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
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.
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.
Heat is a measurement of thermal energy in transition.
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.”
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.
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.
Slarti, I searched every previous comment. Your last post is the first time you mentioned 10K J/cm^2.
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?
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.
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?
no work was performed? are you serious? how do you think those towers got to be almost 1400 feet tall?
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.
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.
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?
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:
Some energy is retained in the hammer head. you cannot have a purely inelastic collision. Dont you think the hammer head deforms?
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.
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.
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.
“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.