sound measurement taking place? [As I said above, I don't know for the 'rock concert' comparison - which is clearly very rough, but the power is a function of the volume at the source.] Does it take the same amount of energy to drive a 20″ woofer as it does a 2″ tweeter? [A speaker putting out 100 W of sonic energy will generate a 140 dB sound regardless of the size of the speaker or the frequency of the sound.] Is that 100 watts per millisecond? or nanosecond? [Just 100 Watts. Power is measured in energy per unit time, in SI units that would be J/s. One Watt of power is one Joule per second.] All you did is put numbers in a statement. You didn’t support your numbers with math. [Not once in this entire thread have a posted a number that I could not back up with a source or a calculation. Where I have made mistakes or revised inaccurate numbers, I have noted it. When you have disputed numbers that I have been using I have either accepted your values (like 400 GJ GPE) or explained why I don't consider them valid (like 14 GJ to rip loose a floor).] You provided us with off the wall babble. Provide links to your source. [Since my writing style is already very dry and most of the statements I make are the result of multiple sources (I've got 4 Wikipedia pages open right now) as well as calculations I have, in general, omitted sources unless I'm making a direct quote. If you would like me to be more rigorous, I will (and, of course I will provide sources for anything you ask for). In my 'speaker' post, I used the 'decibel' page (to verify that my understanding of the topic was correct) and the 'sound power' page (for the equivalences of decibel level to power). Later in this post, I will explain my logic/calculation for the 'speaker' post - I can do this for any (but unfortunately not ALL) of my posts.]”
[Me] “Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what the decibel level of the WTC collapse was, but it requires one megawatt of power to produce a 180dB sound. This is the sound of a rocket engine or the sound of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption as heard from 100 miles away. Given that 1 million joules per second produces this volume of sound, the sonic energy produced by the collapse is negligible in this calculation.”
[Robert] “Notice that you gave a distance for the measurement of Krakatoa (100 miles), but did not for the rocket engine.”
If no distance is given, you may assume that I mean at the source (which is what you use to calculate its power). I included the Krakatoa thing (and other comparisons) because I believe that context like this comparison help to get a sense of scale in a discussion like this.
[Robert] ” Do you think the sound level is the same at the source as it is at a distance of one mile? 10 miles? 100 miles?”
I think that volume declines predictably with distance.
[Me] “Seismic energy works exactly the same way, except in the case of the seismic energy we do have accurate measurements (2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale for the WTC1 and WTC2 collapses – I’m not sure which is which).”
[Robert] “As I told you before. The collapse of the WTC(s) CANNOT be directly related to the energy of an earthquake. The buildings hit the surface of the earth. An earthquake is an event in which the earths crust moves or crumbles. You’re not comparing apples to apples.”
The Richter scale measures seismic energy. It takes a fixed amount of power to generate a given reading – the distance between the source and the measurement is figured into the reading (The collapses measured a 2.1 and a 2.3 on the Richter scale, not a ’2.1 from 1 km away’). The consistency of the ground determines how much energy gets transformed into seismic energy, how much gets transformed to sonic energy, and how much is transformed into thermal energy (other forms of energy generated – like electromagnetic energy – are not significant in this event), but it is the total amount transferred into seismic energy which determines the reading. For example (and to give an idea of scale), yesterday’s earthquake in Haiti measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, meaning that about 130 petaJoules (10^15 Joules) of energy were released, the equivalent of 32 megatons of TNT, slightly more than the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco (6.9). The conversions from the Richter scale to Joules and tons of TNT can be found on the ‘Richter magnitude scale’ entry in Wikipedia along with the formula to compute the relative energy of two readings. The whole point of the Richter and decibel scales is to determine the amount of energy that went into a given seismic event or sound. This is why we can make equivalences between earthquake magnitude, energy (Joules), and the energy released in a TNT explosion.
Because we had talked about it earlier, the Chicxulub impactor had about 4 or 500 zetaJoules (10^21 Joules) of KE, the equivalent of 100 teratons of TNT. If ALL of that energy were converted into a seismic event it would register 13.0 on the Richter scale.
In order to make my post about speakers last night, I used the following facts and reasoning: the decibel scale of sonic energy is a logarithmic scale. This means that an increase of 10 dB corresponds to a sound with 10 times the power (your banks of 10 and 100 speakers made the calculations easy). The ‘sound power’ page of Wiki gives a figure of 1 W for a 120 dB sound (jackhammer) which seemed like a good base level (incidentally, 140 dB (100 W) is also listed as equivalent to a ‘heavy truck’ if you like that better than ‘rock concert’ – the important relation here is 140 dB = 100 W). As I said before, at sufficient distance to consider 10 or 100 speakers a point source, you cannot tell the difference in the pressure waves generated by 1 speaker putting out a 140 dB sound, 10 speakers putting out a 130 dB sound or 100 speakers putting out a 120 dB sound.
[Robert] : “The decay of Cobalt-60 also produces 2 gammas. (not that it matters for my example) Point, line, and plane sources are used to represent energy, and how measurement of that energy cannot be used to calculate the source without defining the source to be a point, line, or plane, NOT the type of energy. I think you’re purposely trying to miss the point. If we were talking about shielding, then the type of radiation we were trying to address would be important.”
I just meant that most people don’t think of an electron when they think of ‘energy’. How many Joules of energy are generated in Cobalt-60 decay? Since the answer to this question is something like ‘the energy of 2 gammas and one electron mass plus its kinetic energy’, I think that this example is more likely to cause confusion than to alleviate it.
[Robert] “You’re not a scientist. [Search for 'Kesseler KJ' on pubMed if you'd like to see my publications (all two of them
). Sometime in the next month I will submit a paper on a mathematical model of the G2 checkpoint that is 10 times as complex as anything in the literature currently (I'm pretty proud of it).] You’re a story teller. [Science is about telling a story. All of my mentors have taught me that a good scientific paper tells a story. I haven't really done a good job of it here, but I feel like I'm starting to hit my pace.] When the laws don’t apply, you just disregard the required parameters and decide to apply them anyway. [The laws of mechanics and conservation of energy apply here. I have laid out my logic step by step and I will defend each and every one if necessary.]”
[Robert] “I performed an analysis (using YOUR numbers) based on the premise that a child used a slingshot to hit both buildings with rocks, which somehow caused WTC 1 and 2 to collapse in the same amount of time that we have accepted. Guess what? IT COULD HAPPEN. That’s what happens when you apply JUNK SCIENCE.”
Reproduce your analysis and I will explain to you what you did wrong.
[Bob] “I also have to say that I agree with Robert’s rebuttals to Slarti’s less than honest replies to legitimate questions.”
I don’t feel I have been anything less than honest (and up until now I’ve answered most questions). I’m settling in for the long haul now – I’m going to limit myself to one post per day, but I will go through my analysis step-by-step justifying every one if necessary. Looking back, I see that I did a lot of research, analysis and computation in the past month which, although it strengthened MY belief that I am right was certainly not apparent to anyone else. I threw out my conclusions with only a sketch of my analysis and computations and you had no reason to believe that I had done anything more than make them up. I am now trying to correct that by justifying what I did step by step so that even if I can’t convince you and Robert that I am correct, at least we can figure out where we disagree.
[Bob] “Epistemically speaking dear doctor, the only system you’re capable of analyzing is the one you’re capable of perceiving with empirical data.”
Yes, and we have an enormous amount of empirical data about the universe – in fact, all of the empirical data in human knowledge is about the universe. We don’t have to know everything about a system in order to use science to understand it. If I’m making a model of traffic flow patters, I don’t need to know what people are listening to on the radio. I can make valid model of a traffic jam (a friend of mine in grad school did this), I just can’t tell you how many people will be listening to Rush. In fact the whole point of conservation laws is because the details of most systems are too complex or unknowable (for example, we talk about the energy of an electron’s orbit, not its exact path). The number of forces and ‘jobs’ (let’s define a ‘job’ as an event involving work) and collisions in the collapse is far to big to allow for computation, but conservation of energy can give us significant (albeit general) information about the event.
Bob, you raise a valid concern about the fallacy of composition, but I am out of time tonight – I’ll attempt to convince you that I am justified in treating the multiple collisions that make up the ‘impact’ in aggregate (to the very rough accuracy of this calculation) in my next post. You are right that the ‘energy is destroyed statement was dismissive, I apologize.
Buddha,
Can you pass me a beer?
Slarti,
You left off the qualifying statement “provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy” because all the work WAS NOT converted to heat energy. Deformation does produce some heat energy, but the majority of that work resulted, not in heat energy, but in the metal now having a different shape.
“I don’t feel that I have been dishonest.”
And shoplifters think they “work” to get the goods that they resell. When you left off the qualifying statement; that was being dishonest. When you decided that you would consider the collapse of the WTC to be an event that took place in the universe, so that you could attempt to apply laws of physics to a system in which those laws do not apply; that was dishonest.
“I was trying to establish the fact that kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy by impact (which, I believe, you have just implicitly agreed to and Bob explicitly agreed to) and that the amount of energy transferred is calculable (which, according to Joule’s experiment, it is).”
Neither Bob, nor I, nor anyone else for that matter, has agreed with your premise (that virtually all of the remaining kinetic energy was transformed into thermal energy). You’ll notice that I used the word “transformed”, which is completely different than your word “transferred”. You, from the beginning, have FAILED to provide the method by which the kinetic energy became thermal energy.
“Speaking of intellectually dishonesty, why did you quote: “Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality” without including: “(except perhaps for the universe as a whole), because, for example, there is always gravity between a system with mass and masses elsewhere. However, real systems may behave nearly as an isolated system for finite (possibly very long) times. The concept of an isolated system can serve as a useful model approximating many real-world situations. It is an acceptable idealization used in constructing mathematical models of certain natural phenomena;”
Slarti, a statement made on Wikipedia IS NOT a scientific fact. Wikipedia is generated by individuals. One is not required to have any credentials to publish on Wikipedia. You cannot even tell me who wrote the statement on Wikipedia, yet you rely on it as scientific fact to support your argument. And you call yourself a scientist?
“A sound with 100 Watts of power is a 140 dB sound (regardless of how it’s generated)”
Bullshit! Complete bullshit. For one, a sound does not have 100 watts of power. It may require X amount of power to generate a sound, at a particular frequency, that would reach a certain decibel level at a particular distance, but a sound is not said to have 100 watts of power.
Slarti said “[A speaker putting out 100 W of sonic energy will generate a 140 dB sound regardless of the size of the speaker or the frequency of the sound.]”
Bullshit! Support you argument with relevant citation of an accepted source. A decibel is a measure of sound pressure. “Sound power” is a measure of power, but that is not the same as a “sound power level”, which is measured in decibels.
Slarti said “Power is measured in energy per unit time, in SI units that would be J/s. One Watt of power is one Joule per second.”
That statement is incomplete, and based on your history, likely to be intentionally deceptive. We’re talking physics here. Power is the rate at which energy is transferred or work is performed. P=Work/t
To say that “Power is measured in energy per unit time” is INCORRECT. This is what you get when you rely on Wikipedia without having a working knowledge of the information. Joules per second IS NOT a representation of work performed or energy transferred. Out of context, it is meaningless. (delta)J/s is Power. The end mathematical result is represented in J/s, but without the formula representing that the result is, in reality, the difference, it would be meaningless as a representation of power.
It’s probably not a good idea to tell the guy who generates POWER for a living, what power is.
Slarti said “Not once in this entire thread have a posted a number that I could not back up with a source or a calculation.”
OK. What is your source for 100W is 140db. Show me the math or provide a link to your source. If your source is a Wikipedia page without supporting citation; I’ll laugh.
Slarti said “If no distance is given, you may assume that I mean at the source (which is what you use to calculate its power). I included the Krakatoa thing (and other comparisons) because I believe that context like this comparison help to get a sense of scale in a discussion like this.”
How deep will you dig before you realize that you are getting deeper? Sound is not generally measured at the source. Do you think someone was listening AT Krakatoa? Does the audience at a rock concert put their ear to the speaker(s)? A decibel level is measured at the point of observation. i.e. the decibel level in the car is not the same as the decibel level outside of the car. In addition, the watts used to drive a speaker, and the resulting decibel level is not a linear function. At low wattage it takes major changes in wattage to produce small increases in sound. Whereas, at higher levels it becomes nearly linear.
Sound physics “For instance, suppose we have two loudspeakers, the first playing a sound with power P1, and another playing a louder version of the same sound with power P2, but everything else (how far away, frequency) kept the same.” (I didn’t need to read a web page to know that distance and frequency made a difference -That’s called a “working knowledge”.)
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/dB.html
Slarti said “I think that volume declines predictably with distance.”
Bravo! I don’t just think it, I know it. Inversely, volume (decibel level) INCREASES as you get closed to the source. Hence, a decibel level presented that does not include distance from the source CANNOT be used to determine the energy USED by the source to generate it.
Slarti said “yesterday’s earthquake in Haiti measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, meaning that about 130 petaJoules (10^15 Joules) of energy were released, the equivalent of 32 megatons of TNT, slightly more than the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco (6.9).”
Other than another attempt to sell your product, why add another relative? Is your science failing? Do you just like saying “megatons of TNT”, or were you looking for a way to introduce “petajoules”? The earthquake in Haiti is irrelevant to this discussion.
“Because we had talked about it earlier, the Chicxulub impactor had about 4 or 500 zetaJoules (10^21 Joules) of KE, the equivalent of 100 teratons of TNT. If ALL of that energy were converted into a seismic event it would register 13.0 on the Richter scale.”
More irrelevant salesmanship.
I am convinced that you don’t have the ability to comprehend the difference between something impacting the earth, and the release of energy from an earthquake. They are apples and oranges.
Slarti said “In order to make my post about speakers last night, I used the following facts and reasoning: the decibel scale of sonic energy is a logarithmic scale. This means that an increase of 10 dB corresponds to a sound with 10 times the power (your banks of 10 and 100 speakers made the calculations easy).”
Deceptive. Without knowing the source, you cannot determine the initial source power needed to generate the sound. i.e. A(watts) is to B(Watts) as X(decibels) is to Y(decibels). You cannot determine A,B, and Y by only knowing X. Not only that, in the “real world” we have a thing known as “power factor” or “efficiency”. More amps, more energy is wasted as heat.
Again you relied on Wikipedia that has no accepted citation. Some kid took some measurements and posted them on Wikipedia. Big deal! Your “kid” doesn’t specify frequency or distance from the source. More JUNK SCIENCE.
Slarti said; “I just meant that most people don’t think of an electron when they think of ‘energy’. How many Joules of energy are generated in Cobalt-60 decay? Since the answer to this question is something like ‘the energy of 2 gammas and one electron mass plus its kinetic energy’, I think that this example is more likely to cause confusion than to alleviate it.”
Is scale really a problem for you? Isn’t physics still physics? Are you that dependent on megatons and petrajoules? Nevermind, I think you are. (for the purposes of salesmanship). There is no confusion here. At least, not for a physicist (BTW, I spent 4 years working as a Radiation Health Physicist. Two of those as the shift supervisor.)
“[Robert] “I performed an analysis (using YOUR numbers) based on the premise that a child used a slingshot to hit both buildings with rocks, which somehow caused WTC 1 and 2 to collapse in the same amount of time that we have accepted. Guess what? IT COULD HAPPEN. That’s what happens when you apply JUNK SCIENCE.”
Slarti then said “Reproduce your analysis and I will explain to you what you did wrong.”
The numbers are your numbers. The GPE was the same, and the time it took to collapse was the same. Work backwards (as you did) and you end up with the same thing. You NEVER determined the amount of decreased structural support needed before the one (or two) floors would fail to support the building above it. All you do is support that it happened.
Slarti,
What about that 45 degree cut on the steel columns, and the remnants of molten metal?
Your response from yesterday was unacceptable. It was like me asking what evidence you have that I hit your car, and you responding that it must be so, because I have a car.
Tell us how the energy was focused just on those columns at a 45 degree angle.
I think this may be a good time to provide a better explaination of “efficiency”.
In ALL of Slarti’s calculations, he considers energy transformation (which he incorrectly refers to as tansfer) to be 100% efficient. The human body is only 20% efficient (some higher, some lower. It may be divided along partisan lines.:>)
A nuclear power plant is only 30-40% efficient.
A hydroelectric plant (one of the most efficient) is 80% efficient.
As we can see, we as humans aren’t very efficient, and about 80% efficiency of energy transformation is about the best that we can achieve when we create a really good design. However, in Slarti’s experiment, because it doesn’t take place in the real world, he considers the energy transformation to be 100% efficient.
“The second law [or thermodynamics] then simply states that within each process of producing work, we are increasing the unavailable energy and the disorder in the universe. This means that even though the total energy in the universe is constant, we are decreasing the “quality” of the energy. We are decreasing the amount of available energy — the energy that we can use to produce work.”
http://telstar.ote.cmu.edu/environ/m3/s3/03transformation.shtml
In the real world, energy is transformed through a process known as work. Yes Work; that dirty little word that evades Slarti’s analysis of the collapse. Once you acknowledge “work” you can’t help but acknowledge “efficiency”. And the efficiency of a chaotic event would do well to reach 20% efficiency. A stationary chunk of concrete hit by a sledge hammer will disperse into many, many directions.
This is a good video to debunk the claim that what we saw pouring out of the WTC was molten aluminum.
Sen. Kerry in reference to WTC 7; “They did it in a controlled fashion”
BTW Senator, I don’t believe that you are that “unaware” of many of the details about 9/11.
Robert: “However, in Slarti’s experiment, because it doesn’t take place in the real world, he considers the energy transformation to be 100% efficient.”
That’s the sophistry behind defining the system as ‘the universe’ since such a system by definition necessitates 100% efficiency.
Slarti: “I don’t feel I have been anything less than honest (and up until now I’ve answered most questions).”
You haven’t answered any of my questions of late; e.g. your whale skewered upon two support structures of the towers is beginning smell rancid.
[Bob] “Epistemically speaking dear doctor, the only system you’re capable of analyzing is the one you’re capable of perceiving with empirical data.”
Slarti: “Yes, and we have an enormous amount of empirical data about the universe – in fact, all of the empirical data in human knowledge is about the universe. We don’t have to know everything about a system in order to use science to understand it.”
Yes, and infinity divided by infinity is still undefined Slarti. Your credibility with me diminishes with every bullshit sophistic statement like the foregoing.
Slarti: “If I’m making a model of traffic flow patters, I don’t need to know what people are listening to on the radio.”
Unless of course they’re being directed every ten minutes by various radio stations what roads to take. Nonetheless, your analogy is bullshit because your traffic flow patterns would be limited to those the task requires you to analyze; i.e. a closed defined set.
Slarti: “I can make valid model of a traffic jam (a friend of mine in grad school did this), I just can’t tell you how many people will be listening to Rush.”
As I said before, your task defines the limits of your system for analysis. What elements you decide to include or exclude depends on your intent to make your observations relevant to the task at hand.
Slarti: “In fact the whole point of conservation laws is because the details of most systems are too complex or unknowable”
Yes, and that’s why the steam locomotive was never invented or improved upon.
Slarti: Bob, you raise a valid concern about the fallacy of composition, but I am out of time tonight – I’ll attempt to convince you that I am justified in treating the multiple collisions that make up the ‘impact’ in aggregate (to the very rough accuracy of this calculation) in my next post.”
Sure you will.
[Me] “Speaking of intellectually dishonesty, why did you quote: “Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality” without including: “(except perhaps for the universe as a whole), because, for example, there is always gravity between a system with mass and masses elsewhere. However, real systems may behave nearly as an isolated system for finite (possibly very long) times. The concept of an isolated system can serve as a useful model approximating many real-world situations. It is an acceptable idealization used in constructing mathematical models of certain natural phenomena;”
[Robert] “Slarti, a statement made on Wikipedia IS NOT a scientific fact. Wikipedia is generated by individuals. One is not required to have any credentials to publish on Wikipedia. You cannot even tell me who wrote the statement on Wikipedia, yet you rely on it as scientific fact to support your argument. And you call yourself a scientist?”
I haven’t quoted any scientific facts from Wikipedia that I wasn’t sure of already – Wikipedia is a handy source and, as I’ve said, reasonably accurate on this sort of stuff. If you feel that anything that I quote (or say) on physics is wrong, then it should be easy to find a source to rebut me, but you don’t seem to be posting links that contradict my interpretation of the physics. Why is that? And you never answered why you truncating a quote to avoid explicitly allowing my choice of isolated system (the universe) and sanctioning my use of an isolated system (computer modeling) is not dishonest, but me truncating part of a quote which refers to less than 10% of the energy involved is.
Me “yesterday’s earthquake in Haiti measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, meaning that about 130 petaJoules (10^15 Joules) of energy were released, the equivalent of 32 megatons of TNT, slightly more than the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco (6.9).”
[Robert] “Other than another attempt to sell your product, why add another relative? [To get a better idea of what the scale of the WTC collapse was.] Is your science failing? [No, this is actually a strength of my science - an understanding of how to compare things.] Do you just like saying “megatons of TNT”, [In fact I do.] or were you looking for a way to introduce “petajoules”? [I wasn't looking for a way, it just happened, unlike how I'm dropping in 'exaJoules' (EJ, 10^18 J) right now. And, by the way, the 'J' in petaJoules should be capitalized.] The earthquake in Haiti is irrelevant to this discussion. [I is one more event that can be measured in terms of total energy (although, in this case, the devastation is much more than would be expected at this power (only about 20% more powerful than the 1989 San Francisco earthquake). It was a very efficient earthquake.)]”
These are all things that are measured in energy. When two quantities are measured in the same units they are, in a very well-defined sense, comparable. The total energy involved in the collapse of WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 is likely well in excess of 20 TJ – a little less that the average thunderstorm puts out (36 TJ) and more than double the energy in the maximum fuel load for an Airbus A380 (10 TJ). Having some idea of what this amount of energy ‘means’ gives us a better feel for what sort of consequences throwing around this much energy has. When we’re closing in on half of the energy released by ‘Little Boy’, I don’t think that molten steel is very surprising. More comparisons can be seen at:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_E17_J#1012
[Me] “Because we had talked about it earlier, the Chicxulub impactor had about 4 or 500 zettaJoules (10^21 Joules) of KE, the equivalent of 100 teratons of TNT. If ALL of that energy were converted into a seismic event it would register 13.0 on the Richter scale.”
[Robert] “More irrelevant salesmanship.”
I enjoy facts like these. I share them in case anyone else enjoys them as well. That it seems to bug you and Bob is just an added bonus.
[Robert] “I am convinced that you don’t have the ability to comprehend the difference between something impacting the earth, and the release of energy from an earthquake. They are apples and oranges.”
Both of these are events which can be measured by their total energy. The whole point of units is to tell us what are apples and what are oranges. As I’ve pointed out above, if two quantities have the same units then they are comparable. If we can’t do this, then why do we measure anything?
[Robert] “Again you relied on Wikipedia that has no accepted citation. Some kid took some measurements and posted them on Wikipedia. Big deal! Your “kid” doesn’t specify frequency [Irrelevant.] or distance from the source. [Sound power is specified by the sound power level at the source.] More JUNK SCIENCE. [No, more science that I could find a dozen other sources for without difficulty - where are the sites you've linked to impeach my WIkipedia quotes?]”
As I’ve said, all of the physics that I quoted on Wikipedia were things that merely confirmed my understanding. I don’t need WIkipedia to teach me physics, but apparently you do. I was trying to help alleviate your ignorance.
[Me] “I just meant that most people don’t think of an electron when they think of ‘energy’. How many Joules of energy are generated in Cobalt-60 decay? Since the answer to this question is something like ‘the energy of 2 gammas and one electron mass plus its kinetic energy’, I think that this example is more likely to cause confusion than to alleviate it.”
[Robert] “Is scale really a problem for you? [No, I have a pretty good grasp of what scale means - what do you think the scale of an event which releases over 20 TJ of thermal energy is? And, in any case, this comment wasn't about scale - it was about Cobalt-60 decay not being what most people have in mind when they talk about radiating energy.] Isn’t physics still physics? [Yes, the physics of impactors is the same as the physics of the WTC collapse or the physics of a whale hitting the earth. ] Are you that dependent on megatons and petrajoules[sic]? [No, I just think they are interesting.] Nevermind, I think you are. (for the purposes of salesmanship). [I've never said that the WTC collapse had the same energy as the Chicxulub impactor (if anything, I've carefully specified the difference), I've just said that the physics that governs both events are the same. It is often easier to understand the physics by considering the extreme cases.] There is no confusion here. [Well, I'm not confused, I'm not so sure about you.] At least, not for a physicist (BTW, I spent 4 years working as a Radiation Health Physicist. [And I'm sure you know a lot about what radiation does to the human body, but you don't know as much as I do about what the human body does in response to radiation (I model cellular response to genetic damage), just like you don't know as much about mechanics as I do.] Two of those as the shift supervisor. [And this is relevant how?])”
[Robert] “I performed an analysis (using YOUR numbers) based on the premise that a child used a slingshot to hit both buildings with rocks, which somehow caused WTC 1 and 2 to collapse in the same amount of time that we have accepted. Guess what? IT COULD HAPPEN. That’s what happens when you apply JUNK SCIENCE.”
[Me] “Reproduce your analysis and I will explain to you what you did wrong.”
The numbers are your numbers. [You have not described any specific scenario - we're talking about science here, show your work.] The GPE was the same, and the time it took to collapse was the same. [And how are you assuming that the collapse was triggered?] Work backwards (as you did) and you end up with the same thing. [I am not working backwards - I trace all of the energy stored as GPE in the WTC before impact until after the collapse or it leaves the vicinity. I'm not following any energy backwards in time - that's Bob's fallacy.] You NEVER determined the amount of decreased structural support needed before the one (or two) floors would fail to support the building above it. [No, I haven't determined this - however there is a strength at which a single floor would fail and after that happened the rest of the collapse was inevitable. Gravity is what does the work to bring down buildings in controlled demolition and it is what did the work to destroy all three buildings at the WTC. And all of that work resulted in heat, most of it in the rubble pile.] All you do is support that it happened. [Obviously at least a single floor failed (for whatever reason), my point is that once a single floor failed, nothing was going to stop any of these buildings from collapsing.]
[Robert] What about that 45 degree cut on the steel columns, and the remnants of molten metal? [As I've said before, analyzing the forces in a complex event like this is nearly impossible, but seeing that this was the sort of event that bent I-beams into horseshoe shapes, I don't think that forces capable of shearing steel columns at any angle are out of line - especially towards the end of the collapse.] Your response from yesterday was unacceptable. It was like me asking what evidence you have that I hit your car, and you responding that it must be so, because I have a car. Tell us how the energy was focused just on those columns at a 45 degree angle. [I can tell you that there were 2-300 GJ of energy available by the end of the collapse and that this energy could power some very large forces - how much force is necessary to shear an I-beam?]
Bob posted:
“Robert: “However, in Slarti’s experiment, because it doesn’t take place in the real world, he considers the energy transformation to be 100% efficient.”
That’s the sophistry behind defining the system as ‘the universe’ since such a system by definition necessitates 100% efficiency.”
It necessitates energy being conserved. As I said in my post to Robert, the efficiency of the collapse (however you define it) doesn’t matter as energy lost to inefficiency is energy that is converted into thermal energy without doing useful work rather than by doing useful work.
[Me] “I don’t feel I have been anything less than honest (and up until now I’ve answered most questions).”
[Bob] “You haven’t answered any of my questions of late; e.g. your whale skewered upon two support structures of the towers is beginning smell rancid.’
I felt that it was more important to attack the misinformation that Robert was spewing about physics first. His bullshit smelled worse than the whale.
[Bob] “Epistemically speaking dear doctor, the only system you’re capable of analyzing is the one you’re capable of perceiving with empirical data.”
[Me] “Yes, and we have an enormous amount of empirical data about the universe – in fact, all of the empirical data in human knowledge is about the universe. We don’t have to know everything about a system in order to use science to understand it.”
[Bob] “Yes, and infinity divided by infinity is still undefined Slarti. Your credibility with me diminishes with every bullshit sophistic statement like the foregoing.”
And your credibility with me on science has stopped decreasing because there isn’t any left. I’m willing to take any system which includes the entire WTC collapse and in which I can use conservation of energy. The universe satisfies both of those conditions. If you just understood how to use basic laws of physics, I wouldn’t need to go to such extremes to prove that I’m using them correctly.
[Me] “If I’m making a model of traffic flow patters, I don’t need to know what people are listening to on the radio.”
[Bob] “Unless of course they’re being directed every ten minutes by various radio stations what roads to take. [Which doesn't generally happen, so there would be no point in worrying about how to model it.] Nonetheless, your analogy is bullshit because your traffic flow patterns would be limited to those the task requires you to analyze; i.e. a closed defined set.”
Traffic flow patterns would be emergent behavior from a successful model. The model exhibiting the same behavior as its object is evidence which validates the model. The model could then be used to determine how to maximize traffic flow.
[Me] “I can make valid model of a traffic jam (a friend of mine in grad school did this), I just can’t tell you how many people will be listening to Rush.”
[Bob] “As I said before, your task defines the limits of your system for analysis. What elements you decide to include or exclude depends on your intent to make your observations relevant to the task at hand.”
Yes. The task that I have set my hand to is to determine (and quantify as much as possible) the amount of thermal energy in the rubble of the WTC (assuming no explosives) in order to show that there was enough thermal energy to account for observations and that explosives would not add significant thermal energy.
[Me] “In fact the whole point of conservation laws is because the details of most systems are too complex or unknowable”
[Bob] “Yes, and that’s why the steam locomotive was never invented or improved upon.”
If you can calculate all of the individual forces involved in the WTC collapse, be my guest. If you can identify the forces that were the result of explosives and show your work, you could convince me that I am wrong. But until you can do this, a calculation with energy is the best we can do. And doing a calculation with energy is the first thing you should try with just about any physics problem. Like developing the theory of thermodynamics so that you can explain how a steam engine works.
[Me] “Bob, you raise a valid concern about the fallacy of composition, but I am out of time tonight – I’ll attempt to convince you that I am justified in treating the multiple collisions that make up the ‘impact’ in aggregate (to the very rough accuracy of this calculation) in my next post.”
[Bob] “Sure you will.”
I wanted to wait until I’d established that the kinetic energy before a collision is equal to the total of kinetic (KE), thermal (TE), seismic (SE), and sonic energy (AE) after the collision, but if you’d rather I did it now, that’s fine. Assume that KE(before) = KE(after) + TE + SE + AE. The ‘impact’ of the rubble with the ground consists of a large number of individual collisions. Energy is conserved in each of these collisions, so we must account for all of the KE that is present immediately before impact. Given our assumption, every single collision in the ‘impact’ obeys the above equation, thus, by transitivity, the impact taken as a whole obeys the equation as well. qed
Taking the resultant forms of energy one-by-one:
KE(after) – This remains KE and will participate in further collisions. Since there is no KE present after the impact, this energy must ultimately take a different form. Therefore KE(after) = 0 for the impact as a whole.
SE – Collisions with the ground (or parts of the structure still connected to the ground) resulted in seismic energy being emitted. The seismic energy of the collapses of WTC1 and WTC2 were recorded as measuring 2.3 and 2.1 on the Richter scale – this means that roughly 12 GJ and 6 GJ went into seismic energy.
AE – Collisions resulted in acoustic energy being emitted. As it takes only 60 MJ of energy to power a 180 dB sound for 1 minute. Since the collapse lasted for much less than one minute and I doubt it was significantly louder than a rocket engine it seems reasonable to conclude that on the order of 0.03% of the KE was converted to AE.
TE – This means that we are left with over 180 GJ of thermal energy in the rubble and the ground below it as a result of the ‘impact’.
That’s all for now, I’ll answer some more of your recent posts later unless I think it’s more important to address any of your subsequent posts.
[Robert] What about that 45 degree cut on the steel columns, and the remnants of molten metal?
Slarti’s response; [As I've said before, analyzing the forces in a complex event like this is nearly impossible, but seeing that this was the sort of event that bent I-beams into horseshoe shapes, I don't think that forces capable of shearing steel columns at any angle are out of line - especially towards the end of the collapse.]
Slarti, You’re either intellectually dishonest, or completely out of touch with reality. You point to Wikipedia, and consider it to be accepted science because you accept it. I can’t compete with that logic.
I think this is a good time for me to bow out.
Robert,
I cite Wikipedia because it agrees with what I already know about science. I made a long post debunking your comments about acoustic power, but it’s hung up in moderation because it has too many links.
Slarti,
I should just leave you be, but I have on last question.
When the WTC impacted the earth, why did it stop? Please provide some detail in your answer.
Have some fun.
http://www.physicsgames.net/game/Demolition_City.html
Robert,
I will provide you with an answer to your question later tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks Slarti.
Here is a redo of the post with too many links.
Robert,
I’m going to try to explain this all to you point-by-point, but you have just tried to tell me that I don’t understand something (sound) while unquestionably proving that you don’t understand it yourself. Wikipedia is an entirely reasonable source for the basic science that I’ve been using (and I’ve been using it to support my understanding, not to form my understanding). I’m going to give you multiple other sources to demonstrate my point, but I wont do it again. If you want to impeach anything that I quote from WIkipedia then find your own source to debunk it.
[Me] “A sound with 100 Watts of power is a 140 dB sound (regardless of how it’s generated)”
[Robert] “Bullshit! Complete bullshit. For one, a sound does not have 100 watts of power. It may require X amount of power to generate a sound, at a particular frequency [Frequency has absolutely nothing to do with power.], that would reach a certain decibel level at a particular distance, but a sound is not said to have 100 watts of power.”
An audio source does work which transforms energy (electrical energy in the case of speakers) into sonic energy (pressure waves in the atmosphere). This quote is from ‘Physics: Its Foundations and Applications’:
“Thus the source does work on the water, supplying energy to it. The average rate at which the source continually supplies energy is the source power . The energy is not accumulated in the region near the source. Instead, the energy flows outward through the region because it is transported by the waves that the source produces. This means that the average energy per unit time crossing and closed curve surrounding the source must be equal to the average source power .”
This quote is about circular waves being generated in water, but it is equally applicable to spherical pressure waves being generated in the atmosphere. If you pump enough energy into a speaker for it to radiate 100W of power into the atmosphere, you will generate a sound that is 140 dB at the source. If you hear that sound 100m away and measure its decibel level, you can compute the volume at the source and hence the power going into generating the sound.
Me “[A speaker putting out 100 W of sonic energy will generate a 140 dB sound regardless of the size of the speaker or the frequency of the sound.]”
[Robert] “Bullshit! Support you argument with relevant citation of an accepted source. A decibel is a measure of sound pressure. “Sound power” is a measure of power, but that is not the same as a “sound power level”, which is measured in decibels.]
Sound power level is a measure of the amplitude of the pressure wave in the atmosphere, sound power is the energy per unit time needed to generate a pressure wave with a given sound power level at the source. If an acoustic wave
with a given power P is produced, the volume of the sound would be given by the equation:
L = 10 log {P/P(ref)} dB
Where P(ref) = 1 picoWatt = 0 dB. Below is a link to a chart comparing sound power level (measured in dB) to sound power (measured in Watts). It is identical to the chart in the ‘sound power’ entry in Wikipedia.
www(dot)ccohs(dot)ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/noise_basic.html#_1_8
(There is a bunch of good stuff about sound on this page, by the way – all of which is perfectly consistent with what I’ve said.)
[Me] “Power is measured in energy per unit time, in SI units that would be J/s. One Watt of power is one Joule per second.”
[Robert] “That statement is incomplete, and based on your history, likely to be intentionally deceptive. We’re talking physics here. Power is the rate at which energy is transferred or work is performed. P=Work/t [Yes, and work has units of energy.] To say that “Power is measured in energy per unit time” is INCORRECT. [As the quote below indicates, power is measured in Watts, a unit equivalent to Joules per second.] This is what you get when you rely on Wikipedia without having a working knowledge of the information. [I have a working knowledge of this topic and I know all of the physics I quoted from WIkipedia to be correct] Joules per second IS NOT a representation of work performed or energy transferred. [ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? ONE WATT OF POWER IS EQUAL TO ONE JOULE PER SECOND.] Out of context, it is meaningless. [I am using power in an appropriate context.] (delta)J/s is Power. [Power is work per unit time as shown in the quote below, for a variable source of work, total power would be given by integrating dP=dW/dt.] The end mathematical result is represented in J/s, but without the formula representing that the result is, in reality, the difference, it would be meaningless as a representation of power. ['...the result is, in reality the difference...'? The difference of what?]”
Quoting P:IT&A:
“To be more specific, power measures the rate of doing work. If work is being done at a constant rate, the power P is, by definition, P=W/t, where W is the total amount of work done in the total time t. If work is being done at a varying rate, the power P expended at any instant is defined as P=dW/dt. The unit of power is the SI system is the Watt (W), named after James Watt (1736-1819), the inventor of the most important form of the steam engine. If work is being done at the rate of 1 Joule per second (J/s), the power is 1 W.”
[Robert] “It’s probably not a good idea to tell the guy who generates POWER for a living, what power is.”
It’s probably not a good idea to tell the person who builds mathematical models for a living how to correctly build mathematical models, but that hasn’t stopped you.
[Me] “Not once in this entire thread have a posted a number that I could not back up with a source or a calculation.”
[Robert] “OK. What is your source for 100W is 140db. Show me the math or provide a link to your source. If your source is a Wikipedia page without supporting citation; I’ll laugh.”
I’ve already posted one link to a chart identical to Wikipedia’s, here’s another:
www(dot)engineeringtoolbox(dot)com/sound-power-level-d_58.html
If you would like more, just google ‘sound power level’ – you should be able to find as many as you wish and they will all tell you that 100 W = 140 dB.
If you check out this site:
www(dot)sengpielaudio(dot)com/calculator-spl.htm
and plug in 10 130 dB sounds you will find that this results in a total sound power of 140 dB (really you get 139.98 – must not be the most accurate calculation). Adding two sounds with equal decibel levels will result in an increase of about 3 dB (really 10 log 2) as shown at this site:
www(dot)ccohs(dot)ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/noise_basic.html#_1_13
If you scroll up a little you will find a table that tells you that a 10 dB increase means that the sound energy is increased by a factor of 10 (which is exactly what I said).
[Me] “If no distance is given, you may assume that I mean at the source (which is what you use to calculate its power). I included the Krakatoa thing (and other comparisons) because I believe that context like this comparison help to get a sense of scale in a discussion like this.”
[Robert] “How deep will you dig before you realize that you are getting deeper? [I'm wading in the kiddie pool right now, and I can swim in pretty deep waters in the field of mechanics without getting out of my depth.] Sound is not generally measured at the source. [Sound power is measured at the source and can be computed from the sound power level measured in dB at a known distance from the source.] Do you think someone was listening AT Krakatoa? [No, someone made an estimate. You need to estimate it at some distance because near the source the pressure waves are 'clipped' at zero pressure.] Does the audience at a rock concert put their ear to the speaker(s)? [I said the 'rock concert' comparison probably meant in the crowd It is clearly a very rough estimate anyway - are we talking about The Who or Cat Stevens?] A decibel level is measured at the point of observation. i.e. the decibel level in the car is not the same as the decibel level outside of the car. [Power is determined by the dB level at the source.] In addition, the watts used to drive a speaker, and the resulting decibel level is not a linear function. [The decibel scale (like the Richter scale) is a logarithmic scale - 10 times the power results in a increase of 10 dB.] At low wattage it takes major changes in wattage to produce small increases in sound. [At ANY wattage it takes 10 times that wattage to increase the sound by 10 dB.] Whereas, at higher levels it becomes nearly linear. [This is just totally wrong.] Sound physics “For instance, suppose we have two loudspeakers, the first playing a sound with power P1, and another playing a louder version of the same sound with power P2, but everything else (how far away, frequency) kept the same. [Actually, you generally want to add incoherent sounds - if you add identical sounds you get acoustical interference patterns.]” (I didn’t need to read a web page to know that distance and frequency made a difference -That’s called a “working knowledge”. [It's a pretty poor 'working knowledge' if you don't know that frequency doesn't effect power level. And I didn't need to read any of these web pages, I just linked them to support (and double check) my arguments, unlike your arguments which are unsupportable.])”
[Me] “I think that volume declines predictably with distance.”
[Robert] “Bravo! I don’t just think it, I know it. [The problem with you is that you 'know' a bunch of things a lot less well than you think you do.] Inversely, volume (decibel level) INCREASES as you get closed to the source. Hence, a decibel level presented that does not include distance from the source CANNOT be used to determine the energy USED by the source to generate it. [As I have repeatedly said, when you are talking about the power, you refer to the decibel level at the source.]”
[Me] “In order to make my post about speakers last night, I used the following facts and reasoning: the decibel scale of sonic energy is a logarithmic scale. This means that an increase of 10 dB corresponds to a sound with 10 times the power (your banks of 10 and 100 speakers made the calculations easy).”
[Robert] “Deceptive. Without knowing the source, you cannot determine the initial source power needed to generate the sound. [I have always maintained that you need to know the distance to the source.] i.e. A(watts) is to B(Watts) as X(decibels) is to Y(decibels). You cannot determine A,B, and Y by only knowing X. Not only that, in the “real world” we have a thing known as “power factor” or “efficiency”. [Which is why I was careful to talk about the amount of 'sound energy' i.e. the amount of acoustic energy output by the speaker - the electrical energy required to generate a particular sound would be sightly higher.] More amps, more energy is wasted as heat. [Yes, it becomes heat in the speaker. Whenever you talk about efficiency you're just shooting yourself in the foot. The energy lost to inefficiency always becomes thermal energy.]”
[Robert] “I think this may be a good time to provide a better explaination of “efficiency”. In ALL of Slarti’s calculations, he considers energy transformation (which he incorrectly refers to as tansfer [sic - call it whatever you like, but energy is changed from one form to another whenever work is done.]) to be 100% efficient [No - any energy which is lost to inefficiency is converted to thermal energy - since that's what I'm looking for, I don't need to account for the heat resulting from inefficiency separately.]. The human body is only 20% efficient (some higher, some lower. It may be divided along partisan lines.:>) A nuclear power plant is only 30-40% efficient. A hydroelectric plant (one of the most efficient) is 80% efficient. As we can see, we as humans aren’t very efficient, and about 80% efficiency of energy transformation is about the best that we can achieve when we create a really good design. However, in Slarti’s experiment, because it doesn’t take place in the real world, he considers the energy transformation to be 100% efficient. [Nope, I just don't lose thermal energy due to inefficiency.]
Robert quoted:
“The second law [or thermodynamics] then simply states that within each process of producing work, we are increasing the unavailable energy and the disorder in the universe. This means that even though the total energy in the universe is constant, we are decreasing the “quality” of the energy. We are decreasing the amount of available energy — the energy that we can use to produce work.”
Yes – the energy is degraded into thermal energy, the lowest ‘quality’ energy, at which point it can no longer be used to do work.
[Robert] “In the real world, energy is transformed through a process known as work. [Yes...] Yes Work; that dirty little word that evades Slarti’s analysis of the collapse. [I certainly never claimed that work wasn't done, in fact all of the thermal energy that I'm trying to quantify is the result of work being done.] Once you acknowledge “work” you can’t help but acknowledge “efficiency”. And the efficiency of a chaotic event would do well to reach 20% efficiency. [As I've said, since efficiency is the amount of energy that becomes heat instead of doing useful work rather than as a result of it, efficiency is not relevant to my argument, but out of curiosity, how would you define the 'efficiency' of a collapse?] A stationary chunk of concrete hit by a sledge hammer will disperse into many, many directions. [So will a watermelon. Your point?]”
[Robert] “You left off the qualifying statement “provided the work done is totally converted to heat energy” because all the work WAS NOT converted to heat energy. [The work being done converted kinetic energy into thermal energy.] Deformation does produce some heat energy, but the majority of that work resulted, not in heat energy, but in the metal now having a different shape. [If energy used to bend metal doesn't end up as thermal energy in the metal, then what sort of energy does the work result in?]”
[Me] “I don’t feel that I have been dishonest.”
[Robert] “And shoplifters think they “work” to get the goods that they resell. When you left off the qualifying statement; that was being dishonest. [Since I have clearly stated all along that sonic, seismic, and thermal energy are produced by impacts and that thermal energy was the lion's share (well over 90% in this case) If thermal energy were not the most significant resultant energy in an impact, why would it be the only form of energy resulting from an impact that the physics text mentions?] When you decided that you would consider the collapse of the WTC to be an event that took place in the universe, so that you could attempt to apply laws of physics to a system in which those laws do not apply; that was dishonest. [The law of conservation of energy applies to the GPE stored in the WTC, to say otherwise is ridiculous. Since that energy continues to exist, I can (and have) tracked it.]”
[Me] “I was trying to establish the fact that kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy by impact (which, I believe, you have just implicitly agreed to and Bob explicitly agreed to) and that the amount of energy transferred is calculable (which, according to Joule’s experiment, it is).”
[Robert] “Neither Bob, nor I, nor anyone else for that matter, has agreed with your premise (that virtually all of the remaining kinetic energy was transformed into thermal energy) [That doesn't change the fact that it is correct. And no one else has offered realistic suggestion as to where the energy goes. If it isn't where I say it is, then where do you think it is? And try to come up with something better than 'ejected into the atmosphere' (sonic energy) this time.]. You’ll notice that I used the word “transformed”, which is completely different than your word “transferred”. [As I've said, I don't care what word you use - before the work is done there is one kind of energy and after the work is done there is another kind of energy. Call it what you want.] You, from the beginning, have FAILED to provide the method by which the kinetic energy became thermal energy.”
Friction. You (or Bob) mentioned friction from rubbing your hands together, but there are other types of friction. The important one here is internal friction – friction resulting from the deformation of a body. When concrete is pulverized or steel is bent or sheared, work is done to deform the body in question. This work converts kinetic energy into thermal energy.
Robert,
I liked the demolition game that you posted, check out this comic:
http://xkcd.com/690/
Slarti, Robert, Bob:
any resolution yet?
“I’m going to give you multiple other sources to demonstrate my point, but I wont do it again. If you want to impeach anything that I quote from WIkipedia then find your own source to debunk it.”
Not my job. If you want to claim that 100 watts equals 140db, it’s you job to prove it. You can do that by providing links to accepted sources. Wikipedia, by itself is not an accepted source. If the information provided on the Wikipedia page provides a link to the supporting reference, I will accept it.
“Thus the source does work on the water, supplying energy to it.”
Do you really expect me to accept a quoted paragraph that refers to water, when this is the first time that water is introduced into the discussion?
“The average rate at which the source continually supplies energy is the source power.”
You do realize that they are talking about the speaker, and not the power supply to the speaker. Don’t you?
“The energy is not accumulated in the region near the source. Instead, the energy flows outward through the region because it is transported by the waves that the source produces.”
Since the paragraph started by referring to water, I would imagine that the rest of the paragraph is also referring to water. Are you relying on Pascal’s Law? You talking about applying pressure (sound pressure), and according to Pascal’s Law, a pressure applied to a fluid at rest, is applied equally, and undiminished throughout the fluid, and to the walls of its container. (or pretty close to that. I didn’t need to look it up)
Water, steel, and air are not the same thing.
“This means that the average energy per unit time crossing and closed curve surrounding the source must be equal to the average source power .”
Yep. It’s a fluid at rest that you are referring to. That cannot be applied to sound in the air.
“This quote is about circular waves being generated in water, but it is equally applicable to spherical pressure waves being generated in the atmosphere.”
Bullshit! You must stop doing that, Slarti. How did I catch you doing it? Because I have an extremely good working knowledge of physics. Gas laws and fluid laws are not interchangeable.
“If you pump enough energy into a speaker for it to radiate 100W of power into the atmosphere, you will generate a sound that is 140 dB at the source. If you hear that sound 100m away and measure its decibel level, you can compute the volume at the source and hence the power going into generating the sound.”
Prove it. Provide us with your source of information. If it is not from a source that is available on the internet, scan it, and post it on photobucket. http://photobucket.com/
Different frequencies of sound will travel different distances, at different rates, through different mediums. Altitude (or depth in water), temperature, etc. will cause variances.
“If you hear that sound 100m away and measure its decibel level, you can compute the volume at the source and hence the power going into generating the sound.”
Not without knowing the frequency you won’t.
I can tell you this. A depth charge can be heard by the unassisted ear from the inside of a submarine at a distance of 50 miles. I don’t know what the depth of the submarine was at the time.
Robert:
I have heard that whales are able to communicate over distances many times that amount.
“Sound power level is a measure of the amplitude of the pressure wave in the atmosphere, sound power is the energy per unit time needed to generate a pressure wave with a given sound power level at the source. If an acoustic wave
with a given power P is produced, the volume of the sound would be given by the equation:
L = 10 log {P/P(ref)} dB”
Can anyone blame me for calling this bullshit? Your information comes from a Wikipedia entry, that cites a (1) self-proclaimed expert, with no formal training, just because he wrote a book. (2) an educational institution, but the full link takes you to a page maintained by “ricky”. All hail Ricky! And (3) A reliable source, but that source does not attempt to relate sound level to sound power.
Byron said “I have heard that whales are able to communicate over distances many times that amount.”
I believe it. You should see the number of them on the pier when the submarine pulls in. :>)
All kidding aside, the deeper the whale goes, the further the sound will travel. As a general rule, the denser the material, the further the sound will travel through it. Deep water is under high pressure (about 33 psi for every hundred feet of depth), and its generally pretty cold too. That provides a much better medium for sound travel than does air.
A higher frequency has sound waves that are much closer in spacing. A low frequency has a much further distance between the sound waves.
The frequency and strength of the transmitted signal, which is called the ‘carrier wave’, is what determines the distance of propagation. AM and FM differ in that the music or voice content is added to the carrier wave by modulating (varying) the amplitude or the frequency of the transmission wave with the audio signal. AM uses amplitude modulation, and FM uses frequency. The quality of the audio resulting from frequency modulation is much better than that resulting from amplitude modulation, so that AM audio is, by definition, not as clear as FM audio, but this difference is due to the form of modulation, and not the frequency of the carrier.
Given two AM signals of equal strength and different
frequencies, the lower frequency will travel further and
have greater clarity at equal distances from the respective
transmitters. The same would hold two for two FM signals
of different frequencies and equal strength.
As you can see, radio waves are sound waves, and contrary to Slarti’s assertion, frequency does matter.
Slarti: “It necessitates energy being conserved. As I said in my post to Robert, the efficiency of the collapse (however you define it) doesn’t matter as energy lost to inefficiency is energy that is converted into thermal energy without doing useful work rather than by doing useful work.”
Really.
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/seismic.html#wtc1level
BTW Slarti,
It would be greatly appreciated if you would address just a few of my points in a, how shall we say, RESPONSIVE way.
Slarti: “I felt that it was more important to attack the misinformation that Robert was spewing about physics first. His bullshit smelled worse than the whale.”
Slarti: “And your credibility with me on science has stopped decreasing because there isn’t any left. I’m willing to take any system which includes the entire WTC collapse and in which I can use conservation of energy. The universe satisfies both of those conditions. If you just understood how to use basic laws of physics, I wouldn’t need to go to such extremes to prove that I’m using them correctly.”
It bears repeating: “I have replied to your arguments; over and over. In lieu of answering those questions I ask you, i.e. those elements that if you convince me you’d win the argument by winning my assent, you just repeat yourself, toss out more of your assumptions and declare your arguments immaculate by your own authority while denigrating me.
BTW, I’m not the only one who has a problem with your method of debate.
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical/#comment-99415
Bob,
In one of the videos I was watching, it was claimed that the top section of WTC #2 ended up at or on WTC #4. Can you find anything to support that?
If true, it would mean that almost 30% of the mass, and 30% of the height would be removed from the equation. This would have an extremely large impact on the WTC #2 collapse calculations.
I suspect that the story is true. We can all see that the top was on its way off, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see that bit of information left out of the official report.
The new GPE calculated would be about 178 GJ. That’s right. If the top of WTC #2 fell off to the side, it cannot be included in the WTC #2 collapse energy. Even with Slarti’s numbers (which I refer to for demonstration purposes only) a loss of 228 GJ would exceed the “80-200 GJ that Slarti allotted to destroy the building.
I said “Joules per second IS NOT a representation of work performed or energy transferred.
Slarti replied “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? ONE WATT OF POWER IS EQUAL TO ONE JOULE PER SECOND.”
I agree. I stand corrected. I don’t know what I was thinking. I may have still been spun up from one of your previous statements. I don’t think you have any question that I recognize power to be work within a period of time, and that work is energy expended. Either way, I apologize for the incorrect statement, and appreciate your bringing it to my attention.
Slarti said “Yes – the energy is degraded into thermal energy, the lowest ‘quality’ energy, at which point it can no longer be used to do work.”
Don’t look now Slarti, but that lowest form of energy, the one that you claim can’t do any work, is the energy that is being used to power MILLIONS of homes and businesses. That thermal energy is what heats the water in the primary system of a nuclear power plant. That thermal energy then passes through a steam generator to produce steam, which spins a turbine, a turbine that is connected to a generator.
Slarti said “[As I've said, since efficiency is the amount of energy that becomes heat instead of doing useful work rather than as a result of it, efficiency is not relevant to my argument, but out of curiosity, how would you define the 'efficiency' of a collapse?]”
As I demonstrated above, heat can be used to do work. When referring to the remnants of metal found on columns that had been cut at a 45 degree angle, it is a visible sign of thermal energy being used to melt steel.
Slarti, Since you have a working knowledge, what kind of energy is present in the flame of a cutting torch? Do we use cutting torches to do work?
“efficiency is not relevant to my argument”
Bingo!
“how would you define the ‘efficiency’ of a collapse?”
All energy and mass that is doing anything besides going towards the ground, at any time during the collapse, is a loss of efficiency. A work performed is inefficient. Drop a ball off the top of a building. Anything it hits (including air) reduces the efficiency.
FOLLOW UP REPORT
Chapter 2 of the FEMA Report on the World Trade Center Disaster:
“A review of aerial photography of the site, following the collapse, as well as identification of pieces of structural steel from WTC 2, strongly suggests that the top portion of the tower fell to the south and east, striking Liberty Street and the Bankers Trust building.”
It wouldn’t make any sense to think that the object in motion didn’t stay in motion (especially when we can see in the videos of the collapse, that anything that would have prevented it from continuing along its path was completely destroyed in concert with the collapse).
Slarti: “I wanted to wait until I’d established that the kinetic energy before a collision is equal to the total of kinetic (KE), thermal (TE), seismic (SE), and sonic energy (AE) after the collision, but if you’d rather I did it now, that’s fine. Assume that KE(before) = KE(after) + TE + SE + AE. The ‘impact’ of the rubble with the ground consists of a large number of individual collisions. Energy is conserved in each of these collisions, so we must account for all of the KE that is present immediately before impact. Given our assumption, every single collision in the ‘impact’ obeys the above equation, thus, by transitivity, the impact taken as a whole obeys the equation as well. qed”
Oh yeah, once again you’re arguing for free Work; as was to be shown (at least in your head).
BTW, I love the way your sidestepping the Work component enables you to create the dramatic machinery to maintain the illusion of the ‘massive inelastic collision’ you’re constantly alluding to.
Robert: “In one of the videos I was watching, it was claimed that the top section of WTC #2 ended up at or on WTC #4. Can you find anything to support that?
If true, it would mean that almost 30% of the mass, and 30% of the height would be removed from the equation. This would have an extremely large impact on the WTC #2 collapse calculations.
I suspect that the story is true. We can all see that the top was on its way off, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see that bit of information left out of the official report.”
Robert,
You’re getting sidetracked by observations that are essentially irrelevant to the argument at bar. Winning these side arguments against Slarti is tantamount to revving the engine while in neutral.
Perhaps we should just combine our resources to set forth the questions he has continually side-stepped with his theories that are by definition non-responsive since they either ignore or assume the point he’s been asked to prove.
For example, when asked by what mechanism was the Thermal Energy created, Slarti’s response is as fraudulent as Bush/Cheney constantly grouping the words “Saddam Hussein” and “9/11″ — i.e. references to inelastic collisions, comets, liquification upon impact, etc. and then having the audacity to state he never made nor implied such a claim.
Since ground zero contained three ‘hot spots’ – at the foot prints of towers 1, 2, & 7, his ‘theory’ of the creation of said hot spots must, by virtue of logical relation, include WTC 7. Yet he maintains that ‘he doesn’t have to explain WTC 7′.
When asked about the T factor in Q=mc(delta-T), in re the six month duration of metal existing at or near the heat of fusion at the footprints of all three towers, and how the law of thermal equilibrium, etc. were held in abeyance for so long; does he ever even acknowledge the existence of the anomaly? No. And quite frankly, I’m not sure he understands why it’s an anomaly.
When he tosses up the ‘hot steam & iron’ reaction as part of some Indiana Jones science statement, i.e. ‘incredible stuff could have happened’, I asked him where he got the superheated steam (<180 C), much less the pure iron from. Did he answer? No.
And even when I complied with his request that I use his 'whale metaphor' when addressing the problems with his explanations, did he account for the reason the whale would be left impaled on the exterior and interior structures of the building? No.
Imagine the mortality rate of Internists if they approached patient diagnostics in a similar fashion.
In any case, I think we should make a simple list of the questions he's yet to answer in lieu of pursuing the side arguments about sound, etc.
That's just a few of the questions I can come up with at the moment, let me know what you think or other questions you're
aware of that he's dodged or refused to answer.
Regards,
Bob
[Me] “Yes – the energy is degraded into thermal energy, the lowest ‘quality’ energy, at which point it can no longer be used to do work.”
[Robert] “Don’t look now Slarti, but that lowest form of energy, the one that you claim can’t do any work, is the energy that is being used to power MILLIONS of homes and businesses. That thermal energy is what heats the water in the primary system of a nuclear power plant. That thermal energy then passes through a steam generator to produce steam, which spins a turbine, a turbine that is connected to a generator.”
You are correct. I should have said that once the thermal energy was evenly distributed it could no longer do work. However, for purposes of this discussion, once energy has become thermal energy in the rubble the only work it does is in seeking thermal equilibrium with its surroundings, which we all agree on. Where we disagree is how much energy ends up as heat in the rubble. On the matter of the top sliding off of WTC2, this certainly changes the analysis – and unfortunately complicates the hell out of it. I agree with Bob that this is not very relevant to our debate and while I have my own opinion about what would and wouldn’t be likely under that scenario, I’m not making any assertions about it. I’m retracting all of my previous statements about the WTC collapse to refer to WTC1 but not WTC2. I have thus formally adopted the Randall Monroe theory (except he got the buildings backwards):
http://xkcd.com/690/
Bob,
I’ll answer all of the questions I can (can meaning have time to, not have the ability to), but I get to decide which order I answer them. Your strategy of focusing your comments on the questions you most wanted answered is a good one to this end and I have no problem with it. The question that I would most like you to answer is: ‘Since the sum of the energy before a job is done (a job being an instance of work) is equal to the sum of the energy after a job, why can’t I use this equation in my analysis?
All,
I’ve got some things I need to do, so I wont be posting for a couple of days, but I will get back to this.
Bob, I’m in favor of anything that will provide a general consensus, but I don’t see us getting there until we remove fantasy from the equation. This cannot be analyzed as an isolated system (the universe), unless Slarti is truly willing to accurately account for all of the mass and all of the energy. 80-200 GJ is not an accurate account of anything.
When I asked Slarti to explain the 45 degree cuts in the columns, and he basically replied ‘It could happen, because there was enough energy available’, I was speechless. That’s not a forensic analysis. It’s a dishonest way of saying “I don’t know”, and “It’s not important, because I choose not to explain it”.
As to the top of WTC #2, you can’t just ignore it. It removed over half of the energy from the calculations for WTC #2, which made Slarti’s account of the collapse impossible.
Maybe what you need to do with those hot spots, is calculate the dimensions, and the temperatures recorded by the satellite for two periods in time, and then figure out how much thermal energy would have been required in order to sustain it. Since you know that it was molten, and not gaseous, there is a limit to the initial temperature. The rate at which it cooled should be a reliable enough to permit a calculation of the initial temperature. Consider the surface to be the primary place for the heat transfer to take place. The rate at which the temperature will change can be determined with enough accuracy to prove your point.
Slarti,
Please don’t forget about providing an answer to this question:
When the WTC impacted the earth, why did it stop? Please provide some detail in your answer.
I think your answer may help clear up a few things.
Robert: “Bob, I’m in favor of anything that will provide a general consensus, but I don’t see us getting there until we remove fantasy from the equation. This cannot be analyzed as an isolated system (the universe), unless Slarti is truly willing to accurately account for all of the mass and all of the energy.”
I couldn’t agree more. Further, I have no idea how Byron and Buddha let that one go.
Robert: “When I asked Slarti to explain the 45 degree cuts in the columns, and he basically replied ‘It could happen, because there was enough energy available’, I was speechless. That’s not a forensic analysis. It’s a dishonest way of saying “I don’t know”, and “It’s not important, because I choose not to explain it”.”
Amen. That’s what I call ‘Indiana Jones Science’ — i.e. the kind of crap that attempts to convince the audience you can survive a fall from a plane with an inflatable raft or escape ground zero of a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a refrigerator.
Robert: “As to the top of WTC #2, you can’t just ignore it. It removed over half of the energy from the calculations for WTC #2, which made Slarti’s account of the collapse impossible.”
I think that goes outside the bounds of available evidence. You can make the argument that the reverse in angular momentum and velocity necessitated a miraculous acceleration of collapse on the other side of the building though.
Robert: “Maybe what you need to do with those hot spots, is calculate the dimensions, and the temperatures recorded by the satellite for two periods in time, and then figure out how much thermal energy would have been required in order to sustain it. Since you know that it was molten, and not gaseous, there is a limit to the initial temperature. The rate at which it cooled should be a reliable enough to permit a calculation of the initial temperature. Consider the surface to be the primary place for the heat transfer to take place. The rate at which the temperature will change can be determined with enough accuracy to prove your point.”
Think about it; where is the sustained source of heat, REQUIRED TO REACH THE HEAT OF FUSION FOR STEEL, coming from?
I’m sure there are experts who can make the calculations you’re talking about that would further bolster the argument; but the initial question remains WHAT IS THE SOURCE OR MECHANISM OF ALL THAT THERMAL ENERGY?
Slarti’s sophistry would have you believe, in a ‘Saddam/911′ fashion that it’s due to liquification upon impact like a comet — or, and this is where his explanations become insulting, IT MUST BE (sans definition of mechanism by which it was created) as a remainder of the initial GPE.
That is question begging in the first degree; a crime that should be punishable by being slapped in the face with a wet fish.
Bob said:
“…the initial question remains WHAT IS THE SOURCE OR MECHANISM OF ALL THAT THERMAL ENERGY? Slarti’s sophistry would have you believe, in a ‘Saddam/911′ fashion that it’s due to liquification upon impact like a comet [No, the rubble experiences a temperature increase on impact - just like a comet does.] — or, and this is where his explanations become insulting [Insulting like your misrepresentation of my statements.], IT MUST BE (sans definition of mechanism by which it was created [internal friction]) as a remainder of the initial GPE.[No, I insist that the initial GPE be conserved.]”
I have been trying to identify the sources of the thermal energy in the rubble. You seem to want to look at each source and say ‘that’s not enough to melt steel’. As I have explained, this is equivalent to applying the heat equation backwards – once we’re looking at the rubble, we can’t identify where, in particular, any of the heat ‘came’ from (like the heat which melted it). What we can do is determine what the sources of heat were and ask ‘how much of the thermal energy in the rubble came from this source?’ We agree that some of the energy stored as GPE in WTC1 became thermal energy in the rubble. I have also asserted that there are other sources of thermal energy in the rubble such as fires before and after the collapse, chemical reactions, etc. Fires, in particular, supplied an enormous amount of thermal energy. As you point out, they (probably) did not burn hot enough to melt steel. They did, however, supply and enormous amount of thermal energy (some of it to the structural steel). A source of heat far smaller than one needed to melt room temperature steel could have put some of the steel over the top. To me it is not surprising that when you take steel and bathe it in, say, 1000 C fire after which you use large forces to bend, compress, and rip it and the building around it to rubble before slamming it to the earth after which you spray it with water continuously, allowing the oxidation of the iron as well as the burning of the hydrogen byproduct that some of it melts. And given that rubble is a fairly good insulator (and the rubble is constantly converting a few more Joules of GPE into TE via compression) and that it is possible that conditions in the rubble created a furnace-like effect (plus the water), I think that steel could have remained at or near the heat of fusion for the time it was observed to.
I just thought of an experiment to demonstrate my point: Take a block of ice as close to 0 C as possible and drop it from a height where its GPE is above its heat of fusion. Upon impact the ice will liquify. (You should shape the block to minimize wind resistance in order to minimize the GPE converted to KE before impact and decrease frictional heating.)
Top of WTC #2
Bob said “I think that goes outside the bounds of available evidence. You can make the argument that the reverse in angular momentum and velocity necessitated a miraculous acceleration of collapse on the other side of the building though.”
No matter how you interpret it. It just doesn’t make sense. I think it had to separate from the lower floors almost immediately. If it hung on, it would have swung in, and caused the building to roll to the side on its way down. (That’s not scientific analysis. Its just my lifetime of experience seeing how things happen.)
Bob said “Think about it; where is the sustained source of heat, REQUIRED TO REACH THE HEAT OF FUSION FOR STEEL, coming from?
I’m sure there are experts who can make the calculations you’re talking about that would further bolster the argument; but the initial question remains WHAT IS THE SOURCE OR MECHANISM OF ALL THAT THERMAL ENERGY?”
I think the analysis would prove that either:
A. Natural cooling would have eliminated the hotspot in X amount of time, without a source of energy to keep it going.
B. The initial temperature, and mass of the hotspot would have had to be Y to permit the heat to remain for that long.
I’ll see if I can come up with a reliable model in the next day or two.
Slarti,
If I have 200 fires that are burning at 500 degrees, and I put all of those fires together; how hot will the fire be?
“I just thought of an experiment to demonstrate my point: Take a block of ice as close to 0 C as possible and drop it from a height where its GPE is above its heat of fusion. Upon impact the ice will liquify. (You should shape the block to minimize wind resistance in order to minimize the GPE converted to KE before impact and decrease frictional heating.)”
Oh yeah. That’ll work. Maybe that can explain this.
Robert,
I would assume that most hail is far below 0C.
You’ll heat 200 times as much stuff to 500 C.
And be sure to include:
C. The expected temperature given the oxidation of iron, burning of hydrogen and heating by additional fires.
in you analysis.
I did the math on the ice dropping experiment and impact needs to be at over 800 m/s, so make it a thought experiment about an ice bullet going 1000 m/s (this is fast enough to account for heating the bullet as long as it’s above -40 degrees (F or C)). If an ice bullet hits a stationary target at 1 kilometer per second, it would liquify on impact (assuming no deformation of the target).
“You’ll heat 200 times as much stuff to 500 C.”
Impossible!
Oxidation of Iron?
Not even a relevant consideration as a heat source.
Burning of hydrogen?
Where did the new hydrogen come from?
heating by additional fires?
Where fires (of consequence) burning below the rubble? Which direction does heat go?
[Me] “You’ll heat 200 times as much stuff to 500 C [With 200 500 C fires].”
[Robert] “Impossible!”
200 500 C fires will generate 200 times the thermal energy one fire – this will heat a much larger region to the neighborhood of 500 C.
[Robert] “Oxidation of Iron? Not even a relevant consideration as a heat source.”
A turn of the (previous) century industrial process for producing hydrogen was to spray steam onto hot iron. This resulted in the (exothermic) oxidation reaction:
3Fe + 2H2O -> Fe3O4 + 4H2 + (energy – anyone want to guess what kind and where it is?*)
As water was continuously sprayed onto the rubble for weeks (and there was clearly hot steel in the rubble), this is a probable source of heat.
[Robert] “Burning of hydrogen? Where did the new hydrogen come from?”
The above process.
[Robert] “heating by additional fires? Where fires (of consequence) burning below the rubble?”
There were eyewitness accounts of fires in the rubble, so we must include that as a possible source of heat.
[Robert] “Which direction does heat go?”
Down the thermal gradient according to the heat equation.
*The answer is thermal energy in the products of the reaction.
“I did the math on the ice dropping experiment and impact needs to be at over 800 m/s, so make it a thought experiment about an ice bullet going 1000 m/s (this is fast enough to account for heating the bullet as long as it’s above -40 degrees (F or C)). If an ice bullet hits a stationary target at 1 kilometer per second, it would liquify on impact (assuming no deformation of the target).”
This is complete and utter nonsense. It could only be dreamed up by a guy whose knowledge of physics is limited to that which is possible on paper. (I’m not trying to be demeaning. I’m just trying to get you to acknowledge your limitations.)
The impact takes place on a point. The ice would shatter before the heat would have a chance to propagate throughout the entire piece of ice.
I’d point out that you never defined how much ice you would start with, but that would be feeding the delusion.
A block of anything cannot change state, or heat instantaneously and uniformly upon impact. Drop an ice cube in a pot of boiling water. Does it instantaneously disappear?
The heat exchange takes place on the surface, and then propagates along the path of least resistance.
“A turn of the (previous) century industrial process for producing hydrogen was to spray steam onto hot iron. This resulted in the (exothermic) oxidation reaction:”
That process requires superheated steam? What would make superheated steam available at the WTC collapse?
[Robert] “heating by additional fires? Where fires (of consequence) burning below the rubble?”
Slarti said “There were eyewitness accounts of fires in the rubble, so we must include that as a possible source of heat.”
Are you double dipping? The fires in the rubble were most likely the molten metal that is evidenced.
[Me] “A turn of the (previous) century industrial process for producing hydrogen was to spray steam onto hot iron. This resulted in the (exothermic) oxidation reaction:”
[Robert] “That process requires superheated steam? What would make superheated steam available at the WTC collapse?”
I never said ‘superheated’ steam, regular H2O in gaseous form is fine. This whole argument is about steel at or near the heat of fusion in a rubble pile which was being continuously sprayed with water. Steam is not a problem. Nor is steam in contact with hot iron.
[Robert] “heating by additional fires? Where fires (of consequence) burning below the rubble?”
[Me] “There were eyewitness accounts of fires in the rubble, so we must include that as a possible source of heat.”
[Robert] “Are you double dipping? The fires in the rubble were most likely the molten metal that is evidenced.”
I’m only repeating what was said in an article given as evidence of molten metal.
[Me] “I did the math on the ice dropping experiment and impact needs to be at over 800 m/s, so make it a thought experiment about an ice bullet going 1000 m/s (this is fast enough to account for heating the bullet as long as it’s above -40 degrees (F or C)). If an ice bullet hits a stationary target at 1 kilometer per second, it would liquify on impact (assuming no deformation of the target).”
[Robert] “This is complete and utter nonsense. It could only be dreamed up by a guy whose knowledge of physics is limited to that which is possible on paper. [I studied physics for two years with the intent of getting a Ph.D. I switched to mathematics for reasons unrelated to my mastery of the field and earned my Ph.D. My knowledge of physics stacks up pretty favorably against most people.] (I’m not trying to be demeaning. I’m just trying to get you to acknowledge your limitations. [I do acknowledge my limitations, they're just not where you think they are.])”
This experiment is within the realm that we could actually perform. (If we made the bullet out of frozen methane, 400 m/s would be sufficient.) You’ve already admitted that a meteor can liquify on impact (even vaporize) at 11 km/s, why is it so hard to believe that due to operation of the same principles an ice bullet moving at 1 km/s will also liquify if it hits a hardened target. And with regard to my limitations, did you ever consider that I am exactly what I represent myself to be and that the problems you see in my analysis are a result of your misunderstandings of physics and what I am saying?
[Robert] “The impact takes place on a point. [The tip of a bullet - a very small area, not a mathematical singualrity.] The ice would shatter before the heat would have a chance to propagate throughout the entire piece of ice. [No. As the structure of the bullet impacted it would be liquified from its tip to its end at approximately the speed the bullet was traveling.]”
Obviously we would have to actually perform the experiment to prove this, but if we did, here’s what would happen (in my opinion):
Upon impact the tip of the bullet and the target would exert force on each other. The target would not deform, so no work would be done in the target. The force exerted on the bullet would destroy the structure of the bullet doing work (force of impact times length of bullet destroyed) sufficient to convert enough kinetic energy into thermal energy to achieve the heat of fusion, thus liquifying the bullet. (I bet it would look really cool in slow-motion like some of the clips you’ve posted.
) If we increase the speed of the bullet, we increase the force doing the work and thus the thermal energy in the water. If the speed of impact is sufficiently high, the bullet will vaporize on impact.
To answer the question you keep repeating – this is exactly what happens when a piece of debris hits the ground. The ground and the debris exert force on each other until the structure of one or both is effected resulting in deformation of the debris or the ground though a distance i.e. work being done which transforms (and is powered by) kinetic energy into thermal energy (in the object being deformed). This is a consequence of the law of conservation of energy.
[Robet] “I’d point out that you never defined how much ice you would start with, but that would be feeding the delusion.”
The bullet needs to be carrying enough kinetic energy to heat itself to 0 C plus its heat of fusion. In other words,
1/2 m v^2 = m (specific heat of ice)(0 C – temp of bullet) + m (heat of fusion of ice).
As you can see, mass drops out of this equation. I might be delusional, but I think that made sense.
[Robert] “A block of anything cannot change state, or heat instantaneously and uniformly upon impact. [Work is done via internal friction to destroy the structure of the ice converting kinetic energy in the ice into thermal energy in the ice. This doesn't take place instantaneously because W=Fd.] Drop an ice cube in a pot of boiling water. Does it instantaneously disappear? [The only work being done here is via thermal equilibration - in the bullet case the work is being done to destroy the structure of the ice, they are totally different.] The heat exchange takes place on the surface, and then propagates along the path of least resistance. [more properly, heat flows down the thermal gradient.]”
All I’m saying is that energy is conserved in every single event in which work is performed.
Slarti: “[No, the rubble experiences a temperature increase on impact - just like a comet does.]”
From your favorite source: “In the absence of atmosphere, the impact process begins when the impactor first touches the target surface. This contact accelerates the target and decelerates the impactor. Because the impactor is moving so rapidly, the rear of the object moves a significant distance during the short-but-finite time taken for the deceleration to propagate across the impactor. As a result, the impactor is compressed, its density rises, and the pressure within it increases dramatically. Peak pressures in large impacts exceed 1 TPa to reach values more usually found deep in the interiors of planets, or generated artificially in nuclear explosions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_crater
I’m sure that’s exactly what happened Slarti. And with an acceleration constant of 9.8 m/s^2, how long would it take to accelerate the steel to a velocity of Mach 3.94? A tad longer than the collapse itself; right? And as everyone knows, the higher you drop something the faster it falls. Drop a penny from a helicopter and it’ll break the sound barrier if you’ve got enough altitude; right Slarti?
Slarti: “[No, I insist that the initial GPE be conserved.]”
As do I; as does the universe. But not at the expense of the truth.
But let’s read on and see if you’ve addressed a single point I re-raised today; shall we?
Slarti: “I have been trying to identify the sources of the thermal energy in the rubble. You seem to want to look at each source and say ‘that’s not enough to melt steel’.”
Actually, it works this way. When I’m offered an alleged source thermal energy that’s either physically impossible or as astronomically improbable as water flowing upwards and back onto a waterfall, my reply will tend to orbit around the response ‘that’s not enough to melt steel.’
Slarti: “As I have explained,”
You promise to explain while not responding to my questions. What do we call that?
Slarti: “this is equivalent to applying the heat equation backwards – once we’re looking at the rubble, we can’t identify where, in particular, any of the heat ‘came’ from (like the heat which melted it). What we can do is determine what the sources of heat were and ask ‘how much of the thermal energy in the rubble came from this source?’”
And when your alleged sources of thermal energy are shown to be as existent as ether, i.e. post Michaelson/Morely, what does Sir Ockham tell us to do?
Slarti: “We agree that some of the energy stored as GPE in WTC1 became thermal energy in the rubble. I have also asserted that there are other sources of thermal energy in the rubble such as fires before and after the collapse, chemical reactions, etc. Fires, in particular, supplied an enormous amount of thermal energy.”
And there’s that Indiana Jones science kicking in again. The plane that hit WTC 2 wasted its jet fuel in a pyrotechnic display that hit the front page of the NY Times. The fuel from AAL 11, i.e. that hit WTC 1, was reported as burned out by the FD; further evidenced by the oxygen starved black smoke observed pouring out the building. Finally, you again evade my question about where you were getting your superheated (<180 C) steam or your pure iron for your proposed 'Hindenberg effect.' Oh the humanity!
Slarti: "As you point out, they (probably) did not burn hot enough to melt steel. They did, however, supply and enormous amount of thermal energy (some of it to the structural steel)."
This overly general statement reminds me of Phil Hartman as Frankenstein: "Fire bad!"
Slarti: "A source of heat far smaller than one needed to melt room temperature steel could have put some of the steel over the top. To me it is not surprising that when you take steel and bathe it in, say, 1000 C fire after which you use large forces to bend, compress, and rip it and the building around it to rubble before slamming it to the earth after which you spray it with water continuously, allowing the oxidation of the iron as well as the burning of the hydrogen byproduct that some of it melts."
Remember when I asked you how hot a diffuse jet fuel flame was? It's 339 C; which is a tad lower than 1000 C, wouldn't you agree? What's more, if you've ever watched the show "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel, you'd find out that jet fuel does not burn like gasoline; i.e. you can't light it and keep it lit if it's just spilled all over the place. Needs to be aerated don't ya know.
And on that issue about spraying water on to your alleged source of heat, we return once again to my question "where you were getting your superheated (<180 C) steam or your pure iron for your proposed 'Hindenberg effect.'" Last I checked, cold water on a hot surface creates generic 100C steam; a lot cooler than the kind created by a locomotive. Steam engine's got pressure; make that train go 'Choo choo!'
Slarti: "And given that rubble is a fairly good insulator"
And here I am thinking that all that steel was acting as heat sinks; supposedly obeying the law of thermal equilibrium as well. Silly me.
Slarti: "(and the rubble is constantly converting a few more Joules of GPE into TE via compression)"
Fascinating point Mr. Boyle; a point so cogent that it brings us back to the problem of WTC 7. All the heat and just a fraction of the mass/compression of Towers 1 & 2; right Slarti?
Slarti: "and that it is possible that conditions in the rubble created a furnace-like effect (plus the water), I think that steel could have remained at or near the heat of fusion for the time it was observed to."
Of course. So what did you think of Indiana Jones IV? Did you like that scene with the nuclear blast and the refrigerator?
Slarti: "I just thought of an experiment to demonstrate my point: Take a block of ice as close to 0 C as possible and drop it from a height where its GPE is above its heat of fusion."
You're speaking Australian now; i.e. I understand the words but never quite seen them in that order before.
Slarti: "Upon impact the ice will liquify."
And the ice that falls from 30,000 feet and smashes through peoples houses from time to time; that's an anomaly? It was supposed to liquify?
Slarti: "(You should shape the block to minimize wind resistance in order to minimize the GPE converted to KE before impact and decrease frictional heating.)"
No Slarti, Q=mc(delta-T) necessitates a time component. Water has a specific heat of 1. When it comes to heating and cooling, water takes its time. When the temp reaches/rises to the heat of fusion for water/ice, i.e. 0 C, the time component kicks in and our ice/water mixture will remain at 0 C until all the ice has melted. The impact will merely shatter the ice. Granted the increased surface area and lower mass per unit will hasten the 'melting process' but the impact will not 'melt the ice.'
And as we close out this post we see that Slarti has once again proven himself reluctant to provide responses to the questions he's been asked. (see above)
Slarti said “A turn of the (previous) century industrial process for producing hydrogen was to spray steam onto hot iron. This resulted in the (exothermic) oxidation reaction:”
Robert responded “That process requires superheated steam? What would make superheated steam available at the WTC collapse?”
Slarti replied “I never said ’superheated’ steam, regular H2O in gaseous form is fine. This whole argument is about steel at or near the heat of fusion in a rubble pile which was being continuously sprayed with water. Steam is not a problem. Nor is steam in contact with hot iron.”
Just because you “never said” superheated steam, that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t need superheated steam in order to make it happen. You effective stated that spraying steam onto hot iron will produce hydrogen, but you completely eliminated any of the parameters that must be met in order for this to take place.
Leaving the qualifier out of the equation is sophistry.
Robert: “No matter how you interpret it. It just doesn’t make sense. I think it had to separate from the lower floors almost immediately. If it hung on, it would have swung in, and caused the building to roll to the side on its way down. (That’s not scientific analysis. Its just my lifetime of experience seeing how things happen.)”
Or, But, like I said, if the other side (pivot point) was obliterated and ‘balanced’ the collapse by removing the angular momentum and velocity components….
Robert,
Excellent point about hail.
“You’ve already admitted that a meteor can liquify on impact (even vaporize) at 11 km/s”
I have admitted no such thing.
“and the rubble is constantly converting a few more Joules of GPE into TE via compression”
The rubble is a product of the collapse. Any compression (deformation) that was going to take place, did so immediately upon impact. This isn’t a gift that keeps on giving. According to your premise, TE was constantly being created, because GPE continued to exist. That’s nonsense. If you spell it out, that may help. Gravitational POTENTIAL energy. It has the potential to do work. As in; you have great potential. The work isn’t performed because there is a potential, the TE is a byproduct of the work performed AFTER the potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy.
““We agree that some of the energy stored as GPE in WTC1 became thermal energy in the rubble.”
The key word there is SOME. Some doesn’t mean that all of the GPE that had not been accounted for to perform work miraculously became TE in the rubble. Friction and deformation are methods of converting KE to TE, but that is only a small fraction of the KE observed. The overwhelming majority of the energy was dissipated as a shock wave into the earth, and into the surrounding atmosphere. If it wasn’t involved in friction (rubbing) or deformation, or to send things flying, it was dissipated (as in gone forever (as far as the WTC collapse site is concerned). Your physics books won’t tell you that, because they are based on the premise of an isolated system.
Robert: “I think the analysis would prove that either:
A. Natural cooling would have eliminated the hotspot in X amount of time, without a source of energy to keep it going.
B. The initial temperature, and mass of the hotspot would have had to be Y to permit the heat to remain for that long.”
The answer is both. However as you consider point B, recall that the key question is “what source of thermal energy had the capacity to raise the temperature of so much mass so quickly and continuously that it would take it nearly six months to cool down? Slarti doesn’t seem to understand that the 45 degree cuts in the steel columns for a certain type of reaction used by, how shall we say, the ‘hot’ demolition experts.
Do I say that’s the only possible answer? No, but it’s far more fucking plausible, given the evidence, than hypothesizing about inelastic collisions of comets and asteroids traveling around Mach 4.
Did you see new film “Sherlock Holmes” yet. Excellent quote.
Sherlock Holmes: [to Watson] Never theorize before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Now you tell me Robert; who here has been ignoring data to suit his theories?
“Now you tell me Robert; who here has been ignoring data to suit his theories?”
I think the whole problem here is the result of a false initial premise. Slarti was permitted to treat this as an isolated system, without requiring him to account for EVERYTHING in his isolated system. This led to his conclusion, that whatever he couldn’t specifically account for had to be energy remaining in the WTC rubble. He limited the mass and energy to the rubble, and completely abandoned the universe. Any mass or energy that ended up two blocks away was completely ignored. A 2 ton piece of iron, thrown two blocks cannot be ignored. Oversimplification i.e. PE -> KE -> TE + SE +AE, cannot be accepted as a legitimate forensic analysis of the event. Any sonic waves Slarti treated the as if the sound was produced by one source, rather than millions (if not billions) of sources, and he treated the impact as if it took place on the head of a pin, instead of a gazillion pin heads. It tried to demonstrate that knowing the resultant effect cannot determine the number of simultaneous sources, and that treating it as though it all came from one source does not provide for a reliable conclusion. The calculation could be off by a factor of 1 million times.
I used the speaker calculation, and the radiation measurements to demonstrate this. Thirty 20 db sources will only produce 34.7 db. Try it here http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-spl30.htm
As you add more and more sources, the increased decibel level increases by a smaller and smaller factor.
Slarti says the 100 Watts is equal to 140 db. Well, ten 130 db sources will only produce 139.97 db. Twenty 130 db sources will only produce 142.97 db. And, thirty 130 db sources will only produce 144.7 db. Yet, each one of the sources would be about 100 watts. What would 2 million 130 db sources produce? (I don’t have the calculation handy, but I can tell you it would be about 2 billion watts, according to Slarti’s numbers, as that doesn’t even take into account the efficiency of the amplifier to drive the speaker. What happens when you multiple Slarti’s sound energy calculation by 2 million?
All of this is why a forensic analysis cannot be performed by knowing the result and working backwards. We know that the impact did not involve a single mass impacting the earth all at the same time. To pretend that it did is ludicrous.
When you leave the house to go shopping, you figure out how much the items you need to purchase are going to cost, and you make sure to bring along enough money to buy what is on your list. You don’t go out for a day of shopping, and then check to see if you spent all of your money, and use that to determine that you bought everything on your list. If you come home with extra money in your wallet, you either forgot something, or you got it at a discount. Slarti made no list. He just looked at what he had initially, and how much he had left when he got home. The fact that he didn’t pay for something (got it at a discount, or for free) doesn’t matter. Yes, he did his day of shopping (The WTCs collapsed). The fact that he bought a new car for $20 is not even recognized. (i.e. 80-200 GJ to pulverize the building.)
This may be a helpful (free) utility for anyone needing to convert to different units of measurement.
http://www.nonags.com/freeware-das-unit-converter_3331.html
Bob and Robert,
You have derided me for quoting Wikipedia articles without citations as if this accusation implied that the quotes from the articles were not true. However, all of the quotes about physics I took from Wikipedia were about things that I already knew to be correct – Wikipedia being the easiest place to find support for my (correct) statements about physics. I have even given you quotes from additional sources including a physics textbook and other websites. Neither of you, on the other hand, have been able to produce any source that contradicts my quotations or my interpretations of physical law. None of the quotes in this post are from Wikipedia and again, everything that I’m quoting here is to support what I already know to be true, not the source of my knowledge (more about that later). I have given my name so you have the ability to verify the scientific credentials that I claim. On the other hand, both of you have shown your understanding of energy to highly suspect. Therefore, if you would like me to take any statements of yours with regard to physics seriously in the future, please provide references to support them.
To kick things off, let’s see the definition of ‘impact melt’ from the Internet Encyclopedia of Science:
“Rock that has been made temporarily molten as a result of the energy released by the impact of a large colliding body. Impact melts include small particles, known as impact melt spherules, that are splashed out of the impact crater, and larger pools and sheets of melt that coalesce in low areas within the crater. They are composed predominantly of the target rocks, but can contain a small but measurable amount of the impactor.”
www(DOT)daviddarling(DOT)info/encyclopedia/I/impact_melt.html
This implies that large amounts of thermal energy are created by impacts – where does this energy come from? The only source of energy available energy (unless you want to suggest conversion of matter to energy) is the kinetic energy of the the impacting object. While there are other forms of energy released by impacts (and I’ve discussed all of the significant ones), heat is by far the largest – yes, the Chixulub impactor shook the earth and caused a big kaboom (and a big flash) requiring much energy, but that was just a small fraction of the energy required to melt the 25,000 square kilometers of rock around the impact site. In a quote from a physics text in a previous post, the only resultant form of energy that it talks about in an inelastic collision is thermal energy (in a non-inelastic collision the only additional resultant energy is kinetic energy which may account for anywhere from very little of the initial KE [nearly inelastic] or all of it [elastic]).
But let’s go back to the beginning, how does the IES define energy?
“1. A measure of the ability to do work – for example, to lift a body against gravity or drag it against friction or to accelerate an object.
2. An intrinsic property of everything in the universe, including radiation, matter (see mass-energy relationship), and, strangely enough, even empty space (see quantum vacuum). See also conservation of mass and energy.
Energy exists in a number of equivalent forms. The commonest of these is heat – the motion of the molecules of matter. Ultimately all other forms of energy tend to convert into thermal motion.”
[...bit about electricity, electromagnetic and quantum...]
“When macroscopic bodies move, they too have energy by virtue of their motion; this their kinetic energy and is given by ½mv^2 where m is the mass and v the velocity of motion. To change the velocity of a moving body, or to set it in motion, a force must be applied to it and work must be done. This work is equivalent to the change in the kinetic energy of the body and gave physicists one of their earliest definitions of energy: the ability to do work. When work is done against a restraining force, potential energy is stored in the system, ready to be released again. The restraining force may be electromagnetic, torsional, electrostatic, tensional or any other type. On Earth when an object of mass m is raised up to a height h, its gravitational potential energy is given by mgh, where g is the acceleration due to gravity. If the object is let go, it falls and will strike the ground with velocity v, its potential energy having been converted into kinetic energy ½mv^2.
Sound energy is kinetic energy of the vibration of air. Chemical energy is the energy released from a chemical system in the course of a reaction. Although all forms of energy are equivalent, not all interconversion processes go with 100% efficiency (the energy deficit always appears as heat).
The SI unit of energy is the [J]oule. ”
Well, that sounds to me like it agrees with everything that I’ve been saying. I especially like ‘The commonest [form of energy] is heat – the motion of the molecules of matter. Ultimately all other forms of energy tend to convert into thermal motion.’ and ‘the energy deficit [of inefficiency] always appears as heat’ as I’ve been saying that most energy ends up as heat all along.
Under the heading ‘conservation law’ it says “A law which states that the total value of some quantity does not change in any reaction.”
In order to understand what this means in practice, let’s consider the following quote from ‘On the mechanical equivalent of heat’ by James P. Joule, Esq. (goes to show that some lawyers understand physics…) as read before the British Association at Cambridge in June, 1845. The article may be found at:
http://www.chemteam.info/Chem-History/Joule-Heat-1845.html
James Joule had a can of water.
“A sort of paddle-wheel was placed in the can, to which motion could be communicated by means of weights thrown over two pulleys [...]. He stated that the force spent in revolving the paddle-wheel produced a certain increment in the temperature of the water; and hence he drew the conclusion that when the temperature of a pound of water is increased by one degree of Fahrenheit’s scale, an amount of vis viva [*] is communicated to it equal to that acquired by a weight of 890 pounds after falling from the altitude of one foot.”
*”In the history of science, vis viva (from the Latin for living force) is an obsolete scientific theory that served as an elementary and limited early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy. It can be thought of as a type of kinetic energy or of energy related to sensible motions.” (Wikipedia entry on ‘vis viva’ – okay, there is ONE Wiki cite here
)
In this quote James Joule is telling us the relationship between gravitational potential energy and thermal energy. He’s even showing us that work converts GPE into KE and then more work converts KE into TE.
I’m sure Robert will recognize the equation ‘Q = I^2 R t’, also known as ‘Joule’s first law’, which states the relationship between electrical energy and thermal energy.
James Joule didn’t think of conservation of energy as an abstract theory – the SI unit for energy is named after him because he found some of the nuts and bolts relationships of conservation of energy. Because of his work, we know how to apply conservation of energy to the real world. In any instance where work is performed, we can write down the equation for conservation of the energy used to power the work:
E(powering the work) = sum of resultant energies
In the case of collisions, this equation is:
KE(before) = KE(after) + TE(ineff) + TE(int fric) + SE + AE
Where I have neglected terms such as electromagnetic energy which are trivial in the WTC collapse. (besides, any photon emitted would likely have been absorbed by some atom increasing its internal motion, i.e. raising its temperature).
KE(before and after) – The kinetic energy contained in the objects colliding. The resulting kinetic energy may be moving in a different direction than the original kinetic energies were moving – this means that that forces could occur in other directions besides vertically. Also as a consequence of this we cannot hope to analyze the collapse in terms of the individual forces involved.
TE(ineff) – Thermal energy resulting from any ‘inefficiency’ in the collision. In my mind you would call the energy lost to internal friction, seismic energy and acoustic energy the ‘inefficiency’ in a collision, but if there’s something that I’m not thinking of, then (as is always the case when energy is lost due to inefficiency) that energy would be converted (via this unknown process you hypothesize) into thermal energy in the objects colliding.
TE(internal friction) – When one or both of the objects involved in the collision deform, work equal to the force of the collision times the distance of the deformation is done which changes kinetic energy into thermal energy in the deformed object – be it pulverized rubble, bent or sheared iron or compressed ground or debris.
SE – Seismic energy. Some work is done to power seismic waves in the objects colliding. If one (or both) of the objects is in contact with the earth, this seismic energy could propagate into the earth (this energy was measured as 2.3 on the Richter scale or 12 GJ). If neither object is in contact with the earth then the seismic energy imparted in the collision will reverberate through the objects until it is all dissipated as thermal energy due to the inefficiency of the object as a medium for transmitting seismic energy.
AE – Acoustic energy. This either escapes the collapse (in which case it is a part of the point source generating the sound of the collapse*) or it is absorbed by the rubble around it – i.e. it becomes seismic energy in the rubble.
*When a sound is heard from a sufficient distance to consider it a point source, its measured sound level (and hence the power necessary to generate the sound) is the same no matter the number of sources. After all, your ear (or a measuring device) does not ‘see’ sound coming from a number of distinct sources, it ‘sees’ the changing atmospheric pressure level. If you’re wondering how you can tell what direction a sound comes from, a good friend of mine did her thesis on how a bat’s ear very accurately detects WHEN a sound is heard in order to tell distance from the time lag between one ear and the other hearing a sound. The direction the sound is coming from can be uniquely determined because of the shape of the ear.
Now, let’s forget about taking the universe as my system and all that. Everything I said about it was true and everything I did was justified, but Robert’s misunderstanding of what I’m saying seems to be a big sticking point and I don’t need it to make my argument. We know that in every single event where work is performed energy is changed from one form to another (or transferred from one location to another). Furthermore, we know that in each of these events the total energy is conserved and we can write down the equation for this conservation. So let’s consider the 400 GJ of GPE in WTC1. All of this energy except for what remained in the rubble pile was converted into kinetic energy in the descending rubble. Once the collapse was done, there was no kinetic energy left – it had all been converted into other forms. All of this energy either 1) left the system; or 2) became thermal energy in the rubble. Energy left the system as acoustic energy, seismic energy, kinetic and thermal energy in the pyroclastic flow and in debris thrown from the collapse (like the debris which fatally wounded WTC7). The amount of sonic energy emitted was relatively small – even very loud sustained sounds don’t required a gigaJoule to generate, much less 400 GJ. The amount of seismic energy was measured. While I don’t know how much energy was ejected in the pyroclastic flow and flying debris, I do know that a large amount of kinetic energy was present in the descending debris the moment before impact. I can calculate the velocity of the debris given the time of collapse assuming constant acceleration. Given the velocity and the mass of the descending building I can compute this kinetic energy. In my calculations I have neglected that this mass is somewhat less that the original mass of the building, but given the rough accuracy of the calculations (which I have repeatedly mentioned), the fact that certainly more than half the mass remained and probably significantly more than half the mass remained, and the fact that we are significantly underestimating the mass of the building (We’re only considering concrete and steel, not any of the non-stuctural building elements, machinery, furniture and computers, and people) this is reasonable. The bulk of this energy as well as the bulk of the energy converted into KE and used to do work before the impact (less what is expelled, of course) ends up as thermal energy in the pile of rubble. That’s what the laws of physics say – don’t take my word for it, you have the person that the standard unit of energy is named for telling you that I’m right.
In the end, this 400 GJ of energy is nowhere near the most significant source of TE in the rubble, but it is A significant source of TE in the rubble. Why then have I spent so much time on this topic? Well, earlier Bob said that I offended him when he thought that I had used Ockham’s razor incorrectly (which I have shown I did not – more on this in a later post). Bob has offended me twice: first by claiming that I was incorrect on physics that I understand much better than he does and second by his misstatements about physics, some of which I can mathematically prove are incorrect. This is a much more important issue to me than his misuse of Ockham’s razor or his ridiculous theory that explosives could have added a significant amount of heat to the rubble (if you want to prove me wrong on this, show me the math). The principles of physics that we’re talking about here are ones that I’ve understood for a long time. In Robert Heinlein’s book ‘The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress’ (which won the Hugo award in 1967 and was rated the 2nd best science fiction novel published before 1990 by Locus magazine – I just want to substantiate the quality of my sources
), he wrote about using rocks impacting at escape velocity as weapons.
“What’s that nonsense about nuclear bombs? We haven’t any and you all know it.”
Prof looked puzzled. “I am confused by that, too. This dispatch so alleged. But the thing that puzzled me is that we could actually see, by video, what certainly seemed to be atomic explosions.”
“Oh.” I turned to Wright. “Did your brainy friends tell you what happens when you release a few billion calories in a split second all at one spot? What temperature? How much radiance?”
“Then you admit that you did use atomic weapons!”
“Oh, Bog!’ Head was aching. [Now I know how he felt!] “Said nothing of sort. Hit anything hard enough, strike sparks. Elementary physics, known to everybody but intelligentsia. We just struck damnedest big sparks ever made by human agency, is all. Big flash. Heat, light, ultraviolet. Might even produce X-rays, couldn’t say. Gamma radiation I strongly doubt. Alpha and beta, impossible. Was sudden release of mechanical energy. But nuclear? Nonsense!”
All of the physics I’ve learned since I read this in high school have been completely consistent with this passage, not to mention the fact that good science fiction generally doesn’t contain bad science (although it certainly can contain black box science). The principles involved in an impactor striking the earth are the same ones involved in the WTC collapse. I think I’ve established the credibility of my understanding of mechanics and conservation of energy. Bob, on the other hand, has done nothing more than to cite an equation out of context (the equation you’re so fond of referring to is about transfer of thermal energy from one object to another – it says nothing about how other forms of energy are converted into thermal energy) and repeatedly say that I was wrong, while offering no understanding of what the ‘correct’ interpretation was. And Robert has continually thrown up objections based on his misunderstanding of what I’m talking about, frequently with references that support my theories, with his most strenuous objection being that I’m quoting Wikipedia articles without citations – as if the fact that someone is much more likely to edit an entry that they know is wrong than they are to add citations for a article they know is right is not a big part of what makes Wikipedia work in the first place. In short, both of you have consistently rejected my detailed, supported arguments, while failing to come anywhere near the standard you required of me. That, gentlemen, is bullshit.
In a later post, I’ll show why your misunderstanding of physics has caused you to mistakenly think that Occam’s razor favors explosive use. (I’ve also got a post about what happens to a penny if you drop it from 100km up if anyone is interested.)
“The only source of energy available energy (unless you want to suggest conversion of matter to energy) is the kinetic energy of the the impacting object.”
False. How hot is the impactor? Spacecraft, without a heat shield, or entering at the wrong angle will burn up as they enter the atmosphere. In addition, your talking about an extremely dense object, traveling at an incredible velocity. Abandon your impactor pretense. It’s not even in the same ballpark. In your scenario, you have a relatively small, extremely dense, high speed object that causes incredible deformation in the bedrock. None of those apply to the WTC collapse.
Slarti,
True or false?
The impactor scenario involves a single impactor, and an instantaneous collision. The WTC involves millions to billions of impactors over a duration of seconds.
“I’m sure Robert will recognize the equation ‘Q = I^2 R t’, also known as ‘Joule’s first law’, which states the relationship between electrical energy and thermal energy.”
Of course, but what you’re not recognizing is that the environment (the atmosphere and the earth) is where the majority of impact energy goes. The path of least resistance. The greater the temperature differential, the faster it goes. You’re acting as though everything that you can’t account for is somehow retained in the rubble. That’s just wrong.
You’re treating the WTC collapse as if it were a single object. It may have started as a single object, but long before it hit the ground below it became billions of objects. All of which had a separate interaction, all of which performed different work, all of which must be treated as a separate impact, all of which generated a separate sound upon impact.
Do you acknowledge that to be a true statement?
Slarti,
I can see that you will not come to your senses and abandon your ridiculous premise that permits you to treat an open system as an isolated system. Neither energy or mass are conserved in an open system. Of this there is no disagreement.
Based solely upon your premise:
How much mass from WTC-1 and 2 was deposited at WTC-4 & WTC-5. Please account for each one individually. In addition, how much energy, in all forms reached floors 1,2, and 7 of those two buildings? What was the highest temperature recorded on each floor of those buildings, 2 minutes after the collapse? This is but a simple calculation in an “isolated system”, and since you have “accurately accounted for everything” it is within your capability to do so.
In addition, since we know the universe continues to exist, what is the location of all of the mass (and I do mean all of it) and all of the energy today?
[Me] “The only source of energy available energy (unless you want to suggest conversion of matter to energy) is the kinetic energy of the the impacting object.”
[Robert] “False. [I will address how much energy is converted into thermal energy by atmospheric friction and how much is kinetic energy the moment before impact in the case of an impactor 10 km in diameter striking the earth below.] How hot is the impactor? [The better question is how much of it has melted away in the atmosphere. See below.] Spacecraft, without a heat shield, or entering at the wrong angle will burn up as they enter the atmosphere. [Your point?] In addition, your talking about an extremely dense object [7870 kg/m^3 for solid iron.], traveling at an incredible velocity. [11 km/s] Abandon your impactor pretense. [No, it is a collision and obeys the laws of mechanics and conservation of energy just like every single collision in the WTC1 collapse.] It’s not even in the same ballpark. [Both obey the same laws of physics, they only differ in scale and I have never stated otherwise.] In your scenario, you have a relatively small, extremely dense, high speed object that causes incredible deformation in the bedrock. None of those apply to the WTC collapse. [In both scenarios both impactor and impactee are deformed resulting in the conversion of kinetic energy into thermal energy.]
True or false?
The impactor scenario involves a single impactor, and an instantaneous collision. The WTC involves millions to billions of impactors over a duration of seconds.” [True, but that doesn't change the fact that energy is conserved in each collision.]
Both scenarios involve one or more collisions and hence are governed by the laws of mechanics. In both scenarios the lion’s share of the kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy by work done in destroying the structure of the objects involved in the event. And in both scenarios all of the work being done conserves energy.
[Robert] “Of course, but what you’re not recognizing is that the environment (the atmosphere and the earth) is where the majority of impact energy goes. [12 GJ of energy went into the earth (as seismic energy) and a trivial amount went into the atmosphere (as sonic energy). The majority the kinetic energy remaining in the rubble the moment before impact is transformed via work performed to deform the rubble and the ground directly below it to thermal energy in the body being deformed.] The path of least resistance. [Energy doesn't follow the path of least resistance, it is transformed when it is used to perform work.] The greater the temperature differential, the faster it goes. [I'm not talking about thermal energy seeking equilibrium, I'm talking about conservation of energy in every single collision that makes up the collapse.] You’re acting as though everything that you can’t account for is somehow retained in the rubble. [No, I'm accounting for everything and estimating how much of it ends up in the rubble - 400 GJ, less the GPE of the rubble pile, 12 GJ of seismic energy, a trivial amount of sonic energy, and an unknown amount of energy that went into ejecting the pyroclastic flow or left in the form of flying debris. I would be surprised it this is more that 100 GJ or so (smaller buildings generate smaller dust clouds from their GPE when they undergo gravitational collapse as the result of controlled demolition. The GPE of WTC1 - a building more than twice as tall as any that had collapsed before was to be expected to generate a much larger dust cloud.] That’s just wrong. [No, it's conservation of energy in action which I have justified via the work done by James Joule and others to understand the equivalence of different forms of energy and how they are conserved. If you disagree, cite some evidence - your word has zero credibility with me.] You’re treating the WTC collapse as if it were a single object. [No, I'm treating it as innumerable collisions all of which conserve energy.] It may have started as a single object, but long before it hit the ground below it became billions of objects. [This doesn't change the fact that energy is conserved in every single collision that took place in the collapse.] All of which had a separate interaction [all of which conserved energy], all of which performed different work [each instance of which conserved energy], all of which must be treated as a separate impact [each of which conserved energy], all of which generated a separate sound upon impact [the ear doesn't hear separate sounds, it measures the variation of atmospheric pressure with time - the energy required to produce a certain volume of sound at a certain distance is independent of the number of sources producing the sound and in any case is trivially small for our purposes.].
Do you acknowledge that to be a true statement? ” [My statements, certainly - your statements are much more hit or miss... Once again, you attack my statements which are supported by over 150 years worth of physics with your statements which lack any support whatsoever.]
[Robert] “I can see that you will not come to your senses and abandon your ridiculous premise that permits you to treat an open system as an isolated system. [I am now merely asserting that energy is conserved in every instance of work that took place during the collapse of WTC1, just like it is conserved in every other instance of work in the universe. While my taking the universe as my closed system is entirely valid, it is unnecessary to my argument and I don't care to argue it in the face of your ignorance.] Neither energy or mass are conserved in an open system. [both energy and mass are conserved in every single instance of work that occurs during the collapse of WTC1.] Of this there is no disagreement. [Energy is still conserved in an open system (energy is always conserved) - it is just allowed to flow into and out of the system changing the system's total energy.] Based solely upon your premise: How much mass from WTC-1 and 2 was deposited at WTC-4 & WTC-5. Please account for each one individually. [Some fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC4 and a different fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC5. The fact that I'm not calculating some quantities explicitly doesn't effect accuracies of the quantities that I am calculating or estimating explicitly.] In addition, how much energy, in all forms reached floors 1,2, and 7 of those two buildings? [42] What was the highest temperature recorded on each floor of those buildings, 2 minutes after the collapse? [No idea - we are trying to determine if there are sufficient sources of heat to account for hot spots at 1300 (I don't know if this is C or F) five days after 9/11 and steel at or near the heat of fusion six months later.] This is but a simple calculation in an “isolated system”, [as I've said, I am now only using the assumption that energy is conserved in every instance of work during the WTC collapse.] and since you have “accurately accounted for everything” it is within your capability to do so. [I have accurately accounted for all of the energy stored as GPE in WTC1 (some of it in a quantitative sense, some of it only in the qualitative sense of some fraction of a larger amount of energy that I can calculate.] In addition, since we know the universe continues to exist [Yes, it does.], what is the location of all of the mass (and I do mean all of it) and all of the energy today? [We're talking about the GPE stored in WTC1 on the morning of 9/11. The mass or energy output by the stars in Orion's belt, like most of the mass and energy of the universe is irrelevant to this discussion.]”
And the penny drops…
A while back you asked a hypothetical about dropping a penny from a helicopter. That got me to wondering what would happen if a penny were ‘dropped’ from a height of 100 km? Because I actually have the skills and knowledge that I’ve represented myself as having, I decided to answer that question. I assumed that (atmospheric pressure) = exp(alpha h) atmospheres, where alpha=-0.0001343/m and h is height in meters. I’m sorry I can’t show you the graph fitting this function to the data of pressure at various altitudes, but it is a very good fit in the troposphere and a fairly good fit above it. I also assumed that the penny stayed flat – the plane of the penny remained perpendicular to the direction of travel. This allowed me to ignore skin friction and the energy of rotational motion. I assumed that all of the kinetic energy lost was converted into thermal energy in the penny (none in the atmosphere). I used Cd=1.28 as the coefficient of drag for a flat plate. I assumed that the penny started at absolute zero (to require the most possible energy to heat it) and that the specific heat of copper is a constant 385 J per kg K from absolute zero to its melting point of 1357.77 K and that its heat of fusion is 205 kJ per kg. I assume even heating of the penny (it maintains its solid structure until it has accumulated enough thermal energy to melt the entire penny). I estimated the integral of motion using a 1st order accurate numerical technique. All of the values below come from these calculations.
The penny accelerates through the thin upper atmosphere until it reaches a maximum speed of 766 m/s at a height of 64 km. At this point, the penny has exceeded its terminal velocity at its height and begins to be slowed by atmospheric friction more than it is accelerated by gravity. By the time that it is 43 km from the surface of the earth it has slowed to 258 m/s and will have absorbed enough energy to melt the entire penny. If the penny is made of a substance that does not melt (and otherwise has the thermal properties specified above), then it would impact the earth at 11 m/s (that’s 0.1844 J of kinetic energy) and would be at a temperature of about 250,000 K – the lion’s share of the 311 kJ of gravitational potential energy the penny originally had having been converted into heat.
What is the point of this calculation, you might ask? (Besides the fact that it was fun.) Well, now I’ve got a computer program that can calculate what happens when a solid iron meteor 10 km in diameter is ‘dropped’ from a height of 1,000,000 km. Over the course of 21 days, the meteor accelerates towards the earth, reaching a speed of over 11 km/s by the time it reaches the upper atmosphere. In the 10 seconds that it takes to pass through the atmosphere, atmospheric friction converts about 22 exaJoules of kinetic energy into thermal energy (more than the yearly electricity production of the US but less than the daily energy released by an average hurricane in producing rain). This is enough energy to melt nearly 22 gigatons of iron (the entire asteroid masses more than 4 teratons) at absolute zero. If this energy were distributed evenly across the surface of the meteorite, it would melt enough of the iron to reduce the diameter of the meteor by almost 9 m (of 10 km). The meteorite actually gains almost 90 m/s in speed while it passes through the atmosphere (although it’s impact speed is nearly 1/2 m/s slower than it would have been if the earth had no atmosphere). The impactor strikes with over 250 yottaJoules (YJ) of kinetic energy – good agreement with the 500 YJ given by Wikipedia as the estimated energy released in the formation of the Chicxulub crater.
As you can see, most of the kinetic energy converted from gravitational potential energy in a large impactor falling to earth remains kinetic energy until impact. In the WTC1 collapse some of the kinetic energy is used up before impact on various jobs (much of which ends up as thermal energy in the rubble anyway), but large fraction of the 400 GJ of GPE is converted to thermal energy via deformation of the ground and rubble resulting from collisions that occur during the collapse. This is not a very big proportion of the more than 20 TJ of thermal energy that is generated in the collapse of all three buildings (more than 2 grams worth of mass-energy) and couldn’t have been responsible for heating the rubble more than 20 C or so (Although parts of the structural steel would have been heated much more when it was deformed (bent, sheared, and compressed) during the collapse). I understand your desire to merely look at one energy source at a time, since considering them all together destroys your theory, but intellectual honesty compels us to account for every possible significant source of heat before, during, or after the collapse before we assert a theory that additional heat was required.
Slarti said “The only source of energy available energy (unless you want to suggest conversion of matter to energy) is the kinetic energy of the the impacting object.”
I pointed out that the statement was false because it was not the only source of energy available. No need to add extra statements. Just accept your statement as being false, and move one. You don’t get to change the parameters after you receive a response.
“[The better question is how much of it has melted away in the atmosphere. See below.]”
WTF? This is a discussion about the collapse of a building on earth. Go off on your tangents with someone else.
An asteroid/or meteor can hit the earth at 30,000 mph or faster. That’s 13.41 km/sec. And how fast were the PIECES of the WTCs when they hit the earth? How fast are you claiming that the WTC PIECES hit the earth? Do you think these are anywhere similar impacts? (Maybe I should rephrase that question. Of course you do.)
bdaman,
my argument is that even if everything that you say is true, pollution control is good policy. If you are wrong, it may well be necessary policy (with the alternative being severe consequences).
I said “True or false?
The impactor scenario involves a single impactor, and an instantaneous collision. The WTC involves millions to billions of impactors over a duration of seconds.”
Slarti responded with “True, but that doesn’t change the fact that energy is conserved in each collision.
Both scenarios involve one or more collisions and hence are governed by the laws of mechanics. In both scenarios the lion’s share of the kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy by work done in destroying the structure of the objects involved in the event. And in both scenarios all of the work being done conserves energy.”
Are you incapable of admitting the truth? Spare use the “one or more collisions” bullshit. A meteor is a single impact. The WTC collapse involved millions if not billions of pieces hitting the earth at a much slower velocity, and none of those impacts were significant enough to do squat to the earth (in the grand scheme of things).
“And in both scenarios all of the work being done conserves energy.”
I feel like I’m dealing with a child. Conserves means transfers without loss. If none of it was lost, account for all of the mass and all of the energy at every point I ask for. If not, abandon your ridiculous premise.
“12 GJ of energy went into the earth (as seismic energy)”
Now I know what is meant by educated but ignorant. You CANNOT apply the energy of a single event (tectonic shift) to that of millions, if not billions of separate pieces hitting the earth over a period of seconds. I showed you how sound and radiation energy cannot be calculated that way, but you insist on following false logic that has no scientific support to back it up.
I know, you’re going to tell me you “know it”. You don’t know jack shit. And the worst thing is that you don’t have the lab experience to know the difference.
“and a trivial amount went into the atmosphere (as sonic energy).”
How do you survive? I showed you that the sound from one source is not the same as the sound from a million sources; even if they produce the same decibel level where measured.
Where was the decibel level you used read from? 100 ft away? 1000 ft. away? I doesn’t matter. You don’t have enough information to solve the problem.
One last time Slarti.
You’re treating the WTC collapse as if it were a single object. It may have started as a single object, but long before it hit the ground below it became billions of objects. All of which had a separate interaction, all of which performed different work, all of which must be treated as a separate impact, all of which generated a separate sound upon impact.
Do you acknowledge that to be a true statement?
No insertions. No deletions. Just answer the frickin’ question.
“While my taking the universe as my closed system is entirely valid, it is unnecessary to my argument and I don’t care to argue it in the face of your ignorance.”
Did you stomp your feet? That’s what the other kids do.
“both energy and mass are conserved in every single instance of work that occurs during the collapse of WTC1.”
Then go get me some of your “conserved energy”. The universe still exists. Go get it.
“Energy is still conserved in an open system (energy is always conserved) – it is just allowed to flow into and out of the system changing the system’s total energy.”
That has to be the stupidest thing you have ever said. It’s conserved, it’s just that something else has it. WTF? Do you understand what the word “conserved” means? Let me help you. NO
I asked “Based solely upon your premise: How much mass from WTC-1 and 2 was deposited at WTC-4 & WTC-5. Please account for each one individually.”
Slarti’s brilliant answer “Some fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC4 and a different fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC5. The fact that I’m not calculating some quantities explicitly doesn’t effect accuracies of the quantities that I am calculating or estimating explicitly.”
It’s your isolated system genius. As long as you stick with your premise, you don’t get that luxury. Unless your dishonest.
I asked “What was the highest temperature recorded on each floor of those buildings, 2 minutes after the collapse?”
Slartis’s response “No idea – we are trying to determine if there are sufficient sources of heat to account for hot spots at 1300 (I don’t know if this is C or F) five days after 9/11 and steel at or near the heat of fusion six months later.”
Once again. Slarti’s isolated system cannot accurately account for the energy. Can you account for all of the energy at all points in an isolated, or even a closed system? YES
Slarti said “A while back you asked a hypothetical about dropping a penny from a helicopter.”
No I didn’t, Slarti. Bob Esq. did. Here was his question.
“Drop a penny from a helicopter and it’ll break the sound barrier if you’ve got enough altitude; right Slarti?”
In Slarti’s world (which only exists on paper) “the penny accelerates through the thin upper atmosphere until it reaches a maximum speed of 766 m/s at a height of 64 km”
766 m/s for us Americans is over 1700 mph. Everybody better be on the lookout for pennies traveling at nearly two and a half times the speed of sound. Which makes me wonder why a bomb dropped from high altitude doesn’t give a sonic boom as a head’s up?
I’m finished debating with Slarti. His arrogance is astounding.
Somebody should ask him why all raindrops aren’t hot. Maybe then he will figure out that the forces that would heat an object aren’t the only forces acting on the object. Somebody else can try to explain to him that the rate at which something heats or cools is equal to the mass flow rate, times the specific heat transfer coefficient, time the difference in temperature. That’s why skydivers don’t overheat. In fact, it can be quite chilly. You see, the heat from friction is lost to the air which has a low relative temperature and is going by at a very high mass flow rate.
Don’t confuse him with momentum. He’s not ready for that.
[Me] “The only source of energy available energy (unless you want to suggest conversion of matter to energy) is the kinetic energy of the the impacting object.”
[Robert] “I pointed out that the statement was false because it was not the only source of energy available. [It was the only source of energy sufficient to melt or displace 25,000 square kilometers of rock, which is what I was talking about - my calculation showed that the thermal energy from atmospheric friction is 0.005% of the kinetic energy of impact - and most of the thermal energy from atmospheric friction isn't in the impactor - it's escaped as the heat needed to melt particles on the surface of the meteorite and as heat in the atmosphere - the numbers I'm using give a strict upper bound on the amount of thermal energy in the meteor at impact.] No need to add extra statements. [Well, you apparently don't understand the physics yet...] Just accept your statement as being false, and move one. [What do you think was the source of enough energy to melt or displace 25,000 km^2 of rock within moments of impact?] You don’t get to change the parameters after you receive a response. [I'm not, I was always talking about the energy necessary to create a crater over 180 km in diameter.]
[Me] “The better question is how much of it has melted away in the atmosphere. See below.”
[Robert] “WTF? This is a discussion about the collapse of a building on earth. Go off on your tangents with someone else.”
I’m using an example to explain the physics involved in collisions – it is a very good example showing that most of the kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy in collisions. Additionally, I have supported my position with dozens of quotes from multiple sources and by direct calculation of the magnitude of the energies involved. Admit that I am correct about the physics (be it the Chicxulub impactor or the collapse of WTC1), and we can go back to talking about the collapse of a building, but this scenario is not a tangent, it is a similar event (both involve one or more collisions) that is governed by the same branch of physics (mechanics).
[Robert] “An asteroid/or meteor can hit the earth at 30,000 mph or faster. [Actually, the maximum impact speed for an object in the solar system is about 72 km/s - the impact speed I used was calculated assuming the object started 1,000,000 km from the earth and at rest with respect to it - it is very close to escape velocity, the practical minimum for this sort of collision.] That’s 13.41 km/sec. [Yes, it is.] And how fast were the PIECES of the WTCs when they hit the earth? [Somewhere between 65 and 85 m/s according to my model.] How fast are you claiming that the WTC PIECES hit the earth? [Somewhere between 65 and 85 m/s.] Do you think these are anywhere similar impacts? [I think that they are both collisions governed by the laws of mechanics.] (Maybe I should rephrase that question. Of course you do. [As does every competent physicist on the planet.])”
Robert posted:
I said “True or false? The impactor scenario involves a single impactor, and an instantaneous collision. The WTC involves millions to billions of impactors over a duration of seconds.”
Slarti responded with “True, but that doesn’t change the fact that energy is conserved in each collision. Both scenarios involve one or more collisions and hence are governed by the laws of mechanics. In both scenarios the lion’s share of the kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy by work done in destroying the structure of the objects involved in the event. And in both scenarios all of the work being done conserves energy.”
[Robert] “Are you incapable of admitting the truth? [I've been telling you the truth about the physics involved all along. Please point out the untrue statement in my response.] Spare use the “one or more collisions” bullshit.
It is factually correct, so why is it bullshit? I have an important reason for stating it like that – you see I am a mathematician by training (BS, MS, MA, and Ph.D. in mathematics). What does that mean? I tend to make assumptions and then think logically about what follows from those assumptions (a processes called ‘proof’ because it doesn’t have to be defended from people like you). Let me demonstrate:
Assume that the equation KE(before) = KE(after) + TE(ineff) + TE(int fric) + SE + AE holds for all collisions. It logically follows (meaning I can prove it mathematically) that if an event consists of one or more collisions then this equation holds for the event as a whole. This means that I can apply the above equation to the WTC collapse TAKEN AS A SINGLE EVENT (provided it holds for a single collision). Since the equation is valid here, estimating its terms is meaningful, which is why I’ve been doing it. You can disagree that the equation holds (although you’d be disagreeing with the laws of mechanics and every physicist dating back to James Joule) and you can disagree with how I’m making my estimates (I will explain my process for any of them upon request), but you can’t say with any credibility whatsoever that I’m using an unwarranted conclusion – I can prove that my conclusion follows from my assumptions (I’ll even show you the proof, if you like). This is why I say things like ‘one or more collisions’.
I asked “And how fast were the PIECES of the WTCs when they hit the earth?
The answer provided by Slarti “[Somewhere between 65 and 85 m/s according to my model.]”
Why do I even bother? So your telling us that PIECES of the WTC, all reached speeds of at least 65 m/s?
9.8 m/s^2 permitted all the PIECES to reach a minimum speed of 65 m/s or more? Amazing. Simply amazing.
Let’s look at the pieces that started from a height of 210 meters. (about half the height of the WTC)
v = (2gh)^(1/2)=((2)(9.8 m/s^2)(210))^(1/2)= 64 m/s
As you can see, if we completely remove the friction of air (friction would cause it to drop slower), and we completely ignore the speed reduction caused by impacting anything that stands in their way (like the rest of the building below) none of the PIECES of the WTC below about 215 meters could have reached a speed of 65 m/s.
Did the infallible Slarti forget that the WTC came down in PIECES? Top speed of the PIECES that started out at 100 meters above the ground = 44.28 m/s. 50 meters = 31.31 m/s.
As you can plainly see Slarti, your model is a FAILURE.
Tell us the truth Slarti. Didn’t you determine the velocity, not by what is was capable of doing (within the laws of physics), but by the reported time the entire building reportedly took to collapse? What happens when you discover that the lower half of the building (the majority of the mass) have an average velocity of 45 m/s? Now what happens when you factor in that everything above the 77th floor of WTC2 landed in a different place?
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/01/30/meteorite-sets-off-firestorm-of-litigation-in-lorton
Did melting occur? Using the Slarti model, one would think something should have melted.
Robert said:
“Did melting occur? Using the Slarti model, one would think something should have melted.”
Something did melt. You don’t think that the meteor was only 10cm in diameter when it ENTERED the earth’s atmosphere, do you? My point about meteors is that the heat generated by atmospheric friction is insignificant compared to it’s kinetic energy at impact (for big impactors – size matters!). This Meteorite was less than 10 cm in diameter – slightly less that the 10 km impactor that I was modeling. Furthermore, I assumed that all of the heat generated went into melting the impactor – in other words, I assumed that none of the heat was generated in the molecules of the air or transferred via thermal conduction to the air and all of the heat was used to melt off the surface of the meteor (I wanted to find an upper bound for how much mass the impactor lost in the atmosphere), thus my assumption has the impactor at absolute zero a moment before impact (with a diameter of over 9.991 km). A 1.4 kg meteor (assumes the density of rock is 2700 kg/m^3) 10 cm in diameter would have a terminal velocity of approximately 70 m/s – about as fast as the WTC impact. So this impact doesn’t contradict anything I’ve said in any way.
I found a site that calculates the effects of impacts. Not only do the effects agree entirely with what I’ve been saying, but it verifies the calculations that I have done and adds calculations that I didn’t do.
The site is:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/
Let’s see what it has to say…
If you are 50 km away from the impact of an impactor 10 km in diameter made of iron (they use 8000 kg/m^3 for the density of iron, I used 7870 kg/m^3 – I wonder which is the more accurate value?) with a velocity of 11 km/s at an angle of 90 degrees onto sedimentary rock, this is what this website says happens (and what I said happens):
Energy before atmospheric entry is given as 253 YJ versus my value of 252 YJ (accurate within 0.4% of the value I computed) or the equivalent of 60 teratons of TNT.
The impact creates a crater nearly 150 km in diameter.
The major seismic shaking arrives approximately 10 seconds after the impact and the seismic event registers a 9.8 on the Richter scale (equivalent to about 2 ZJ or about 0.0008% of the total kinetic energy).
The air blast arrives in approximately 152 seconds with a peak overpressure of about 75 megaPascals and a sound intensity of 157 dB, (the volume at the source of a sound with about 5 kilowatts of acoustic energy). The maximum wind velocity (a secondary product of the kinetic energy of impact) is almost 7 km/s and multistory steel-framed buildings will suffer extreme frame distortion and incipient collapse. (Although they would probably have been already destroyed by the magnitude 9.8 seismic event that hit 142 seconds earlier…)
Hmmm. This seems to be very consistent with what I’ve been saying. If we check out the numbers that this site gives for the Chicxulub impactor, we find that from 100 km away (inside both the crater opened in the water and the fireball) the sound of the impact would be 156 dB. Kind of makes my estimate of 180 dB for 60 seconds for the WTC1 collapse seem like the ridiculous overestimate that I said it was…
[Robert] “A meteor is a single impact. The WTC collapse involved millions if not billions of pieces hitting the earth at a much slower velocity, and none of those impacts were significant enough to do squat to the earth (in the grand scheme of things). [All of these little impacts obeyed conservation of energy - upon impact (with the ground or the rubble pile) the kinetic energy of each piece of rubble did several different kinds of work - it powered a shockwave through the air converting KE to sonic energy, it powered a shockwave through the ground converting KE to seismic energy, it deformed the rubble converting KE to thermal energy in the rubble, and it deformed the ground converting KE to thermal energy in the ground. The first was measured, the second is negligible and the last 2 are where the rest of the energy went.]”
[Me] “And in both scenarios all of the work being done conserves energy.”
[Robert] “I feel like I’m dealing with a child. [I'd like to see the child that could perform the analysis that I have here.] Conserves means transfers without loss. [Yes, in every instance of work (in the universe) no energy is lost. Energy is transferred and changed into other forms but the total energy involved in the work (powering it or resulting from it) is the same before and after the work is done.] If none of it was lost, account for all of the mass and all of the energy at every point I ask for. [I have accounted for everything - I have not QUANTIFIED everything. That's why I say things like 'a portion of 80-200 GJ of energy was ejected in the pyroclastic flow'. If you can prove that it required more than 200 GJ to eject the pyroclastic flow then you will have falsified my model.] If not, abandon your ridiculous premise. [I will not abandon the laws of physics just because you say so. Sorry.]“
[Me] “12 GJ of energy went into the earth (as seismic energy)”
[Robert] “Now I know what is meant by educated but ignorant. [You got one of those right.] You CANNOT apply the energy of a single event (tectonic shift) [Are you implying that a tectonic shift takes place at a single point?] to that of millions, if not billions of separate pieces hitting the earth over a period of seconds. [The seismic record of the collapse says different. Ask a seismologist if they can tell you how much energy was required to produce an event they measured.] I showed you how sound and radiation energy cannot be calculated that way, but you insist on following false logic that has no scientific support to back it up. [And I suppose you would say that we can't figure out how much light energy is being put out by the sun because it isn't all being generated in one place? I show below how you were wrong about sound.] I know, you’re going to tell me you “know it”. [Yes, I know how to calculate sound power level from volume and vice versa. And what I said was that I was not quoting things that I had learned from Wikipedia, I was quoting Wikipedia to support things I already knew - and I have given you alternate sources to back up what I say, yet you say that everything I cite is wrong (or I'm being misleading somehow) without ever giving me a source that impeaches my assertions.] You don’t know jack shit. [If anyone else is still reading this, they can be the judge of who has made the better case for their interpretation of physics.] And the worst thing is that you don’t have the lab experience to know the difference. [Actually, I spent two years doing research (on high-Tc superconductors) in an actual physics lab and have spent the last five years as part of a biological lab that studies cancer.]”
[Me] “and a trivial amount went into the atmosphere (as sonic energy).”
[Robert] “How do you survive? [I get by just fine, thanks.] I showed you that the sound from one source is not the same as the sound from a million sources; even if they produce the same decibel level where measured. [Two sounds that produce the same decibel level at the same distance are generating the same amount of sonic power - that's what the decibel scale measures. You didn't show me anything except your own ignorance - I address your post where you 'showed me' below.]”
[Robert] “Where was the decibel level you used read from? [I'm assuming a power level of 180 dB (which is a massive overestimate, by the way) AT THE SOURCE - if you are talking about the amount of acoustic energy being generated, then you are talking about the dB level at the source] 100 ft away? 1000 ft. away? I doesn’t matter. [From the decibel level at a known distance, you can calculate the decibel level at the source.] You don’t have enough information to solve the problem. [I don't know what the actual decibel level was (to the best of my knowledge no one measured it), which is why I made a ridiculous overestimate (that the sound was as loud as a rocket engine and lasted for 60 seconds).]
This is a post of yours from a bit back where you give your thoughts about the site I linked to add sounds:
[Robert] “I used the speaker calculation, and the radiation measurements to demonstrate this. Thirty 20 db sources will only produce 34.7 db. Try it here www[dot]sengpielaudio[dot]com/calculator-spl30.htm
As you add more and more sources, the increased decibel level increases by a smaller and smaller factor. [Yes, and you can calculate it with the formula I give below.] Slarti says the 100 Watts is equal to 140 db. Well, ten 130 db sources will only produce 139.97 db. Twenty 130 db sources will only produce 142.97 db. And, thirty 130 db sources will only produce 144.7 db. Yet, each one of the sources would be about 100 watts. [10 Watts, actually.] What would 2 million 130 db sources produce? (I don’t have the calculation handy, but I can tell you it would be about 2 billion watts [You do some interesting math here.], according to Slarti’s numbers, as that doesn’t even take into account the efficiency of the amplifier to drive the speaker. What happens when you multiple Slarti’s sound energy calculation by 2 million?”
The sound power level of a signal with sound power W is: Lw = 10 log (W/W0) dB, where the log is base 10 and W0 is the reference sound level of 10^(-12) Watts. A 20 dB sound requires 10^(-10) Watts – if you plug 3.0 x 10^(-9) Watts into the above formula, you get 34.7712 dB. Now, just what did I say that was incorrect? I said 100 Watts is equal to 140 dB and you ‘only’ got 139.97 dB by adding 10 10 Watt sounds. Hmmm. So your saying I’m wrong because the website’s answer differs from mine by 0.021%? Which is a more reasonable explanation – I’m incorrect about the relationship between the power in a sound and the volume of a sound, but my incorrect method nearly got me within 0.02% of the correct answer, or the method I’m suggesting is correct and the numerical accuracy of calculations done in html is not quite the same as that of a scientific computing language? For your 30 ten-watt sources, my calculation gives 144.7712 dB (notice a pattern here?) which sounds awfully similar to your 144.7 dB. 2 million ten Watt sources would be 20 million Watts by most people’s math and would generate a 193 dB sound*. I’ve been careful in my discussion of sound to refer to the sonic power generated, not the electrical power needed to generate that sonic power using a speaker which would be slightly higher (due to inefficiencies in the speaker, not the amplifier – which also has inefficiencies). When you double the power you increase the dB level by 10 log_10 (2) or about 3 db and when you increase the power by a factor of ten you increase the dB level by 10 – so a 2,000,000-fold increase in power represents a 63 dB increase in volume.
*When sound gets too powerful the acoustic waves get ‘clipped’ because the atmospheric pressure cannot go below zero.
Slarti:
I think you are dealing with invincible ignorance at this point. Everything that you have posted leads to the conclusion that most people already know.
You are never going to convince him otherwise. I dont know how you have done it. Beating your head against a brick wall, it must be pretty sore.
I bet you have an idea now of how Darwin and others felt. This was amazing to watch. I have never seen someone, faced with a preponderance of evidence contrary to their opinion, continue to say it aint so.
[Robert] “One last time Slarti. You’re treating the WTC collapse as if it were a single object. [No, I'm treating it as an event made up of innumerable collisions, all of which conserve energy.] It may have started as a single object, but long before it hit the ground below it became billions of objects. [Yes, I know.] All of which had a separate interaction, all of which performed different work, all of which must be treated as a separate impact, [My reasoning depends on the fact that energy is conserved in every instance of work, nothing more - do you disagree?] all of which generated a separate sound upon impact. [Your eardrum measures sound pressure level vs. time - the only reason you can tell where a sound is coming from or distinguish different sounds is because you have two ears. As I have said before, as heard from a distance great enough that it sounds like a point source, the same acoustic energy will produce the same sound level be it from one source or 2,000,000.] Do you acknowledge that to be a true statement? [On the whole, no.] No insertions. [Sorry.] No deletions. [For the most part, I haven't deleted any of your words in my responses - in the rare instances where I have, I have acknowledged it with an ellipsis.] Just answer the frickin’ question. [I have.]”
[Me] “While my taking the universe as my closed system is entirely valid, it is unnecessary to my argument and I don’t care to argue it in the face of your ignorance.”
[Robert] “Did you stomp your feet? That’s what the other kids do.”
No, I realized that I could make my point about energy conservation better on a small scale than a large scale. Personally, switching to a better tactic to prove the same point doesn’t seem childish to me…
[Me] “both energy and mass are conserved in every single instance of work that occurs during the collapse of WTC1.”
[Robert] “Then go get me some of your “conserved energy”. [I don't need to know where the energy went to know that it was conserved - the law of conservation of energy tells me that it was.] The universe still exists. Go get it.”
My interest in where the energy went ends six months or so after 9/11. My model of where the energy went is only concerned with the collapse (after the collapse the only work this energy did was in seeking thermal equilibrium). The energy still exists in the universe, but where it is now is irrelevant to our discussion and immaterial to my model.
[Me] “Energy is still conserved in an open system (energy is always conserved) – it is just allowed to flow into and out of the system changing the system’s total energy.”
[Robert] “That has to be the stupidest thing you have ever said. It’s conserved, it’s just that something else has it. [Yes, the energy has been conserved (it still exists), it just exists outside of the system.] WTF? Do you understand what the word “conserved” means? [A lot better than you apparently.] Let me help you. NO [How do you think that physicists use energy conservation laws?]
Slarti:
this guy is taking you all over the track and just screwing with you. He is trying to get you to make a mistake on your math so he can say “gotcha”. The math is a side track for him because he knows you can do it and will do it.
Quit playing his little game, he may be smart but he isnt as smart as he thinks and he is doing this because you have called him on it. It is like those bad singers on American Idol, Simon Cowel tells them they suck and they cannot believe it because their momma told them they were so good. Well I imagine he has been told how smart he is by his momma and others but never really had to put up, you come along and bingo bango he cant believe there is someone smarter than he is. Simon cuts those people off, you should to.
Byron,
For an engineer you’ve done a much better job of playing cheerleader than engineer. Is this discussion beyond your capabilities? Is your intent to play cheerleader in order to avoid correction?
Slarti,
It works much better if you copy my statement and then provide response. Inserting words to my statement, and then providing response make it difficult to differentiate what you insert from what I have stated. The inclusion of mathematical symbols doesn’t make it any easier.
Slarti says the 100 Watts is equal to 140 db. I’m not making that up. That really was Slarti’s statement. Where did it come from?
Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_power_level
True of False Slarti.
I’m trying to slow this down, so that it will be better understood.
Byron said:
“I think you are dealing with invincible ignorance at this point. [Possibly, I'm certainly putting that theory to a pretty strong test and it hasn't shown any signs of cracking.] Everything that you have posted leads to the conclusion that most people already know. [Yes, but my understanding of the physics involved is much deeper and I've gone from pretty sure to darn near certain that the WTC was destroyed by airplanes flying into the buildings.] You are never going to convince him otherwise. [I concede that Ockham's razor favors this conclusion.] I dont know how you have done it. [Don't think that I haven't gotten anything out of it. I've learned more about a branch of physics that I love (classical mechanics), learned more about what I'm capable of doing with my skills in analysis and modeling (which is my career), and I've learned a little bit about a bunch of random subjects as well (controlled demolition, structural engineering, orbital mechanics, atmospheric drag, etc.), also I got to play that controlled demolition web game that Robert posted a link to. Plus, doing all of these calculations were fun (I know, I'm a very sick puppy.] Beating your head against a brick wall, it must be pretty sore. [I admit it hurts some, but it's not as sore as you might think.] I bet you have an idea now of how Darwin and others felt. [Not really, I can do this because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants - they were the giants.] This was amazing to watch. [Thanks. I'm glad you are enjoying the show (and hope Buddha still is as well).] I have never seen someone, faced with a preponderance of evidence contrary to their opinion, continue to say it aint so. [I find it fascinating.] this guy is taking you all over the track and just screwing with you. [Well, he's trying anyway...] He is trying to get you to make a mistake on your math so he can say “gotcha”. [I'm confident that I will find any errors that I make and report them long before he could find them (I actually don't think that he is likely to find any errors that I might have made
).] The math is a side track for him because he knows you can do it and will do it. [I think the thing that you're missing is that I like doing the math.] Quit playing his little game, he may be smart but he isnt as smart as he thinks and he is doing this because you have called him on it. [Think of this as a life lesson I'm teaching him.] It is like those bad singers on American Idol, Simon Cowel tells them they suck and they cannot believe it because their momma told them they were so good. [So I'm Simon Cowel in this analogy...] Well I imagine he has been told how smart he is by his momma and others but never really had to put up, you come along and bingo bango he cant believe there is someone smarter than he is. [It's a tough thing to learn that there's always someone smarter than you.] Simon cuts those people off, you should to.”
Unfortunately, it’s not within my power to cut Robert off, but I’m just about done spending significant time on this fight (I’ll still answer Robert’s posts, I’m just going to stop doing new research and calculations). I’m in endgame with Robert now and at this point, I’m not going to let any of his incorrect statements go unanswered.
Robert said:
“Byron,
For an engineer you’ve done a much better job of playing cheerleader than engineer. Is this discussion beyond your capabilities? Is your intent to play cheerleader in order to avoid correction?”
I would assume that he agrees with me and doesn’t think that I need any help. And, in any case, he would be in wouldn’t be in any danger of correction if he didn’t violate the laws of physics.
Robert said:
“Slarti,
It works much better if you copy my statement and then provide response. Inserting words to my statement, and then providing response make it difficult to differentiate what you insert from what I have stated. The inclusion of mathematical symbols doesn’t make it any easier.”
Sorry, apart from a couple of posts I’ve already been working on, I’ll switch to this style.
[Robert] “Slarti says the 100 Watts is equal to 140 db. I’m not making that up. That really was Slarti’s statement. Where did it come from? Here en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Sound_power_level True of False Slarti.
100 Watts = 140 dB comes from the equation
Volume = 10 log_10(W/W0) decibels
Where W is the power in Watts and W0 = 10^(-12) Watts. Both the equation and the the equivalence can be found on the Wikipedia page you linked.
[Robert] “I’m trying to slow this down, so that it will be better understood.”
Take your time and consider everything I’ve said carefully and I’m sure you’ll understand eventually.
Sorry Slarti, My fault. I did a poor job of presenting the question.
You claim is that a jet engine produces a sound level of 140 decibels.
Is that correct?
Is that sound level measured at the source?
Robert,
The wiki page says that 180 dB (at the source) is the equivalent of a rocket engine (not a jet engine). A 180 dB sound (at the source) contains one megaWatt of acoustic energy.
December 17th at 1:20 AM
Slarti said “Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 7th at 10:04 PM
Slarti said “I don’t really care about where this energy went (it was mostly dissipated as heat in the pyroclastic flow) – just that it left the system and so did not end up as heat in the rubble pile.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 9th at 11:47 PM
Slarti said “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 28th at 8:06 AM
SLarti said “All of this energy either 1) left the system; or 2) became thermal energy in the rubble.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
Another on January 28th at 8:06 AM
Slarti said “Energy left the system as acoustic energy, seismic energy, kinetic and thermal energy in the pyroclastic flow and in debris thrown from the collapse (like the debris which fatally wounded WTC7).”
In an isolated system neither energy or mass can leave the system. Which leads me to this question. Do we have a real isolated system inside of a pretend isolated system, or do we have a pretend isolated system inside a real isolated system. Is it possible to have a pretend isolated system inside of a real isolated system?
PLEASE ADDRESS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IN A SEPARATE POST. PLEASE AVOID ANY SALESMANSHIP.
Slarti said “My interest in where the energy went ends six months or so after 9/11.”
OK. Please account for all the mass and energy two days after the collapse. The dust in someone’s pocket. It’s part of the energy equation. In a real isolated system accurately accounting for EVERYTHING is a piece of cake. Why? because it can’t go anywhere.
What we’re looking at here is a forensic analysis of the collapse. With what we know about the collapse, did the damage caused by the plane hitting the building and the subsequent fires cause enough structural damage to permit a collapse within the time observed, and was there enough heat generated to account for the observed pools of molten metal to exist 6 months later.
The wiki page says that 180 dB (at the source) is the equivalent of a rocket engine (not a jet engine). A 180 dB sound (at the source) contains one megaWatt of acoustic energy.
What is the duration of that sound?
[Me] “The wiki page says that 180 dB (at the source) is the equivalent of a rocket engine (not a jet engine). A 180 dB sound (at the source) contains one megaWatt of acoustic energy.”
[Robert] “What is the duration of that sound?”
The power of the sound is 1 megaWatt, I would think that someone in the nuclear power industry would understand that power = energy/time. In my estimate of the sound of collapse, I used a duration of 60 seconds.
Slarti: “Bob, on the other hand, has done nothing more than to cite an equation out of context (the equation you’re so fond of referring to is about transfer of thermal energy from one object to another – it says nothing about how other forms of energy are converted into thermal energy) and repeatedly say that I was wrong, while offering no understanding of what the ‘correct’ interpretation was.”
I’ve been a tad busy of late and still am so I’ll make this quick. It seems that every time I pose a direct question to you, you delve deeper into theory and deeper into hypotheticals. Argument by verbosity is horseshit.
Why don’t we ask the buddha for a ruling on this?
Spater.
“Why don’t we ask the buddha for a ruling on this?”
I have no objection. I hate to put the burden on him.
Slarti,
I’ll get back to you tomorrow on decibel levels and how they are being related to power. I need to take a break tonight.
Bob said:
“I’ve been a tad busy of late and still am so I’ll make this quick. It seems that every time I pose a direct question to you, you delve deeper into theory and deeper into hypotheticals. Argument by verbosity is horseshit. Why don’t we ask the buddha for a ruling on this?”
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I care more about you and Robert’s misunderstanding of the physics involved than your misuse of Ockham’s razor. If you would have admitted that I am correct on the mechanics of the collapse, I would have addressed my assertion about Ockham’s razor sooner, but I’m not going to let you say that I’m full of shit for correct interpretations of physics without responding. I’ll stand by my interpretation of the physics. And for you and Robert to question every principle of physics and source I use and then criticize my verbosity is horseshit. Buddha (and Byron) are free to comment at any time, but I assume that Buddha hasn’t commented for a while because he’s not as interested in this physics discussion.
Robert:
Slarti doesn’t need my cheer leading. I think the buildings came down because a plane(s) hit them. the decibel level has nothing to do with anything other than when a building implodes there is noise. steel under severe stress makes a considerable amount of noise when it is finally fractured.
slartis math appears to be sound and anyway physics is not my speciality, I am a forces and stress guy. I do F=ma and p/a in all there many permutations. simply put F=ma and p/a pretty much cover what happened. all this side track about sound energy and earth quakes and how many thermites can dance on the head of a pin are a ridiculous distraction.
the simple fact is that when steel gets hot it looses strength. it has been known for years and is not rocket science. it is pretty much all you need to know to figure this out.
or to put it simply – fire hot, heat steel, increase stress due to thermal expansion, column fractures, make big noise, down come building. steel does not need to melt, it just needs to increase temperature by a few hundred degrees. that is the actual issue, not heat of fusion or decibel level or seismic activity or anything that you have been discussing. it is that simple, so I gave up posting a long while back.
And by the way bullets heat a gun barrel from friction not powder ignition, why do you think you see the barrel markings?
the columns are hollow built up members and my guess is that they would amplify sound upon fracture.
but good luck playing your game, slarti has stuck it to you big time over and over. but I will say you keep trying and that is admirable. at some point you should just admit defeat and stay down, the sport is out of this fight.
Robert posted:
December 17th at 1:20 AM
Slarti said “Some of this energy left the system via particles in the pyroclastic flow.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 7th at 10:04 PM
Slarti said “I don’t really care about where this energy went (it was mostly dissipated as heat in the pyroclastic flow) – just that it left the system and so did not end up as heat in the rubble pile.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 9th at 11:47 PM
Slarti said “I have accounted for the entire trajectory of the energy that was stored as GPE in the WTC including including the intermediate and final forms of the energy as well as the energy that left the system.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
January 28th at 8:06 AM
SLarti said “All of this energy either 1) left the system; or 2) became thermal energy in the rubble.”
Left the system (the system is the universe. Is it not?)
Another on January 28th at 8:06 AM
Slarti said “Energy left the system as acoustic energy, seismic energy, kinetic and thermal energy in the pyroclastic flow and in debris thrown from the collapse (like the debris which fatally wounded WTC7).”
In the context of these statements, ‘left the system’ means that it did not end up in the pile of rubble. I have made it clear that although taking the universe as my system is completely legitimate (backed up by a quote you truncated, I might add – who’s the one who’s being honest intellectually?), it is unnecessary to my argument. You have already wasted an enormous amount of time questioning the basic physics of sound in regard to an amount of energy that in my ridiculous overestimate was only 0.015% of the total, so I’ll just end this by saying that I am using conservation of energy in a totally appropriate way and you have provided absolutely nothing which calls that into question.
[Robert] “In an isolated system neither energy or mass can leave the system. Which leads me to this question. Do we have a real isolated system inside of a pretend isolated system, or do we have a pretend isolated system inside a real isolated system. Is it possible to have a pretend isolated system inside of a real isolated system?”
We have an event consisting of a large number of collisions all of which conserve energy.
[Robert] “PLEASE ADDRESS THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH IN A SEPARATE POST. PLEASE AVOID ANY SALESMANSHIP.”
Would you like me to answer without using the letter ‘e’ as well?
[Me] “My interest in where the energy went ends six months or so after 9/11.”
[Robert] “OK. Please account for all the mass and energy two days after the collapse. The dust in someone’s pocket. It’s part of the energy equation. In a real isolated system accurately accounting for EVERYTHING is a piece of cake. Why? because it can’t go anywhere.”
Do you even realize that you just said that it is a piece of cake to accurately account for all of the mass and energy in the universe? That’s a big twinkie.
[Robert] “What we’re looking at here is a forensic analysis of the collapse. With what we know about the collapse, did the damage caused by the plane hitting the building and the subsequent fires cause enough structural damage to permit a collapse within the time observed, and was there enough heat generated to account for the observed pools of molten metal to exist 6 months later.”
I’ve been specifically looking at the question of whether or not ‘natural’ sources of heat are sufficient to account for observations – or that’s what I was doing before you sidetracked the discussion with your ignorance of physics.
Robert,
I apologize for this post using embedded comments, I was working on it before you made your request.
Robert posted:
] Unless your dishonest. [I've been a lot of things in this discussion - arrogant, snide, dismissive... but I haven't been dishonest.] I asked “What was the highest temperature recorded on each floor of those buildings, 2 minutes after the collapse?” Slartis’s response “No idea – we are trying to determine if there are sufficient sources of heat to account for hot spots at 1300 (I don’t know if this is C or F) five days after 9/11 and steel at or near the heat of fusion six months later.” Once again. Slarti’s isolated system cannot accurately account for the energy. [Once again, I'm not calling my system isolated, I'm just assuming that energy is conserved in each instance of work. I have accurately accounted for all of the energy, I just haven't quantified all of it.] Can you account for all of the energy at all points in an isolated, or even a closed system? YES [So you can account for (and quantify) all of the energy in the universe? That's pretty impressive.]”
I asked “Based solely upon your premise: How much mass from WTC-1 and 2 was deposited at WTC-4 & WTC-5. Please account for each one individually.” Slarti’s brilliant answer “Some fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC4 and a different fraction of the total mass of the buildings was deposited in WTC5. The fact that I’m not calculating some quantities explicitly doesn’t effect accuracies of the quantities that I am calculating or estimating explicitly.” It’s your isolated system genius. [So you're saying that if I don't know the value of everything, I don't know the value of anything? By this logic the human race as a whole knows nothing.] As long as you stick with your premise, you don’t get that luxury. [Everyone has the 'luxury' of not knowing everything. Some people have more of it than others
[Me] “A while back you asked a hypothetical about dropping a penny from a helicopter.”
[Robert] “No I didn’t, Slarti. Bob Esq. did. [Sorry, most of the physics posts are from you. My bad.] Here was his question. “Drop a penny from a helicopter and it’ll break the sound barrier if you’ve got enough altitude; right Slarti?” ['enough altitude' is higher than a helicopter could fly and you'd have to drop it where the atmosphere is extremely thin because terminal velocity is lower than the speed of sound at one atmosphere, but if it didn't melt first, yes.] In Slarti’s world (which only exists on paper) “the penny accelerates through the thin upper atmosphere until it reaches a maximum speed of 766 m/s at a height of 64 km” [You don't think an object dropped from 100 km above the surface of the earth accelerates to this speed? Do you understand acceleration due to gravity? Do you think that the atmosphere is dense enough at an altitude of 64 km to slow it down?] 766 m/s for us Americans is over 1700 mph. [Scientists generally like to work in the metric system, even American ones like me.] Everybody better be on the lookout for pennies traveling at nearly two and a half times the speed of sound. [Yes, if there were an epidemic of pennies being dropped from 100 km up and they were hanging out at an altitude of 50-60km. As I said, the penny would melt on re-entry.] Which makes me wonder why a bomb dropped from high altitude doesn’t give a sonic boom as a head’s up? [If it were dropped from 13 km up and had a coefficient of drag of nearly zero it would.] I’m finished debating with Slarti. [Would that this were true.] His arrogance is astounding.”
You can read the arrogance you’re perceiving in one of two different ways: If you are right and I am wrong, then I’ve been an arrogant asshole trying to foist his ignorance about physics and naivety about the 9/11 conspiracy off on everyone else; If, on the other hand, I am right and you are wrong, then I’ve been an patient but increasingly frustrated scientist repeatedly trying to explain some basic physics to a [you can make up your own phrase to put here]. Consider the possibility that I’m right – that I’ve neither made up nor misrepresented the quotations I’ve given from websites and books and the results of calculations that I’ve performed and that every case where you think that I am wrong on the physics is a result of you not understanding what I’m saying or you not understanding the physics. I assure you that this is the situation here.
[Robert] “Somebody should ask him why all raindrops aren’t hot. [Do they fall from 100 km up and make it to the ground?] Maybe then he will figure out that the forces that would heat an object aren’t the only forces acting on the object. [The forces acting on a falling body are gravity and air resistance - I'm neglecting wind, but that's about it as far as significant forces go (I'm not going to worry about forces like light pressure).] Somebody else can try to explain to him that the rate at which something heats or cools is equal to the mass flow rate, times the specific heat transfer coefficient, time the difference in temperature. [This is the rate that objects heat or cool due to the thermal equilibration of objects in thermal contact with each other] That’s why skydivers don’t overheat. [Try skydiving from 100 km and see what happens - be sure to wear an asbestos suit!] In fact, it can be quite chilly. You see, the heat from friction is lost to the air which has a low relative temperature and is going by at a very high mass flow rate. [Which doesn't change the fact that kinetic energy is being converted to heat.]”
Don’t confuse him with momentum. He’s not ready for that.
I’m not the one who doesn’t understand physics. You need to understand momentum to understand the mechanics of collision – can you tell me why it’s significant that the origin of the center of momentum frame of reference for this event is located 500 picometers from the center of the earth?
Robert,
Once again, I apologize for the embedded comments.
[Robert] “I asked “And how fast were the PIECES of the WTCs when they hit the earth? The answer provided by Slarti “[Somewhere between 65 and 85 m/s according to my model.]” Why do I even bother? So your telling us that PIECES of the WTC, all reached speeds of at least 65 m/s? 9.8 m/s^2 permitted all the PIECES to reach a minimum speed of 65 m/s or more? Amazing. Simply amazing. Let’s look at the pieces that started from a height of 210 meters. (about half the height of the WTC)
v = (2gh)^(1/2)=((2)(9.8 m/s^2)(210))^(1/2)= 64 m/s
As you can see, if we completely remove the friction of air (friction would cause it to drop slower), and we completely ignore the speed reduction caused by impacting anything that stands in their way (like the rest of the building below) none of the PIECES of the WTC below about 215 meters could have reached a speed of 65 m/s. Did the infallible Slarti forget that the WTC came down in PIECES? Top speed of the PIECES that started out at 100 meters above the ground = 44.28 m/s. 50 meters = 31.31 m/s. ”
This is why it is important to carefully specify your assumptions. In your analysis, you have assumed that the pieces of the WTC were being acted on by gravity and nothing else, an assumption which is false. Pieces of the WTC did not fall to the ground at free fall speed – they were accelerated by a mass of debris moving at a speed of roughly 65 to 85 m/s when it reached street level. Yes, I’m making a simplifying assumption when I say the the impact speed was between 65 and 85 m/s, but it is a reasonable and justified assumption since the ‘average’* speed of the collapse was between 65-85 m/s.
*I can define (and have above
) what I mean when I say the speed I’ve computed is the ‘average’ speed.
[Robert] “As you can plainly see Slarti, your model is a FAILURE. [No, it is exactly what I have represented it to be: a ballpark analysis of what happened to the 400 GJ of GPE in WTC1. I have considered all of the significant forms of energy which result from the GPE and roughly quantified those that I could.] Tell us the truth Slarti. Didn’t you determine the velocity, not by what is was capable of doing (within the laws of physics), but by the reported time the entire building reportedly took to collapse? [Yes, I calculated the velocity based on what was observed to have happened, not by theoretical means - the building took 10-13s to collapse, this is not in dispute. We have to assume that the building obeyed the laws of physics on 9/11] What happens when you discover that the lower half of the building (the majority of the mass) have an average velocity of 45 m/s? [It didn't, it was accelerated very quickly by the mass of falling debris above it.] Now what happens when you factor in that everything above the 77th floor of WTC2 landed in a different place? [And the kinetic energy that it was carrying became mostly thermal energy in the rubble (of everything above the 77th floor) and the ground it landed on.]“
An it please the court, I would like to admit the following into evidence:
www(dot)911myths(dot)com/WTCREPORT.pdf
Bob and Robert,
Here is just a taste of how completely screwed you are that I found this study:
“This is an important result because it shows that for a series of inelastic collisions, which we believe is a good first approximation to the collapse of the WTC towers, a significant fraction of the kinetic energy generated during the collapse is lost as heat. To fully illustrate this point consider the following example: [...] Thus, in the case of one floor collapsing onto the floor below, 50 % of the kinetic energy is dissipated as heat!”
If you take a look at this report you will see some reasonable estimates of the energy required to collapse a floor (and they’re perfectly consistent with my theory – Robert’s 14 GJ estimate, not so much) and a lot of other good science as well. Everything I’ve read of it so far is consistent with what I’ve been saying and goes a whole lot farther. If you want to prove your case, you’d better get cracking on debunking this paper. It has estimates for the time of collapse, energy to collapse floors, energy to crush concrete, the energy dissipated in the aircraft impacts (3 GJ were dissipated and it requires 2.5 GJ to crush the airplane and 0.6 GJ to collapse the floor). Everything in it shares my interpretation of the physics involved (not difficult since it is the correct interpretation of the physics) and is consistent with my analysis. The site where I found this paper has six more reports by the same author (Dr. Frank Greening) and in short they are devastating to your arguments.
Bob,
I found a post of yours from the beginning of this debate and thought that it would be fitting to respond to it here at the end of the debate. And we are coming to the end of the debate – You can consider this my summation.
Your post had six points which I will consider in reverse order:
[Bob] “Finally, unlike the conspiracy nuts that happen to have doubts similar to mine, I don’t get a cheap pornographic thrill from ‘blaming the govmint.’ I simply have a low threshold tolerance for bullshit.”
For someone with a low tolerance for bullshit you certainly spew a lot of it.
[Bob] “Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.”
This is from www(dot)debunking911(dot)com/firsttime.htm
“There were a lot of firsts for the WTC. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been hit with a plane traveling 500 miles an hour and had its fire proofing removed from its trusses. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever had its steel columns which hold lateral load sheared off by a 767. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been a building which had its vertical load bearing columns in its core removed by an airliner. For Building 7, in all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been left for 6-7 hours with its bottom floors on fire with structural damage from another building collapse. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been without some fire fighters fighting the fires.”
Also 10 floors of a Spanish hotel collapsed as the result of fire and the entire building had to be torn down.
Since you like to object that I can’t explain it, let’s focus on WTC7 for a minute. The ‘hot’ debris that ripped a hole 18 stories tall in WTC7 ignited fires as it passed through the building (since it was very hot as a result of the thermal energy generated in ripping the debris loose from the structure of WTC1 and flinging it over 300 m away). This also severed the lines connecting the tanks of diesel fuel under WTC7 to the emergency generators they were supposed to fuel. When these generators attempted to cut in, 12,000 gallons of fuel was pumped into the flaming building and burned resulting in 1.5 TJ of heat IN ADDITION to the heat from the combustion of other materials. Some of this would have most likely pooled around the second of three unusual trusses necessitated by the 3-story ConEd substation that WTC7 was built on top of. The fact that one of these trusses failed after six hours of fires burning unchecked and the visible bowing of the side of the building which foreshadowed the building’s collapse to those on the scene is hardly surprising. And if the biggest source of initial thermal energy in the rubble was pre-collapse fire, then the rubble of WTC7 would clearly be expected to have the highest initial temperature of the three buildings. Add to that that the fact that WTC7 collapsed from the bottom up – ensuring that it would collapse into its own footprint much more than WTC1 or WTC2 keeping the heat more concentrated, and it would be pretty fishy if the rubble of WTC1 or WTC2 were hotter than the rubble of WTC 7.
Bob said:
“Fourth, fires burn up, building fall down. [Don't you understand that the heat from a fire radiates in ALL directions? If material below the fire is heated to its combustion point, it will ignite. In addition, if a portion of a floor collapses, the fire will fall to the floor below.] How hot is a diffuse jet flame? If you poured jet fuel onto concrete and lit it with a match; what happens and why? [It wasn't poured onto concrete, it was poured onto carpeting and drywall and office furniture.] Where is the steel losing its strength [Steel looses structural strength when heated and things that are subjected to fire get heated, especially if they've lost their fire-resistant insulation.] and how the hell does that affect the rest of the building below? [When the structural steel was heated past its yield strength, a progressive collapse was initiated causing the 23 kiloton top of the building to collapse. The force of this collapse was sufficient to collapse the 94th floor and the force only got bigger as the collapse continued.] Was it built upside down? [No, the collapse steadily gained energy - much faster than the strength of the building increased as it proceeded downward.] Do you see buildings as nothing more than fancy forms of stacked boxes of equal strength? [No.] Do tree trunks on your planet go from small diameter to larger diameter as you travel upwards on the tree?” [No... all the trees are red. No one ever dies there. No one has a head.]
Bob said:
“Third, you may have noticed that the towers had two support systems; one internal, i.e. the 47 steel columns, and the exo-skeletal support forming the perimeter of the building itself. Note that when the architects discussed the 707 impact design, they made the analogy of poking a hole in a metal screen; the hole exists, but the screen remains in tact. [Unfortunately, what actually happened on 9/11 was like slashing through a large section of the screen, not poking a hole in it. The wings of the plane created a horizontal tear in the external support structure that was a large fraction of the width of the building. This caused a portion of the 23 kiloton weight of the top 15 floors of the building to 'hang' from the 5-story roof truss.] Then there are those interior columns, like rail road spikes, that weren’t exactly designed to just collapse on themselves now were they? [Any steel beam will fail if it is subjected to enough force and heating lowers its yield strength.] Accordingly, when you say: “(c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse” you’re adopting the pancake theory assumption that the building was a hollow box. (See the FEMA report)” [I misspoke when I referred to the building 'pancaking', I should have said that the building underwent progressive failure followed by gravitational collapse.]
From the NY Times:
“Last spring, the standards institute found the first photographic evidence on the east face of the south tower that a single floor — with its lightweight support system, called a truss — had sagged in the minutes before it started collapsing. Now, detailed analysis of photos and videos has revealed at least three more sagging floors on that face, said William Pitts, a researcher at the institute’s Building and Fire Research Laboratory.
In addition, Dr. Pitts said, sudden expansions of the fires across whole floors in each tower shortly before they fell suggested internal collapses — burning floors above suddenly giving way and spreading the blaze below.”
How do you explain this if the buildings were brought down with explosives?
Bob said:
“Second, Leslie Robertson, et.al. designed the Towers to withstand the impact of a 707 traveling heavy at full speed; have you done the math to compare the impact force between the 707 and the planes that hit? If you did, you would have seen that the difference was negligible.”
Yes, and just like the designers of the Titanic, they failed.
Finally, Bob’s first point was:
“Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion. Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…”
No, it doesn’t. A sustained source of heat was necessary. We must first consider what sustained sources of heat could have been present in the rubble – Ockham’s razor will then tell us which of these to shave away. Let’s take a look at some candidates, shall we?
1) Fires in the rubble – eyewitnesses reported fires in the rubble.
2) 3Fe + 4H2O(g) -> Fe3O4 + 4H2(g) + (heat) which leads to 2H2(g) + O2(g) -> H2O(g) + (heat) – conditions existed that made this reaction possible at worst and nearly certain at best (and did you notice that we get our steam back – I wonder what could be done with that?). And just FYI – the basements of the WTC were flooded after 9/11 giving a source of water besides the firehoses.
3) Iron burns – did you know that iron burns? I didn’t until recently – yes, I knew that iron oxidized and that that was an exothermic reaction, but if iron gets hot enough, this reaction can actually generate enough heat to sustain the reaction until the iron is all consumed – not only can this occur below the melting point of iron, but some of the steel beams in the WTC debris show signs of this sort of burning. Hmmm…
4) Thermic materials – Assuming that thermate isn’t the most powerful explosive known to man (The most powerful non-nuclear explosive listed in Wikipedia is 2.7 times more powerful than TNT), then something like 100 tons of it (if it were as powerful as TNT) planted throughout the building covertly would only add about the same amount of thermal energy as the GPE of the building (which you’ve been arguing for weeks wasn’t enough). In order for this to be a continuing source of heat, it would have to be set off a bit at a time for six months and there would probably have to be a lot more than 100 tons of the stuff for it to be a necessary heat source for molten steel.
5) ‘Natural’ thermite – Considering there was molten aluminum, molten iron and sulfur available in the collapse and rubble along with quite a bit of free energy to ‘stir the pot’ it may be possible that thermite was created in the collapse and ignited in the rubble
6) Other exothermic reactions – I’ve focused on one particular reaction because it seems to be a very likely source of a large amount of heat on a continuing basis, but it is far from the only possible exothermic reaction that could have been taking place in the rubble. For instance, I wonder if any reactions involving aluminum could have added heat weakening the structure before (and possibly after) the collapse?
So what would William of Ockham say that we could shave away?
1) People actually saw this, so it’s got to stay.
2) We can’t get rid of this unless we can show that the reaction wasn’t possible under the conditions present in the rubble
3) Since there is evidence of this it can’t be considered multiplying entities beyond necessity.
4) Well, there isn’t really a good theory to explain how this could be responsible for both cutting the structural support of the building AND be a continuing source of heat in the rubble and it’s use to collapse the building doesn’t explain the bowing seen right before the collapse and there’s no evidence of the use of cutter charges like what is seen in building implosions and it’s unclear how it would have been covertly placed in the building and precision detonated and thermate is a hypothetical form of thermite that explodes rather than burns* and there isn’t really any good way to make thermite cut through vertical columns and no real explanation of why the building would have been prepared and destroyed with thermic charges and no evidence that precision blasts to collapse the building starting at the impact zone and proceeding downward would be possible to do but I’m sure Willy will let us keep this one…
*After seeing the ‘Mythbusters’ episode ‘Thermite vs. Ice’ it seems reasonable that there may be forms and circumstances under which thermite is an explosive, but doubtful that a thermite compound is a super-explosive or a reliable industrial explosive. The certain presence of molten aluminum and sulphur in the impact zone along with conditions that could have led to the spontaneous creation of ‘thermic’ materials seems to weaken your case and provide me with another source of heat…
5) It seems like there’s some evidence that this might be possible, so I guess we need to keep it until we can rule it out.
6) This probably doesn’t account for much, but we’d better take it into account until we’re sure that there isn’t a surprise in here (like burning aluminum).
So Bob, that’s how I use Ockham’s razor to shave away your thermic material. Consider this a lesson in how the law of parsimony is used. If you still think that thermite or ‘thermate’ cutter charges were used to bring down the twin towers, check out this paper:
www(dot)911myths(dot)com/WTCTHERM.pdf
If after reading this paper you still believe, then enjoy your tinfoil hat.
I rest my case.
Robert,
If you’d like to see a scientist’s take on the tipping of the top of WTC2, check this out:
http://www.911myths.com/WTC2TIP.pdf
The conclusions section of this study:
“The collapse of WTC 2 began with a tilting or rotational motion of the upper section of the Tower about a “hinge” at the 80th floor. This rotational motion, which commenced at a tilt angle 2, was caused by an almost instantaneous multi-column failure that eliminated the structural support on one side of WTC 2 near the impact zone. Once set in motion, the upper block moved with a nearly “free” rotational trajectory of a body pivoting under the constant force of gravity. This behavior was sustained at tilt angles up to about 25. Thereafter the motion of the block changed somewhat although the suggestion that the tilting suddenly stopped is not correct.
What appears to happen is that the tilting upper section was continuously crushed near the 80th floor by its own momentum so that the rotation was no longer that of a rigid body. Eventually the “hinge” at the northeast corner failed and the descending block took on a more vertical motion. Interestingly, once the hinge failed, and the pivot became frictionless, the motion of the center of gravity is predicted to become vertical, causing a shift in the rotational axis. Unfortunately, however, details of this stage of the WTC 2 collapse were obscured by smoke, dust and flying debris.
Holy crap.
You guys have been busy.
I was going to comment on this thread today, but I will return at a later date when I have had time to properly digest the conversation since I lasted viewed it. This deserves more detailed attention than I can spare today though.
Buddha,
Take your time. I’m pretty much done – I will expand upon or justify things that I’ve posted if asked, but at this point I think that the case against explosives is pretty strong. Especially with the 7 reports by Dr. Frank Greening at:
http://www.911myths.com/html/other_contributions.html
I hope you enjoy this last act.
Oops, sorry. I did not notice that. I only read the articles.
Byron,
I agree. The sound generated and the seismic activity have only served to confuse the real issue. I should not have bothered with them.
The real issue here is the same thing that I tried to state in the beginning, but was met with resistance from multiple sources. In the interest of further discussion I caved. That was wrong. I should have ended the discussion as soon as Slarti tried to claim that this is an isolated system by introducing the Universe as his “isolated system”. No objective reason exists to support such an idea. The universe has been consider to be an isolated system in theory only. Slarti chose to adopt this theory in order to apply the Laws of Energy Conservation. If multiple universes exist, is it possible for energy and mass to leave “our” universe? Without any defined physical boundary, the answer must be yes. To consider otherwise is to say that an isolated system requires no boundaries. That would be a fallacy.
The “universe” is undefined. It has no boundaries. It’s an idea. It exists in our imagination as an attempt to explain what we cannot comprehend. I have searched high and low for any scientific study in which the universe was used as the isolated system for the purposes of demonstrating the laws of conservation of energy. I was unable to find a single peer reviewed study to support it.
The isolated system is fundamental to Slarti’s analysis. The laws of energy conservation only apply to isolated systems. Isolated systems have defined boundaries. The universe has no defined boundary.
Slarti has used verbosity to confuse the issue. When confronted with problems that would require him to account for all of the mass and all of the energy (an easy task in any true isolated system) Slarti smugly dismissed all of them with “it still exists in the universe” and “energy is conserved”.
Yesterday Slarti buried some revelations in his responses.
At 1 AM Slarti this is what I presented, followed by Slarti’s response.
I said; Once again. Slarti’s isolated system cannot accurately account for the energy.
Slarti’s response; “[Once again, I'm not calling my system isolated, I'm just assuming that energy is conserved in each instance of work. I have accurately accounted for all of the energy, I just haven't quantified all of it.]”
You can’t have it both ways. The Laws of Energy Conservation are only applicable to an “isolated system”.
Slarti knows that his “universe is an isolated system” premise cannot be validated. Knowing this, when challenged, he abandons the idea altogether.
To further demonstrate this fallacy, let’s look at another comment that was left by Slarti at 12:33 AM.
I had stated “OK. Please account for all the mass and energy two days after the collapse. The dust in someone’s pocket. It’s part of the energy equation. In a real isolated system accurately accounting for EVERYTHING is a piece of cake. Why? because it can’t go anywhere.”
Slarti’s response “Do you even realize that you just said that it is a piece of cake to accurately account for all of the mass and energy in the universe? That’s a big twinkie.”
One of the benefits of an isolated system is that it permits us to account for all of the mass and all of the energy within that system. To be able to scientifically demonstrate that neither mass nor energy left the system is crucial the existence of the isolated system itself.
I can see how you can be persuaded by Slarti’s references to Meteor impacts, and framed documents hanging on his wall, but you should be willing to admit that a fallacy is a fallacy. No matter how well the fallacy is presented.
I expect that Slarti will flip-flop back to a claim that this all happened in the universe, and since Wikipedia says that the universe might be an isolated system, he can therefore apply laws that are restricted to application only in an isolated system, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a system without defined boundaries is the stuff that makes up fairy tales, not scientific analysis that can be repeated and proven as fact.
The purpose of this analysis rest solely upon the ability to perform the specified work within the established frame of time, and end up with the observed results. Slarti’s analysis only demonstrates that it did happen. We already knew that.
When asked how much energy was needed to break the floors loose, and pulverize the the majority of the mass, an answer of 80-200 GJ is not the result of what was required, but that of which had not been accounted for. That’s not science. That’s salesmanship.
I was going to end here, but I found this statement to provide an excellent example of the junk science employed by Slarti. When asked about the speed of the pieces of the building as they hit the earth. Slarti claims that it was 65-85 m/s. Even without accounting for atmospheric drag, nothing below the an initial height of 215 (the majority of the mass) could have reached a speed of 65 m/s. Slarti’s response was that gravity alone didn’t not act on these pieces. Here’s his response from 1:10 AM yesterday.
“This is why it is important to carefully specify your assumptions. In your analysis, you have assumed that the pieces of the WTC were being acted on by gravity and nothing else, an assumption which is false. Pieces of the WTC did not fall to the ground at free fall speed – they were accelerated by a mass of debris moving at a speed of roughly 65 to 85 m/s when it reached street level. Yes, I’m making a simplifying assumption when I say the the impact speed was between 65 and 85 m/s, but it is a reasonable and justified assumption since the ‘average’* speed of the collapse was between 65-85 m/s.”
Repeating a portion of that statement “they were accelerated by a mass of debris moving at a speed of roughly 65 to 85 m/s” demonstrates why thinking on paper, and think in the real world, provide two different results. We know that the “actors” could not accelerate any other pieces until they had already exceeded the minimum speed of 65 m/s themselves. In order to do that, those pieces needed to fall, unobstructed, 215 meters or more. We also know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That opposite reaction causes the “actor” to slow down by an amount equal to that which is used to speed up the object acted upon. Not only did the “actors” need to slow down while acting upon the objects acted upon, the would have had their speed further reduced by using some of their speed to pulverize the objects below. As you can plainly see, the only “actors” that could have achieved a speed of 65-85 m/s were those that ignored atmospheric drag, and had little to no interaction with the lower objects. This would make an average speed of 65-85 m/s for all the rubble physically impossible.
Judges, you have my closing argument.
Slarti,
If you are prepared to present a closing argument, please do so. I only ask that you avoid salesmanship and stick to proven science.
If you would throw in the part about how the columns were cut at 45 degree angles with remnants of molten metal left behind as a result of the magic of nature when enough energy exists, it would be much appreciated.
I know that was a cheap shot after submitting my closing argument, but I just couldn’t help myself.
Robert:
you still miss the point. We are not talking about a nuclear reactor. he is merely trying to show you why there was excess heat. it doesn’t matter if it is an open or closed system, only that there were many avenues for heat generation.
The cause of failure was gravity, the genesis was a fully load plane traveling at 500 mph. End of story.
Slarti:
by the way I made the same point about rotation of the upper floors early on. Not to pat myself on the back . . .
Robert said
“I agree. The sound generated and the seismic activity have only served to confuse the real issue. I should not have bothered with them.”
Plus, you were wrong on the science.
The real issue here is the same thing that I tried to state in the beginning, but was met with resistance from multiple sources. In the interest of further discussion I caved. That was wrong. I should have ended the discussion as soon as Slarti tried to claim that this is an isolated system by introducing the Universe as his “isolated system”. No objective reason exists to support such an idea. The universe has been consider to be an isolated system in theory only. Slarti chose to adopt this theory in order to apply the Laws of Energy Conservation. If multiple universes exist, is it possible for energy and mass to leave “our” universe? Without any defined physical boundary, the answer must be yes. To consider otherwise is to say that an isolated system requires no boundaries. That would be a fallacy.
This is from the Wikipedia definition of ‘isolated system’ (the definition which you used):
“Truly isolated physical systems do not exist in reality (except perhaps for the universe as a whole), because, for example, there is always gravity between a system with mass and masses elsewhere. However, real systems may behave nearly as an isolated system for finite (possibly very long) times. The concept of an isolated system can serve as a useful model approximating many real-world situations. It is an acceptable idealization used in constructing mathematical models of certain natural phenomena…”
If you have a theory that proves multiple universes exist and that matter can be exchanged between them, present it and await your Nobel prize. If not, admit that this explicitly sanctions that both the universe as a whole is an isolated system and that the concept of an isolated system is an acceptable idealization for constructing mathematical models (I remind you that on the subject of mathematical models, I am an expert – I’m not making this stuff up, I’m making decisions that I am professionally qualified to do because of my training and experience.
[Robert] “The “universe” is undefined. It has no boundaries. It’s an idea. It exists in our imagination as an attempt to explain what we cannot comprehend. I have searched high and low for any scientific study in which the universe was used as the isolated system for the purposes of demonstrating the laws of conservation of energy. I was unable to find a single peer reviewed study to support it.”
This is because scientists don’t have to argue that they are allowed to use the fact that work conserves energy in their papers – the readers all understand that they can.
[Robert] “The isolated system is fundamental to Slarti’s analysis. The laws of energy conservation only apply to isolated systems. Isolated systems have defined boundaries. The universe has no defined boundary.”
One out of four is pretty bad, Robert: 1) I’ve said that I don’t need to use an isolated system, just the fact that every instance of work conserves energy; 2) The laws of conservation of energy apply to all instances where work is performed in any system whatsoever; 3) this is true; 4) Let’s see your argument that the universe is infinite.
[Robert "]Slarti has used verbosity to confuse the issue. When confronted with problems that would require him to account for all of the mass and all of the energy (an easy task in any true isolated system) Slarti smugly dismissed all of them with “it still exists in the universe” and “energy is conserved”.”
Both of which are completely true statements – you and Bob have made my verbosity necessary by your refusal to accept basic physics. And you still haven’t told me where all of the mass and energy of the universe is located (which is, by the definition you used, ‘perhaps the only truly isolated physical system’).
[Robert] “Yesterday Slarti buried some revelations in his responses.
At 1 AM Slarti this is what I presented, followed by Slarti’s response. I said; Once again. Slarti’s isolated system cannot accurately account for the energy.”
[Me] “Once again, I’m not calling my system isolated, I’m just assuming that energy is conserved in each instance of work. I have accurately accounted for all of the energy, I just haven’t quantified all of it.”
[Robert] “You can’t have it both ways. The Laws of Energy Conservation are only applicable to an “isolated system”.”
Are you saying that energy is not conserved by every instance of work? That is a ridiculous statement – and one you must justify to invalidate my analysis (and I can prove it mathematically).
[Robert] “Slarti knows that his “universe is an isolated system” premise cannot be validated. Knowing this, when challenged, he abandons the idea altogether.”
As I’ve said, it’s validated by the definition of ‘isolated system’ that you are using – I abandoned the idea because I found a better line of argument to demonstrate my point (one which involves mathematical proof – a playing field on which, quite frankly, you cannot hope to beat me).
[Robert] To further demonstrate this fallacy, let’s look at another comment that was left by Slarti at 12:33 AM. I had stated “OK. Please account for all the mass and energy two days after the collapse. The dust in someone’s pocket. It’s part of the energy equation. In a real isolated system accurately accounting for EVERYTHING is a piece of cake. Why? because it can’t go anywhere.”
[Me] “Do you even realize that you just said that it is a piece of cake to accurately account for all of the mass and energy in the universe? That’s a big twinkie.”
[Robert] “One of the benefits of an isolated system is that it permits us to account for all of the mass and all of the energy within that system. To be able to scientifically demonstrate that neither mass nor energy left the system is crucial the existence of the isolated system itself.”
The universe is ‘PERHAPS THE ONLY ISOLATED SYSTEM THAT EXISTS IN REALITY’ you are alleging that accurately accounting for all of the mass and energy in the universe is a piece of cake. (Which it is if by ‘accounting for mass and energy’ you mean ‘all of the known mass and energy is in the universe’, but ridiculous if you mean you know the location and quantity of all of the mass/energy in the universe.
[Robert] “I can see how you can be persuaded by Slarti’s references to Meteor impacts, and framed documents hanging on his wall, but you should be willing to admit that a fallacy is a fallacy. No matter how well the fallacy is presented.”
I haven’t presented any fallacies. Byron is convinced because he can see that I know what I’m talking about on the physics and I have supported my assertions (at least that’s what I think).
[Robert] “I expect that Slarti will flip-flop back to a claim that this all happened in the universe, and since Wikipedia says that the universe might be an isolated system, he can therefore apply laws that are restricted to application only in an isolated system, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a system without defined boundaries is the stuff that makes up fairy tales, not scientific analysis that can be repeated and proven as fact.”
I’ve shown (by citing the work of James Joule) that conservation of energy applies to and instance of work and that the equation for conservation of energy can be written (and is valid) for any instance of work – if you disagree then write a paper debunking Joule’s research – good luck getting it published.
[Robert] “The purpose of this analysis rest solely upon the ability to perform the specified work within the established frame of time, and end up with the observed results. Slarti’s analysis only demonstrates that it did happen. We already knew that.”
No, my analysis shows the energy available for certain things (ejecting the pyroclastic flow, breaking loose the floors, pulverizing concrete, etc.) until last night you could have falsified my model with well documented estimates of the energy required for these jobs that showed that they required more energy than my model could provide. Last night, thanks to Dr. Greening’s papers, I found solid estimates of these quantities which are completely consistent with my model (and much, much more…)
[Robert] “When asked how much energy was needed to break the floors loose, and pulverize the the majority of the mass, an answer of 80-200 GJ is not the result of what was required, but that of which had not been accounted for. That’s not science. That’s salesmanship.”
Dr. Greening (in his very well written papers) gives an estimate of 0.6 GJ to collapse a floor and estimates that 10% of the concrete was pulverized (nowhere near a majority). His estimates match my analysis (validating it with an independent source).
[Robert] “I was going to end here, but I found this statement to provide an excellent example of the junk science employed by Slarti. When asked about the speed of the pieces of the building as they hit the earth. Slarti claims that it was 65-85 m/s. Even without accounting for atmospheric drag, nothing below the an initial height of 215 (the majority of the mass) could have reached a speed of 65 m/s. Slarti’s response was that gravity alone didn’t not act on these pieces. Here’s his response from 1:10 AM yesterday.”
[Me] “This is why it is important to carefully specify your assumptions. In your analysis, you have assumed that the pieces of the WTC were being acted on by gravity and nothing else, an assumption which is false. Pieces of the WTC did not fall to the ground at free fall speed – they were accelerated by a mass of debris moving at a speed of roughly 65 to 85 m/s when it reached street level. Yes, I’m making a simplifying assumption when I say the the impact speed was between 65 and 85 m/s, but it is a reasonable and justified assumption since the ‘average’* speed of the collapse was between 65-85 m/s.”
[Robert] “Repeating a portion of that statement “they were accelerated by a mass of debris moving at a speed of roughly 65 to 85 m/s” demonstrates why thinking on paper, and think in the real world, provide two different results.”
According to Dr. Greening, the end velocity of the collapse was more likely around 50 m/s (more energy used to destroy structure, etc.) I defined what I meant by the ‘velocity of the collapse’ (which Dr. Greening also define in a way which is consistent with my definition) and it is a property of the collapse (you know, the event in the ‘real world’ which is the object of discussion) that Dr. Greening and I are estimating.
[Robert] “We know that the “actors” could not accelerate any other pieces until they had already exceeded the minimum speed of 65 m/s themselves.”
The falling portion of the building accelerating the intact part of the building (and destroying its structure) are the reason that the collapse was slower than free fall. Are you saying that nothing could have been accelerated by descending rubble (then further accelerated by gravity)? If so, why isn’t the building still standing today?
[Robert] “In order to do that, those pieces needed to fall, unobstructed, 215 meters or more.”
Intact structure was broken loose and very quickly accelerated to the speed of the descending debris (slightly less that it was before the impact which broke loose the structure). The descending debris was being continually accelerated by gravity.
[Robert] “We also know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That opposite reaction causes the “actor” to slow down by an amount equal to that which is used to speed up the object acted upon. Not only did the “actors” need to slow down while acting upon the objects acted upon, the would have had their speed further reduced by using some of their speed to pulverize the objects below. As you can plainly see, the only “actors” that could have achieved a speed of 65-85 m/s were those that ignored atmospheric drag, and had little to no interaction with the lower objects. This would make an average speed of 65-85 m/s for all the rubble physically impossible.”
Robert,
There are several things that I can plainly see: the ‘drag’ of collapsing the building is what prevented it from collapsing at free-fall speed; If no part of the building could have exceeded the ‘free-fall’ speed from it’s height, the collapse would have taken much longer than it was observed to; atmospheric drag is another trivial effect in the collapse; your final statement contradicts the observed time of collapse for the building; and finally, I can plainly see that we are not in the same league here – since I’m in the NFL (I’m not the star, but I made the team) and you’re on the freshman ‘B’ team (you might even be the star of it
) I think some sort of mercy rule should probably kick in soon…
[Robert] “Judges, you have my closing argument.”
I ask the court for a summary judgement that I am correct about the physics on the grounds that Robert has completely failed to make a viable case.
[Robert] “If you are prepared to present a closing argument, please do so. I only ask that you avoid salesmanship and stick to proven science.”
I DID present my closing argument and I augmented the calculations and physics which I have repeatedly supported with 7 actual scientific papers by Dr. Frank Greening which are not only entirely consistent with my analysis, but also completely demolish the argument that the twin towers were collapsed by use of explosives. You may try to refute Dr. Greening’s work, but you will not succeed (because he, like me, understands the physics involved in the collapse).
[Robert] “If you would throw in the part about how the columns were cut at 45 degree angles with remnants of molten metal left behind as a result of the magic of nature when enough energy exists, it would be much appreciated.”
Please give actual, scientific evidence that observed cuts could not have occurred in a ‘natural’ collapse.
[Robert] “I know that was a cheap shot after submitting my closing argument, but I just couldn’t help myself.”
As Byron indicated earlier, you are not nearly as clever as you think you are. In the end, you’ve got nothing but a couple of tinfoil hat ideas and a load of scientific ignorance against my well supported science (plus Dr. Greening’s research).
Byron said:
“by the way I made the same point about rotation of the upper floors early on. Not to pat myself on the back”
You were right, pat away…
Robert,
Just in case you think that I’m grandstanding about the impact (pun intended) of the papers on the collapse that I linked last night, I thought that I would provide you an overview of what I found.
This is the conclusions section of the report on the WTC collapse by Dr. Greening:
“An analysis of the energetics of the WTC collapse events has shown that the kinetic energy of the aircraft collisions and the subsequent gravitational energy released by the descending blocks of floors were quite sufficient to destroy the twin towers in the manner observed. The use of explosive devices in either of the two towers is not necessary to explain the collapse events and is considered to be highly unlikely.
The times calculated for the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2 show good agreement with the observed collapse times verifying the basic assumptions of the momentum transfer model used in the calculations. [His momentum transfer model is pretty clever. I wish I'd though of it.]
The calculated times represent the minimum theoretical times of building collapse. If shorter times are to be physically achieved they must involve an unknown additional source of energy acting in a downward direction. Such a source of energy does not appear to have been involved in the collapse of the twin towers.
The kinetic energy of the collapse events was sufficient to crush the WTC floor concrete in both towers to particles 100 micrometers in diameter, or smaller, which is consistent with the observed WTC debris particle size distribution. [His calculations on the energy required to pulverize concrete look like good science to me and are consistent with my analysis as well.]
From a consideration of the strength of the WTC columns, and the effective area of support they provided, it is demonstrated that the conditions necessary for the initial floor collapse were initiated by the aircraft impacts and made irrevocable by the subsequent eccentric loading of the core columns. The fires that were initiated by the jet fuel spilled within the towers certainly weakened steel in localized areas in the impact zones. However, it is suggested that the total collapse of both towers would have occurred even without the jet fuel fires. [I find his conclusion that the towers would have collapsed in the absence of jet fuel fires very interesting.]”
Of course, you’ll want to know something about him rather than taking my word that this is good science. Here is a brief bio:
http://www.911myths.com/html/dr_frank_greening_bio.html
His six other papers hosted on 911myths are:
A more detailed discussion of the dust clouds generated in the collapse.
Problems he has with the NIST report (he doesn’t think highly of it).
A very interesting discussion of what he thinks is the source of the ‘thermic material’ in the rubble – His Ph.D. is in chemistry and it shows in this discussion – He’s got Dr. Stephen Jones’s number on thermite and he absolutely guts Bob’s argument that Ockham’s razor favors the necessity of explosives.
A look at the various sources of sulfur in the collapse and what reactions it might have been involved in.
A very mathematical study of the the tipping of the top of WTC2. Can you find anything wrong with what he says in this paper, Robert?
A look at the experiment data which determines that the pulverization of the WTC concrete by gravitational collapse was possible and that the particle size distribution predicted by gravitational collapse is consistent with observations. (In a footnote he shows that without the help of gravitational collapse, the degree of pulverization observed in the WTC1 collapse would have required 600 metric tons of high explosives. Bob, is that 600 tons of explosives in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?)
Don’t take my word for it, read these papers. The math might get a bit hairy from time to time (it’s hard for me to judge) but the science is good and it’s all consistent with everything that I’ve been saying. I will gladly discuss the details of any of his analyses if you disagree with his conclusions.
Byron: “you still miss the point. We are not talking about a nuclear reactor. he is merely trying to show you why there was excess heat. it doesn’t matter if it is an open or closed system, only that there were many avenues for heat generation.
The cause of failure was gravity, the genesis was a fully load plane traveling at 500 mph. End of story.”
Not for nothing Byron, but your level of engagement here is lower than your willingness to accept the axiom that corporations are not people.
Not for nothing Bob, but Byron’s level of engagement here is higher than your credibility on Ockham’s razor and physics combined.
Slarti: “Bob’s comments have been very educational on Occam’s Razor (and Kant).”
Try speaking out of one side of your mouth at a time.
Byron: “I think you are dealing with invincible ignorance at this point. Everything that you have posted leads to the conclusion that most people already know.”
So Byron, you accept Slarti’s arguments and analogies as valid?
Funny, I find his analogies as faulty as those made between bees and conventional fixed-wing aircraft.
Do bees violate the laws of aerodynamics or is Slarti fond of making faulty analogies?
Hmm?
[Me - near the beginning of this mess] “Bob’s comments have been very educational on Occam’s Razor (and Kant).”
[Bob] “Try speaking out of one side of your mouth at a time.”
I made that comment before I had realized that your statements about Ockham’s razor were full of crap (I haven’t read Kant before, so your comments about his writings were educational – assuming they were correct). I never wanted this fight – I just wanted you to acknowledge that I knew what I was talking about on the physics and that I had valid reasons to say Ockham’s razor suggested explosives were not involved. You refused every olive branch you were offered and in your arguments you exposed your ignorance on the topic of physics. In doing the research to refute your arguments, I discovered that I was using Ockham’s razor in a completely appropriate way (i.e. you were full of crap).
It is not speaking out of both sides of your mouth to change one’s mind when new evidence comes to light – that is entirely reasonable. I thought that you deserved respect at the beginning of this argument, but I was proven wrong on that one, too.
I supported my arguments with actual references (are you going to admit that the equation for energy conservation can be written down for every instance of work or have you come up with an experiment to disprove the work of James Joule?) and received only ignorant ravings in response (although they were well-written ignorant ravings). I have presented a theory of the WTC collapse that is consistent with observations and explains why molten metal was around for six months after the collapse (and why WTC7 was initially hotter than WTC1 or WTC2). You have offered absolutely no explanation of how ‘thermic explosives/incendiaries’ could have explained the heat in the rubble, the collapse of the building, or the pulverization of the concrete. I, on the other hand, (with the help of Dr. Greening) have offered multiple sources for continuing heat that were either observed to be present or likely to be present in the rubble. I have shown that the observations of the collapse were consistent with progressive failure initiating gravitational collapse (Dr. Greening even concludes that the fires were unnecessary and that the buildings would have collapsed as a result of the impacts even in the abscence of fire) and that explosive use in the collapse was ‘unlikely’. I have shown that 15% of the available kinetic energy was sufficient to accomplish the observed pulverization of concrete (although it could have been 600 tons of high explosives in pre-drilled bore holes spread out over all 110 floors of both buildings… Mr. Ockham, would you care to have a say?).
Finally, I have found an analysis of the collapse that not only agrees numerically with my calculations, but goes much farther in much more depth. It not only agrees with my interpretation on all of the physics I’ve talked about here, but adds a knowledge of chemistry that I don’t have (which eviscerates your arguments). I agreed with you that the observed heat required ongoing sources and listed six possible sources of heat in the rubble – including your ‘thermic’ cutter charges and made my argument that the only one that William of Ockham would frown on is yours. You haven’t said word one to refute my argument, nor have you presented your own argument in which the law of parsimony would require the use of explosives. Now that I have Dr. Greening’s studies which support all of the physics that I’ve been patiently explaining and make your ‘thermic’ theories seem laughable and childish at best, you are in the unenviable position of needing to refute Dr. Greening’s analysis (which you will be unable to do as it is good science) or admit you were wrong. In particular, his paper on thermite makes a mockery of your arguments by presenting a theory which not only accounts for the residue that is your only evidence, but also provides another very substantial ‘natural’ source of heat in the rubble.
(Water (flooded basement) corrodes aluminum (2 kilotons worth in the rubble) via the reaction
Al + H2O + OH^- -> AlO2 + 3/2 H2.
Hydrogen gas burns at 2000 C – sufficient temperature to melt steel. In Dr. Greening’s words:
That this type of reaction occurred in the WTC rubble pile should not be surprising since hydrogen production reactions have been reported in similar environments involving aluminum in contact with water and cementitious materials. Thus the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently published a report entitled: “Potential for Generation of Flammable Mixtures of Hydrogen from Aluminum-Grout Interaction in the K Basin During Basin Grouting.”)
I know that it must be a bitter pill to swallow that some upstart who doesn’t know what ‘heat of fusion’ means and doesn’t have your philosophical understanding of Willie’s rule has not only schooled you on physics (about which you seem to think you have some knowledge), but has also presented a clear example of how Ockham’s razor is used to eliminate the hypothesis of explosives as a source of heat in the rubble of the WTC that you cannot refute. That does not change the fact that for all your rhetorical skill you cannot make your flawed and ignorant arguments stand up to my sound scientific ones.
The thing that I’m offering you right now is your ass. I suggest you take it and slink away.
Slarti: “I found a post of yours from the beginning of this debate and thought that it would be fitting to respond to it here at the end of the debate.”
For those of you who chuckled after reading the above, read it again; you weren’t imagining things. That’s right, Slarti confessed to being non-responsive, i.e. refusing to engage in what’s known as argumentation, all along.
Slarti: “And we are coming to the end of the debate – You can consider this my summation.”
Oh goody.
Bob asked: “Fifth; show me where a steel structured building collapsed as a result of fire before 9/11.”
Slarti responds:
This is from www(dot)debunking911(dot)com/firsttime.htm
(which means it must be true)
“There were a lot of firsts for the WTC. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been hit with a plane traveling 500 miles an hour”
Which plane was traveling at 500 miles an hour??
http://pilotsfor911truth.org/wtc_speed
“and had its fire proofing removed from its trusses. In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever had its steel columns which hold lateral load sheared off by a 767.”
Which plane sheared the columns? You may want to check the FEMA report for both.
“In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been a building which had its vertical load bearing columns in its core removed by an airliner.”
Wow, you picked quite the expert! He’s just making up the facts as he goes along; isn’t he Slarti. Slarti, if you never dared to make the argument that the columns were sheared, why do you allow your expert to do so? Hmm?
So, to sum up for WTC 1 & 2, your expert has used the counterfactual premises that: The planes were traveling 500 mph and the planes sheared the interior columns (a point you never dared to so much as imply until now)
Let’s continue; shall we?
“For Building 7, in all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been left for 6-7 hours with its bottom floors on fire with structural damage from another building collapse.”
Really? Hey Slarti, remember when I informed you that: “Actually, according to FEMA, there was no structural damage from the collapse of the North Tower. They said that a piece of debris from that collapse breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. That piece of debris had to travel across WTC6 and Vesey St., penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of WTC 7, including a concrete masonry wall.”
That’s right Slarti, once again your expert introduced counterfactual premises in support of his bullshit argument.
Continuing…
“In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever been without some fire fighters fighting the fires.”
I love this part; he might as well have said “In all the history of high-rise fires, not one has ever [not been directly over the center of the earth.]”
Sheer fucking poetry.
Continuing…
Slarti: “Also 10 floors of a Spanish hotel collapsed as the result of fire and the entire building had to be torn down.”
Why Slarti, are you referring to the fire in Madrid? The very same fire that disproves your ‘total collapse by fire’ theory?
Silly boy.
Slarti: “Since you like to object that I can’t explain it, let’s focus on WTC7 for a minute.”
You’re too kind; really.
Slarti: “The ‘hot’ debris that ripped a hole 18 stories tall in WTC7″
Says who Slarti? Was that in the FEMA report? No. 18 stories is a hole about one third as tall as the building; got any proof of that claim of yours?
Slarti: “ignited fires as it passed through the building (since it was very hot as a result of the thermal energy generated in ripping the debris loose from the structure of WTC1 and flinging it over 300 m away).”
Any documentation regarding what you stated above either?
Slarti: “This also severed the lines connecting the tanks of diesel fuel under WTC7 to the emergency generators they were supposed to fuel.”
Ah, you’re talking about that “piece of debris from that collapse breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. That piece of debris had to travel across WTC6 and Vesey St., penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of WTC 7, including a concrete masonry wall.”
Slarti: When these generators attempted to cut in, 12,000 gallons of fuel was pumped into the flaming building and burned resulting in 1.5 TJ of heat IN ADDITION to the heat from the combustion of other materials.”
Ah yes, that 12,000 gallons of diesel being all that was required to make WTC 7 collapse into its own footprint. Oh, I’m sorry, you said IN ADDITION to the heat from ‘other materials;’ Which of course makes your statement all the more plausible.
Slarti: “Some of this would have most likely pooled around the second of three unusual trusses necessitated by the 3-story ConEd substation that WTC7 was built on top of. The fact that one of these trusses failed after six hours of fires burning unchecked and the visible bowing of the side of the building which foreshadowed the building’s collapse to those on the scene is hardly surprising.”
Of course; thus the reason FEMA & NIST punted on providing an explanation.
Slarti: “And if the biggest source of initial thermal energy in the rubble was pre-collapse fire, then the rubble of WTC7 would clearly be expected to have the highest initial temperature of the three buildings.”
Yeah, remember this exchange?
Bob: How hot is a diffuse jet flame? (aka type 2 diesel)
Slarti: [I don't know, how hot is a diffuse jet flame?]
339 C.
And the NASA thermograph taken five days after the collapse and gallons and gallons of cool water being pumped over the debris of WTC 7 showed an approx temp of what? 1300 F? Which is just over 704 C? Right Slarti?
Slarti: “Add to that that the fact that WTC7 collapsed from the bottom up – ensuring that it would collapse into its own footprint much more than WTC1 or WTC2 keeping the heat more concentrated, and it would be pretty fishy if the rubble of WTC1 or WTC2 were hotter than the rubble of WTC 7.”
Actually, hot spot G (WTC 2) registered 746.85 degree Celsius; making it the hottest. But thanks for playing anyway.
Bob said: “Fourth, fires burn up, building fall down.
Slarti’s response: [Don't you understand that the heat from a fire radiates in ALL directions? If material below the fire is heated to its combustion point, it will ignite. In addition, if a portion of a floor collapses, the fire will fall to the floor below.]”
Apparently I’ve been holding lit matches all wrong my entire life.
Bob said: How hot is a diffuse jet flame? If you poured jet fuel onto concrete and lit it with a match; what happens and why?
Slarti’s response: [It wasn't poured onto concrete, it was poured onto carpeting and drywall and office furniture.]”
So jet fuel poured on to an office desk burns differently than on concrete? Mmmm k.
Bob asked (a long time ago and in a slightly different context)
Where is the steel losing its strength
Slarti: [Steel looses structural strength when heated and things that are subjected to fire get heated, especially if they've lost their fire-resistant insulation.]”
That’s not what I asked; but I’ll give you points for stating the patently obvious.
Bob said: “and how the hell does that affect the rest of the building below?
Slarti: [When the structural steel was heated past its yield strength, a progressive collapse was initiated causing the 23 kiloton top of the building to collapse."
Once again, you evade the question. You speak of heat weakening steel and I asked you HOW DID IT WEAKEN THE STEEL BELOW THE FIRE. As Buddha pointed out earlier, you're being an evasive D#$^. Accordingly, since you're response ignores my initial premise, I see no need in addressing the consequents any further.
Bob said:
“Third, you may have noticed that the towers had two support systems; one internal, i.e. the 47 steel columns, and the exo-skeletal support forming the perimeter of the building itself. Note that when the architects discussed the 707 impact design, they made the analogy of poking a hole in a metal screen; the hole exists, but the screen remains in tact.
Slarti: [Unfortunately, what actually happened on 9/11 was like slashing through a large section of the screen, not poking a hole in it."
Care to tell that to the WTC architect who made the metaphor?
Bob said: "Then there are those interior columns, like rail road spikes, that weren’t exactly designed to just collapse on themselves now were they?
Slarti: [Any steel beam will fail if it is subjected to enough force and heating lowers its yield strength.]”
STOP RIGHT THERE. Both I and Robert have asked you repeatedly to explain the collapse of the interior columns in the absence of shearing forces; I even asked the question again using your dumb-ass whale metaphor. But like a Fox News pundit, you keep evading the subject entirely.
Bob said: “Accordingly, when you say: “(c) structural failure due to design flaws leading to a pancake collapse” you’re adopting the pancake theory assumption that the building was a hollow box. (See the FEMA report)”
Slarti: [I misspoke when I referred to the building 'pancaking', I should have said that the building underwent progressive failure followed by gravitational collapse.]
Which is a fancier way of not responding to the question about the lack of shearing forces required to cut the columns? You’re a riot.
Slarti: From the NY Times: “Last spring, the standards institute found the first photographic evidence on the east face of the south tower that a single floor — with its lightweight support system, called a truss — had sagged in the minutes before it started collapsing. Now, detailed analysis of photos and videos has revealed at least three more sagging floors on that face, said William Pitts, a researcher at the institute’s Building and Fire Research Laboratory.
In addition, Dr. Pitts said, sudden expansions of the fires across whole floors in each tower shortly before they fell suggested internal collapses — burning floors above suddenly giving way and spreading the blaze below.”
How do you explain this if the buildings were brought down with explosives?”
I don’t know Slarti; how does the foregoing address any of the questions I’ve been asking you?
Bob said: “Second, Leslie Robertson, et.al. designed the Towers to withstand the impact of a 707 traveling heavy at full speed; have you done the math to compare the impact force between the 707 and the planes that hit? If you did, you would have seen that the difference was negligible.”
Slarti: “Yes, and just like the designers of the Titanic, they failed.”
As responsive as…
Slarti: “It wasn’t arson your honor, it was an act of God. Mr. Slarti, have you been paid for your testimony today? Objection… objection.”
Finally, Bob’s first point was:
“Allow me to illustrate Ockham’s razor in one simple example. For no less than six months, there existed at ground zero tons and tons of steel at and/or near the heat of fusion. Considering the law of thermo equilibrium had no effect in cooling down the metal, Ockham’s razor says IT IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO POSTULATE THE REALITY OF ANOTHER ENTITY THAT EXPLAINS THE DISCREPANCY. In this case, Q=MCΔT necessitates the existence of a SUSTAINED SOURCE OF HEAT to keep the metal at the heat of fusion. Which brings us back to that evidence of thermitic materials found within the dust…”
Slarti’s response: No, it doesn’t. A sustained source of heat was necessary.”
You do recall that this was my initial premise all along; don’t you? The reason I continually cite Q=mc(dela-T)?
Slarti: We must first consider what sustained sources of heat could have been present in the rubble – Ockham’s razor will then tell us which of these to shave away.”
Don’t get cute with Ockham’s razor; your wikipedia knowledge of the topic makes you look like an ass.
Slarti: Let’s take a look at some candidates, shall we?
1) Fires in the rubble – eyewitnesses reported fires in the rubble.
(Witnesses also reported hearing massive explosions in all three buildings and molten metal existing in the rubble for nearly six months)
Slarti: 2) 3Fe + 4H2O(g) -> Fe3O4 + 4H2(g) + (heat) which leads to 2H2(g) + O2(g) -> H2O(g) + (heat) – conditions existed that made this reaction possible at worst and nearly certain at best (and did you notice that we get our steam back – I wonder what could be done with that?). And just FYI – the basements of the WTC were flooded after 9/11 giving a source of water besides the firehoses.”
And you’re stating that you don’t need superheated steam for this reaction Slarti? And the source of your pure Fe is what? And the ‘experts’ who have made similar claims as you on this topic are who?
Slarti: 3) Iron burns – did you know that iron burns?”
Did you know that shit floats; did you know that sometimes you’re so full of shit I think you’d float away? Sorry, what’s the relevance of your point again?
Slarti: “I didn’t until recently – yes, I knew that iron oxidized and that that was an exothermic reaction, but if iron gets hot enough, this reaction can actually generate enough heat to sustain the reaction until the iron is all consumed – not only can this occur below the melting point of iron, but some of the steel beams in the WTC debris show signs of this sort of burning. Hmmm…”
Ever hear of question begging Slarti? Hmmm?
Slarti: 4) Thermic materials –
Yes, a topic which you attempted to explain without addressing the recent physical evidence of its existence at ground zero as recently as 2009. How intellectually honest of you.
Slarti: 5) ‘Natural’ thermite –
Funny, I don’t recall questioning on on something called ‘natural thermite’ — do I smell straw?
Slarti: “Considering there was molten aluminum, molten iron and sulfur available in the collapse and rubble along with quite a bit of free energy to ’stir the pot’ it may be possible that thermite was created in the collapse and ignited in the rubble”
Let me guess, you’ll be in Sheboygan all next week and I should tip my waitress? You’re funny.
Slarti: 6) Other exothermic reactions
A Slarti specialty!
Slarti: “I’ve focused on one particular reaction because it seems to be a very likely source of a large amount of heat on a continuing basis, but it is far from the only possible exothermic reaction that could have been taking place in the rubble. For instance, I wonder if any reactions involving aluminum could have added heat weakening the structure before (and possibly after) the collapse?”
I’ll give you that; you sure do a lot of ‘wondering’ and ‘theorizing’ and using same to make faulty analogies.
Slarti: “So what would William of Ockham say that we could shave away?”
1) People actually saw this, so it’s got to stay.
….
Instead of wasting bandwith; I’ll let the reader scroll up to your original post so as to attempt comprehend your grammatical nightmare.
….
Slarti: “So Bob, that’s how I use Ockham’s razor to shave away your thermic material. Consider this a lesson in how the law of parsimony is used.”
For anyone who scrolled up and read Slarti’s take on Ockham’s razor, and you had the same reaction as Krusty the Clown after seeing the cartoon called “Worker & Parasite” — exclaiming with a cigarette hanging from a slack jaw “What the hell was that?!” You’re not alone.
Hey Robert,
Remember when I posted this to you (and all reading this thread?)
=================
Perhaps we should just combine our resources to set forth the questions he has continually side-stepped with his theories that are by definition non-responsive since they either ignore or assume the point he’s been asked to prove.
For example, when asked by what mechanism was the Thermal Energy created, Slarti’s response is as fraudulent as Bush/Cheney constantly grouping the words “Saddam Hussein” and “9/11″ — i.e. references to inelastic collisions, comets, liquification upon impact, etc. and then having the audacity to state he never made nor implied such a claim.
Since ground zero contained three ‘hot spots’ – at the foot prints of towers 1, 2, & 7, his ‘theory’ of the creation of said hot spots must, by virtue of logical relation, include WTC 7. Yet he maintains that ‘he doesn’t have to explain WTC 7′.
When asked about the T factor in Q=mc(delta-T), in re the six month duration of metal existing at or near the heat of fusion at the footprints of all three towers, and how the law of thermal equilibrium, etc. were held in abeyance for so long; does he ever even acknowledge the existence of the anomaly? No. And quite frankly, I’m not sure he understands why it’s an anomaly.
When he tosses up the ‘hot steam & iron’ reaction as part of some Indiana Jones science statement, i.e. ‘incredible stuff could have happened’, I asked him where he got the superheated steam (<180 C), much less the pure iron from. Did he answer? No.
And even when I complied with his request that I use his 'whale metaphor' when addressing the problems with his explanations, did he account for the reason the whale would be left impaled on the exterior and interior structures of the building? No.
Imagine the mortality rate of Internists if they approached patient diagnostics in a similar fashion.
====
BTW Robert, speaking of pennies from heaven, who put WTC 1, 2 & 7 up in Cloud City? It was Lando wasn't it?
Hey, using Slarti logic, if the Towers were up in Cloud City, then maybe Bin Laden was getting help from Darth Vader.
Hmmm….
Slarti: “The thing that I’m offering you right now is your ass. I suggest you take it and slink away.”
lol
You’re as full of shit as a Christmas goose.
In Re: those planes traveling 500 mph…
“Please give actual, scientific evidence that observed cuts could not have occurred in a ‘natural’ collapse.”
ROTFLMAO!
Please give actual, scientific evidence that observed [trout] could not have [appeared naturally in the milk.]
lol
I’ll see your Dr. Greening and raise you Dr. Steven Jones
http://www.physics911.net/stevenjones
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf
And Dr. Greening’s take on the conclusion from the paper on “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe”
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html#conclusions
was what?
Hmm?
Bob said:
“And Dr. Greening’s take on the conclusion from the paper on “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” [Link to an article by Jim Hoffman] was what? Hmm?”
Here is a response by Dr. Greening to Jim Hoffman’s theory on the dust cloud:
www(dot)911myths(dot)com/Energy_Transfer_Addendum.pdf
I believe that his response to this article would be to argue that the residue found could be of ‘natural’ origin (and since he holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, his arguments (which can be found in his article on thermite) have some weight to them – I was unable to find any credentials listed for Mr. Hoffman…). You mentioned Dr. Jones earlier, so I thought that I would note that in an email to Dr. Jones, Dr. Greening suggested experiments that could be done (in contrast to the NIST experiments which were actually done) to try and (scientifically) determine if the residue Dr. Jones found could have been produced naturally in the impact zone or in the rubble. Dr. Jones sidestepped the issue in his response. Why wouldn’t he welcome an experiment that could validate his theories? (or disprove them…)
In reading the beginning of Mr. Hoffman’s essay, I noticed the same flaw – he makes the completely unsupported assumption that the residue found could not be of natural origin. Dr. Greening’s theories about how such materials might result from the conditions present in the impact zone or rubble call that assumption into question. Add to that the fact that explosives are by far the least likely continuing source of heat capable of keeping steel at or near the heat of fusion for 6 months and your assertion that Ockham’s razor favors the necessity of explosives to explain the observed heat at ground zero* starts looking pretty weak. I gave a list of six potential continuing sources of heat in the rubble and showed what I think Ockham’s implies for each. Your argument requires that explosive thermite charges be unquestionably the largest of those sources – I show that we have every reason to expect it would be the least of those sources. NOTHING YOU’VE SAID IN THIS ENTIRE DISCUSSION SO MUCH AS ADDRESSES THIS ISSUE LET ALONE PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT I’M IN ANY WAY INCORRECT.
*Not to mention the fact that your theory has never explained HOW explosives were a continuing source of heat in the rubble while I’ve shown that the amount of explosives necessary to produce the observed heat would be measured in kilotons (everyone must have mis
“I’ve shown that the amount of explosives necessary to produce the observed heat would be measured in kilotons”
No you haven’t. You pulled your number out of thin air.
[Robert] “Who said that 750 metric tons would be required? Show your calculations. Are you now a demolition expert?”
[Slarti] “This is my estimate of the amount of the most powerful (non-nuclear) explosive it would take to double the expected thermal energy in the rubble pile of all 3 buildings. If you can show me data for the energy released by ‘thermate’, please do.”
Which leads us to the question; How much thermal energy was in the rubble pile? How accurate is your calculation? What variables can affect your calculation?
And finally; What was the work performed that converted the kinetic energy into thermal energy