Im not even going to try to debate the meaning of the word mostly.

All I said is " even the WTC7 didnt fall entirely in its own footprint" I never claimed anymore in regards to the WTC7 rubble and I still stand by that no matter your definition of the word mostly is.

Originally posted by bsbray11


Pretty amazing, how it left such a neat pile as it fell. No lopsiding or anything. Just straight down onto itself -- all the way down.

So fire and debris from the Towers caused that, Shadow? The same kind of fire that's never brought down a steel skyscraper, and the same kind of debris that hit other nearby buildings that were in no danger of collapsing?

And yet you have WTC7, a 47-story skyscraper, falling straight down, symmetrically, into a neat little pile. ......

Well I dont know if I would call that a neat pile. I would fire any demo team that did that bad of a job on my building.

But really bsbray11 what did you expect a building buring to do fall over like domino?

You have no clue how much debris from the Towers hit WTC7 compared to other nearby buildings. It wasn't all equally spread around you know. The WTC7 was also allowed to burn they just stopped fighting the fire.

The design of the WTC7 and Windsor Tower were different they were of different sizes. The Windsor Tower recieved no damage from any 110 story building falling next to it.

But heres another important difference people were fighting the fire in Madrid. They just didnt give up like the people at the WTC7 did they fought it the whole time.

apples and oranges.

Comparing anything to 9-11 is always going to be apples and oranges until somebody flies another pair of planes into two 110 story buildings again.

[edit on 25-3-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Im not even going to try to debate the meaning of the word mostly.

All I said is " even the WTC7 didnt fall entirely in its own footprint" I never claimed anymore in regards to the WTC7 rubble and I still stand by that no matter your definition of the word mostly is.

promomag you know those type of post are considered spam on ATS right? MODs dont really like those types of post.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
Well I dont know if I would call that a neat pile. I would fire any demo team that did that bad of a job on my building.

Well you'd be firing every team on the planet before you could find one to demolish the building into a parking lot full of trucks ready to haul the debris away.

But really bsbray11 what did you expect a building buring to do fall over like domino?

No. I don't think it should've fell at all.

But if there was any collapse, it would have been a LOCAL collapse. Get used to this term, because it offers a nice shade of gray between the black and white of collapsing into dust and steel shards, and not collapsing at all.

The only skyscraper collapses due to fire or anything else other than earthquakes or demolition, have all been local in nature. And these local collapses only occur in the most extreme skyscraper fires, like the Windsor Tower's, or the Caracas Tower Fire.

What happens is a local section of the building becomes too damaged to support its loads and fails. The rest of the building, both above and below, stands just fine. Again, look at the most extreme cases of building fires known. That's all that happened.

You have no clue how much debris from the Towers hit WTC7 compared to other nearby buildings.

Oh, I can get an idea, buddy. It certainly wasn't the closest building to the Twin Towers, and it certainly wouldn't have been enough in any case to penetrate the building and take out the core columns. Exterior damage at most, just like you see in photos, and that exterior damage isn't going to collapse a whole building into its footprint like some kind of f'ed up magic. Superficial to the global structure at best.

It wasn't all equally spread around you know.

Yeah, that's why the symmetrical fall doesn't make any damned sense.

The WTC7 was also allowed to burn they just stopped fighting the fire.

And I'm sure a hydrocarbon fire had a lot to do with dropping a 47-story building down to the ground in a few seconds. That's something that we've seen a lot of in the history of skyscraper fires, isn't it? Those 700 C fires are doozies.

They just didnt give up like the people at the WTC7 did they fought it the whole time.

Show me any evidence at all that the fires at WTC7 were even near as bad as the Windsor fires.

Comparing anything to 9-11 is always going to be apples and oranges until somebody flies another pair of planes into two 110 story buildings again.

You wouldn't be saying that if it weren't for the fact that all the comparisons only hurt your case.

[edit on 25-3-2006 by bsbray11]

Whatever ShadowXIX. The fact is I've opened to discuss the 'mostly' point with you further, and you turned it down.

End of discussion.

Thanks for playing.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
promomag you know those type of post are considered spam on ATS right? MODs dont really like those types of post.

Im not playing your lame games debating the word mostly.

Or do you want to debate what I said" that even the WTC7 didnt fall entirely into its own footprint." Ill be glad to play that game with you.

unless you have some insane definition of the word mostly your not going to disprove my statement.

Originally posted by promomag

I'll ask again.... does anyone here know how a skyscraper is engineered and know the contents of a fully housed and occupied skyscraper? Or, do any of you work in a skyscraper currently or have worked in a skyscraper?

Anyone?

I do, I am a structural engineer and this is what I do. I am reading these posts from you guys and just laughing and looking stunned in disbelief at the shear lack of knowledge that is being presented herein. The statements about egineers designing building not to EVER collapse is an utter joke, and then the statement about how the building should have been designed like fort knox is just rediculous. Every structure on this planet is built with economics as the deciding factor. The winning design is usually the cheapest one which corresponds to almost always the weakest design, albeit, safe.

So when you look at a typical sky-scraper, you see pretty much a bunch of sticks holding up 110 floors. It was the engineering genius that enabled the towers to stand after the impact, but not forever.

I keep hearing all these people saying that the fire wasnt hot enough to MELT steel, well, hey wake up dude, it doesnt have to be. Let me spell it out for you.

Structural steel loses HALF its axial strength at around 1200 degrees. Ok, so take a typical ofice fire, like some have stated, yes, the over-strength factors should accomodate for the new lack of capacity, BUT, now consider that almost half of the wtc exterior steel was destroyed by the plane and then the damage to the concrete core, and then the complete annihilation of 5 floors in the wtc and the loss of fire proofing by the exlosion and the fact that the water lines were blown to bits and no firemen, so a raging inferno etc.....

Come on people, isnt it blatantly obvious to you, or just someone like me who has a degree in this and works on this stuff?

Lastly, let me ask you why you think the wtc should have fallen over to the side, instead of straight down? Do you realize that gravity acts DOWNWARD!!!!. You would need a substantial amount of lateral force to make the wtc fall over to the side. If you watch the collapse of wtc south, you can clearly see how the top of the building starts to fall over in the exact direction of the plane impact area, where the collaspe initiates.

I cant believe how you would not think otherwise. As for all your other conspiracy theories, i cant comment on those, other than to say, whatever.

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse, from the debris that shot outward to the sides, imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

I could go on and on and on, but i just get the impression that those conspiracy people will never take the facts into consideration, only to make their theories sound good.

I can answer questions about engineering all day, so if you want to challenge me on that subject fine, but for asking me about why, who when etc, dont bother.

Train

Actually this is one of the better things yet to add to the case and it's worthy of looking at further, so a big thanks to BigTrain on this one

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse, from the debris that shot outward to the sides, imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse, from the debris that shot outward to the sides, imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

And when that moving mass of solid liquid comes to a rest it acts like a solid mass, unlike a tsunami which destroys then retreats. So could it be argued the solid mass could prop up whatever it takes out?

Originally posted by BigTrain
Structural steel loses HALF its axial strength at around 1200 degrees.

1112 Fahrenheit, I guess you mean, or around 600 C. Steel will glow in broad daylight at those temperatures.

Ok, so take a typical ofice fire, like some have stated, yes, the over-strength factors should accomodate for the new lack of capacity, BUT, now consider that almost half of the wtc exterior steel was destroyed by the plane

Less than 15% of the perimeter columns were taken out in either building in the impacted regions. See the FEMA Report for more information; sections 2.2.1.1 for WTC1 and 2.2.2.2 for WTC2.

and then the damage to the concrete core,

The cores consisted of multiple steel columns.

and then the complete annihilation of 5 floors in the wtc

Sources for this?

If less than 15% of the perimeter columns were taken out in the impacted regions, I think you can imagine how much an exaggeration it is to assert 5 whole floors were lost by either the planes or the fires.

and the loss of fire proofing by the exlosion and the fact that the water lines were blown to bits and no firemen, so a raging inferno etc.....

In an open atmosphere, with no pre-heating conditions or anything else to boost a hydrocarbon fire over its 825 C max (excluding flashovers), I don't see how you can imagine any "raging inferno," fireproofing or no, firemen or no.

Note that the smoke turned black coming from both towers after the jet fuel burned away, too. That means the fires had a poor fuel/air ratio, which definitely isn't going to provide you with the max temp of 825 C or so in open atmosphere. Right? You can't seriously expect anywhere near a maximum burn when the fire isn't making good use of its fuel at all.

So, with, say, fires between 700C - 800C, how is steel going to be heated to 600C? Be reasonable. A lot of heat is being lost in the air, carried away by soot-rich smoke, and absorbed by the concrete slabs, office materials, etc. And you must know that steel conducts heat excellently, right?

So then what realistic numbers can you imagine regarding the heating of those steel columns? It surely isn't going to be near the temperature of the fire itself, as that would defy laws of thermodynamics. Heat is always lost when the energy is being transferred, even if the steel is sitting in the fire, let alone there being air blowing, and concrete and office materials, and the steel conducting heat away from the source.

Come on people, isnt it blatantly obvious to you, or just someone like me who has a degree in this and works on this stuff?

Maybe you have a degree in engineering, but you apparently don't know much about the WTC.

Lastly, let me ask you why you think the wtc should have fallen over to the side, instead of straight down?

I thought you didn't worry about how buildings fell?

This is more of a physics question. And the reason is because there would be less resistance in open air, than in thousands of tons of steel and concrete. It's a pretty simple concept: air is less resistant than tons of steel and concrete.

Do you realize that gravity acts DOWNWARD!!!!.

So when you drop a ball onto a car, will that ball go straight through the car, or roll off the hood?

It's the same concept, dude. Gravity forces objects inwards, but gravity is weaker than the other forces at work here, mainly the forces that keep objects from going through each other. I think that's electromagnetism but I could be mistaken, as it's been a while. Nonetheless, gravity is not the strongest force here.

You would need a substantial amount of lateral force to make the wtc fall over to the side.

To the contrary; you would need more force to make it fall through steel and concrete than air. Are you sure you have a degree, dude?

If you watch the collapse of wtc south, you can clearly see how the top of the building starts to fall over in the exact direction of the plane impact area, where the collaspe initiates.

Yeah, and this is another problem: loss of angular momentum. Look to Newton's laws of motion, in which laws of momentum are founded. You should find a problem in the fact that the leaning just stops.

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse,

Evidence?

imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

Maybe at a few hundred miles per hour, but not at the freaking speed of gravity or slower.

We would probably be talking about gases here anyway, unless there is some solid in particular that you had in mind as blowing out the windows as the building began to fall.

Originally posted by BigTrain

Originally posted by promomag

I'll ask again.... does anyone here know how a skyscraper is engineered and know the contents of a fully housed and occupied skyscraper? Or, do any of you work in a skyscraper currently or have worked in a skyscraper?

Anyone?

I cant believe how you would not think otherwise. As for all your other conspiracy theories, i cant comment on those, other than to say, whatever.

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse, from the debris that shot outward to the sides, imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

I could go on and on and on, but i just get the impression that those conspiracy people will never take the facts into consideration, only to make their theories sound good.

I can answer questions about engineering all day, so if you want to challenge me on that subject fine, but for asking me about why, who when etc, dont bother.

Train

This is all nice but if you haven't seen the blue prints for the buildings in question then you are also making assumptions here.

We were told the buildings were designed to withstand a full on crash of a certain older type of aircraft.. care to comment on the implications of that?

Lastly, and not talked about here to my knowledge, how much damage was done to all the neighbouring buildings due to the problems in the WTC complex disaster. You may not know the answer to this of course but would we not expect a lot of insurance claims in a natural disaster as this? How much damage was done to external buildings in the area.

I still do not see any motive for WTC7 to be deliberately taken down and covered up.

If this was done deliberately, why not just say that it was structurely unsafe and it needed to be imploded as soon as possible? What would be the need to do this covertly?

Why take the risk to do it covertly?

I mean the official word could come out that the building was unsafe and could have been taken out before anyone had time to question it. There surely was enough going on that day to keep everyone occupied.

Maybe some of you don't like how the building went down, but I do not see any dark mysterious agenda here.

Its hard to explain this without pictures, but bare with me. The plan layout of the wtc towers consisted of 1 acre of usable office space and all open air, that is huge first of all. To get this requirement, they used a tube design, instead of designing buildings like all others, with columns throughout like in the sears tower and empire state building, they chose to use the outer walls as both gravity members and as lateral force resisting members. Then they had a concrete core which housed the elevators staircases water lines, etc etc.

If you have read any of the collapse reports, you would see that the angle clips that held the floors to the exterior walls, were the likely first mode of failure as it is easier to heat smaller steel elements than larger ones. The more material you have the harder it is to heat it up. Not to mention that when I said 5 floors destroyed i meant that the size of the plane coupled with the impact and blast took out a maximum of 5 floors therefore creating a massive interior lateral weak point .

And lets go back to the 600C debate here, maybe it is you who doesnt understand what they are talking about because structural steel, which is not always the same strength due to alloy changes, hence 40 ksi, 60 ksi, 75 ksi steel, etc, A992 and so on, so your statement of 1112 degrees as an exact number is false, but that it only takes a 300 degree difference in temperature to warp a steel beam, add this into your loss of axial capacity and include P-delta deflection, you have no chance of standing up.

Even a 1-inch out of plum deflection can reduce axial capacity greatly. So back to the design. Let;s not forget here that each building weighed more than half a million tons. thats more than 5 nimitz class aircraft carriers! So now you have this massive weak point in the top 1/3 of wtc south and therefore about 200,000 tons of building above the impact point (Guessing weight).

Once this mass starts going, the resistance you mention actually PREVENTS the builging from toppling over due to the design of the building. The exterior walls hold the floors inside the building as they crumble on top of each other, and after the floors go, these walls are shoved outward, as can be seen by ALL videos, how the upside down mushroom cloud gets bigger on the way down, its from the exterior walls being SHOVED outward by the falling floors. So, to recap the collapse, the floors give way first, pancaking on top of each other, causing the demolition style smoke you see running down the building. These floors are what provided the exterior walls with their lateral strength. As the floors went, the exterior columns became longer, their effective lengths increased extremely fast and then they buckled, all this happening within a second. Thats when the upper mass of the building came crashing down, and now you have no resistance, excpet for the already tumbling mass below. I hope this can be visualized without drawings. If you have the collpase videos on your computer, i recommend watching them right after you read this.

And im not sure what someone else was talking about when they said only wtc 1-2-7 were destroyed, when 1 and 2 collapsed, they destroyed all the other buildings in the complex, 4-5-6. anything else?

One more thing, nobody seems to mention that one sept 11th, the wtc towers had 20% of their design capacity in WIND loads acting on them, add this to their deflection and come on, im just glad they held for 45 minutes for the people to get out.

Train

if the building(s)*the wtc buildings* were indeed brought down by explosives, no one would be able to get out, a while back on the history channel on modern marvels i was watching something about demolition with explosives and when they have a building wired up, there are wires running all over the building crisscrossing and what not, and explosives are packed into every beam, ill explain a little better..........hole drilled,explosive planted,rest of hole filled with an explosive puttywith a wire protruding, this wire connects to the main fuse wire which runs down the middle of the floor(not on the floor it is suspended in the air about 3 or 4 feet off the floor), so every explosive is connectied to this main wire and that is why they criss cross and everything like i said, also they wrap some areas of the buildings with i think kevlar to protect outside areas from flying debris, also they dont only wire up one floor, they have to wire up every single floor in the way i just explained.

What i think silverstein meant by "pull it" is he probably meant to pull the firefighters out and halt all the recue attempts in that building.

As for the two towers i dont think they had explosives in them either, they were a tube structure meaning all the support was straight down the middle, along with the stairwells and elevators, sprinklers sytem's water pipes and pretty much everything for the building, well on another show(it was about the WTC)they showed the floorplan of one of the floors in the building then they had a picture of the plane type that hit the wtc(i cant remember the type of plane, it was on a clear plastic sheet, like the ones they use for overhead projectors, and it was an above view of the plane)well anyway the plane was pretty much the length of the floor, so hitting it the way it did could successfully knock out all the sprinkler water and the main beams(in the center of the building)then at impact when the fuel ignited eventually the beams got weak and gave and each floor collapsed onto the other

big train explained better than me, but its pretty much everything i meant

[edit on 26-3-2006 by blackhumvee113]

BigTrain - while I find most of what you say completely plausible with regard to WTC1&2, I still find WTC7 to be very confusing. I doubt very much that flying debris from 1&2 would damage the core structure so badly, causing such a catastrophic collapse.

You also have to remember that many extremely intelligent and qualified people have a problem with the official story, and while I respect your credentials, I'm not going to take your word as gospel. Sorry However, it's great to have experts posting on this subject so keep it up

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by BigTrain
Structural steel loses HALF its axial strength at around 1200 degrees.

1112 Fahrenheit, I guess you mean, or around 600 C. Steel will glow in broad daylight at those temperatures.

Ok, so take a typical ofice fire, like some have stated, yes, the over-strength factors should accomodate for the new lack of capacity, BUT, now consider that almost half of the wtc exterior steel was destroyed by the plane

Less than 15% of the perimeter columns were taken out in either building in the impacted regions. See the FEMA Report for more information; sections 2.2.1.1 for WTC1 and 2.2.2.2 for WTC2.

and then the damage to the concrete core,

The cores consisted of multiple steel columns.

and then the complete annihilation of 5 floors in the wtc

Sources for this?

If less than 15% of the perimeter columns were taken out in the impacted regions, I think you can imagine how much an exaggeration it is to assert 5 whole floors were lost by either the planes or the fires.

and the loss of fire proofing by the exlosion and the fact that the water lines were blown to bits and no firemen, so a raging inferno etc.....

In an open atmosphere, with no pre-heating conditions or anything else to boost a hydrocarbon fire over its 825 C max (excluding flashovers), I don't see how you can imagine any "raging inferno," fireproofing or no, firemen or no.

Note that the smoke turned black coming from both towers after the jet fuel burned away, too. That means the fires had a poor fuel/air ratio, which definitely isn't going to provide you with the max temp of 825 C or so in open atmosphere. Right? You can't seriously expect anywhere near a maximum burn when the fire isn't making good use of its fuel at all.

So, with, say, fires between 700C - 800C, how is steel going to be heated to 600C? Be reasonable. A lot of heat is being lost in the air, carried away by soot-rich smoke, and absorbed by the concrete slabs, office materials, etc. And you must know that steel conducts heat excellently, right?

So then what realistic numbers can you imagine regarding the heating of those steel columns? It surely isn't going to be near the temperature of the fire itself, as that would defy laws of thermodynamics. Heat is always lost when the energy is being transferred, even if the steel is sitting in the fire, let alone there being air blowing, and concrete and office materials, and the steel conducting heat away from the source.

Come on people, isnt it blatantly obvious to you, or just someone like me who has a degree in this and works on this stuff?

Maybe you have a degree in engineering, but you apparently don't know much about the WTC.

Lastly, let me ask you why you think the wtc should have fallen over to the side, instead of straight down?

I thought you didn't worry about how buildings fell?

This is more of a physics question. And the reason is because there would be less resistance in open air, than in thousands of tons of steel and concrete. It's a pretty simple concept: air is less resistant than tons of steel and concrete.

Do you realize that gravity acts DOWNWARD!!!!.

So when you drop a ball onto a car, will that ball go straight through the car, or roll off the hood?

It's the same concept, dude. Gravity forces objects inwards, but gravity is weaker than the other forces at work here, mainly the forces that keep objects from going through each other. I think that's electromagnetism but I could be mistaken, as it's been a while. Nonetheless, gravity is not the strongest force here.

You would need a substantial amount of lateral force to make the wtc fall over to the side.

To the contrary; you would need more force to make it fall through steel and concrete than air. Are you sure you have a degree, dude?

If you watch the collapse of wtc south, you can clearly see how the top of the building starts to fall over in the exact direction of the plane impact area, where the collaspe initiates.

Yeah, and this is another problem: loss of angular momentum. Look to Newton's laws of motion, in which laws of momentum are founded. You should find a problem in the fact that the leaning just stops.

The wtc 7 tower fell straight down because the bottom stories were smashed to hell from the wtc collapse,

Evidence?

imagine pouring water out of a glass and seeing what happens when it hits the ground, it rockets outward, and anyone who is familiar with physics knows that fast moving solids act as a liquid.

Maybe at a few hundred miles per hour, but not at the freaking speed of gravity or slower.

We would probably be talking about gases here anyway, unless there is some solid in particular that you had in mind as blowing out the windows as the building began to fall.

There is a video in here somewhere that shows how the tilting of the tower as it was falling and then stopped and fell straight down. It was explained how that violated Newton's 3 laws of motion. We all know the first, that which is in motions tends to stay in motion. I wish I had it handy, there are so many great videos out on this. It is very apparent that the official story believers just flat out refuse to watch these videos. Plausible deniability at work here? Disinformation specialists?


Another great post Bsbray...already voted you way above so cant do it again.