Richard Gage Debates a Member of International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators

So far, I have heard about 15 minutes.

One thing I noticed is Ron is asked about hydrocarbon fires and their temperatures. He avoids the question by derailing it into talking about old style buildings as oppossed to newer ones (8 inch thick concrete vs. 4 inch thick).

www.ldeo.columbia.edu... Now why did that one work? I REALLY need to figure this out.

ANy hints?

[edit on 15-11-2007 by Haroki]

Originally posted by Haroki
www.ldeo.columbia.edu...

Read this and prove Labtop wrong. No one has as of yet.

www.studyof911.com...

Originally posted by Haroki
You're the one starting with a theory - controlled demolition - and the proof for you is the 15 and 22 second fall time, which you say is too fast.

No, I don't. I think the moment of inertia is not enough, but regardless of what I think, you don't have any evidence to support what you believe, for the same reason: NIST never released the structural documents and no one has ever shown any calculations from those documents, finding the figures one would actually need to accurately model what happened. Also, one would have to prove the theoretical collapse mechanism, because NIST never bothered to do that, either, and it's never been verified in a lab.

And the proof it is too fast - is because there's controlled demolition

If this is what you think I'm saying, then you really have no idea. Then you rant a bit.

I disagree with Judy Wood on many points. I don't really care what she thinks. She does not consider the core structure or the outer columns in her model, either.

Your arguments about how "pancaking" is only valid if the collapse begins on the first floor, which we can all agree it didn't.

Come on, man, I said the "pancaking" has to start with ONE floor (to initiate the "pancaking", do you know what "pancaking" in this case means?), NOT all of the above floors + perimeter columns + core structure and everything else above the impact site failing simultaneously. Visualize this in your head, if you know the structure of the building (look at pictures, diagrams). You apparently don't understand that the floors were independently held between the core and exterior columns. Really, and this is the third time I've said this (and I don't know whether it's going over your head or what but I can only imagine), the TRUSSES that held up the floors (over 20 probably at least on each floor) were mostly independent of each other too. Why would they all fail at the same time when they all had completely different sets of bolts connecting them directly to the columns, and why would they fail at different locations simultaneously?

Go here:wtc.nist.gov... and scroll down to page 27. It gives a very detailed explanation about load transfer through the hat truss, thermal lengthening/shortening of various pieces of that complicated building. That expains WHY, and how, once the limits of the buildings ability to transfer load - the secret why it was initially able to stand the plane impacts - global collapse initiated, resulting in 25-odd floors impacting the floor below. Cuz with that amount of monentum - remember that one - I think the load bearing ability of a single floor, which is what I believe you have been asking for, -apparently, even though those calcs are available - you'll see why Dr Green's calcs are now valid. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.....

Do you know what a free body diagram is? Have you ever had to work one?

Hey, do you really not know why I keep saying all the floors wouldn't suddenly fall in one big stack on top of another single floor, in one instant? Think about it. What started moving first and how did the movement spread? Had to start somewhere, didn't it? I want to see if it's at all possible for you to comprehend why so many floors above wouldn't just break off all at once and smash simultaneously into a single floor below:






The plane crash created asymmetrical damage. Starting with only that and fire, how do you get all of those places in the steel to suddenly fail at the same time? Think about it. What do you have to do, to make all those connections break at the same time, to make a symmetrical collapse? Movement has to start somewhere, and I think we'd agree the initiating movement would be downwards, so wouldn't some local part of a floor (the first place to move, to fail) fall first and cause all of the other failures to ripple outwards from if, if they were related to it at all?

Have you ever had physics? You know a common 101 problem might force you to conceptualize how bodies will move in relation to each other if you drop them from a free-fall from different distances at the same time, or even what conditions would have to exist for this to happen in the first place. I have no idea how you can imagine them as hitting something simultaneously, unless you think the collapses started from the roof. Less than 15% of either the perimeter or core columns were knocked out during the impacts on the affected floors and the safety factors for either must have required around 50% at least just to approach the yield strength, which is the point at which permanent deformations start to occur in the steel (not even when some magical free-fall starts, because all of these parts were solidly connected with bolts and welds). What does that mean to you? It's the reason the buildings really withstood the plane impacts, and is obvious, and no "secret": they were built stronger than they had to be. They were "over-engineered." This is the concept of the "safety factor" or "reserve strength" in engineering.


Btw, if NIST is your source, you've contradicted them pretty severely by now. They don't support pancake theory, said this in an FAQ they released August of last year, and they never analyzed the global collapses or came up with any real mechanisms for how failures propagated. They only asserted a hypothesis as to what exactly started the collapses, and they didn't even test it.

[edit on 15-11-2007 by bsbray11]

reply to post by Griff


Sure, he wants to imply that there are some ENORMOUS explosives used to bring down 7, and is saying that the time line is off to prove it. Is that a decent summary?

1st, show me a video that has the audio of those huge explosions going off in the second preceeding the collapse. You know, like the ones we hear in any controlled demolition......

Originally posted by bsbray11
the TRUSSES that held up the floors (over 20 probably at least on each floor) were mostly independent of each other too. Why would they all fail at the same time when they all had completely different sets of bolts connecting them directly to the columns, and why would they fail at different locations simultaneously?

Although you are 95% correct, I just wanted people to know that the PBS documentary (I think it was that) wasn't correct IMO either. The trusses would have been connected to the floor slabs. That is what a composite floor system is. The trusses are attatched to a member that extends into the concrete (that the floor pans sit on). So, it being a stiff structure itself, it's my opinion the trusses wouldn't necessarily fail independant of the floor system. On the impact floors they would because the plane would have severed them.

But, I believe you are correct when stating that the floor system wouldn't fail all at once like a sheet of plywood being dropped. It would fail here and there. Making what everyone wants to equate as a freefall (to calculate the kenetic energy...hmm..hhmm. ..Greening) not plausible IMO.

Originally posted by Haroki
Sure, he wants to imply that there are some ENORMOUS explosives used to bring down 7, and is saying that the time line is off to prove it. Is that a decent summary?

1st, show me a video that has the audio of those huge explosions going off in the second preceeding the collapse. You know, like the ones we hear in any controlled demolition......

I didn't say debate me on this. Contact Labtop (he is a member on here also) and prove him wrong. But, just to let you know, he's probably the reason NIST had to fudge their original numbers.

BTW BsBray,

"Moment of Inertia". I see those engineering classes are being put to good use.

reply to post by bsbray11


en.wikipedia.org...

Moment of inertia, also called mass moment of inertia and, sometimes, the angular mass, (SI units kg m2, Former British units slug ft2), is the rotational analog of mass. That is, it is the inertia of a rigid rotating body with respect to its rotation. The moment of inertia plays much the same role in rotational dynamics as mass does in basic dynamics, determining the relationship between angular momentum and angular velocity, torque and angular acceleration, and several other quantities. While a simple scalar treatment of the moment of inertia suffices for many situations, a more advanced tensor treatment allows the analysis of such complicated systems as spinning tops and gyroscope motion.

Ok, this isn't the first time you've used moment of inertia. In an effort to educate myself so we could have a better conversation, I had to look it up, but Wiki defines MoI as involving a spinning mass. Can you point me in another direction here?

reply to post by Haroki


The moment of inertia (or I) is bxh(cubed)/12 for a rectangular element.

It does have everything to do with rotation. But to calculate it, you use the geometry of the member. Say like a rectangular tube. It's easy to see that the missing section's I will align with the solid section's I. But if there is an offset, then the moment of inertia is also offest.

Anyway, moment of inertia (I) is also used to calculate deflections of members.

www.neng.usu.edu...

Notice that the equations have EI as the denomenator. That is the stiffness of the member. This explains it better.

Bending stiffness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bending stiffness EI of a beam (or a plate) relates the applied bending moment to the resulting deflection of the beam. It is the product of the elastic modulus E of the beam material and the area moment of inertia I of the beam cross-section.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Haroki


Oh lordy! Why is it people want to argue building collapses when they don't even understand simple physics laws and their meaning?

Not trying to be an ass but how can you even try to debate this when you obviously don't understand the physics involved and just believewhat you read on a de-bunking website, which you believe cause you don't understand it?

That's why I couldn't get a de-bunker to debate the South Tower tilt and rotation problem. If you understood physics you would have to agree that what WTC2 did was impossible without 'help' from another energy source (note I didn't say explosives) other than gravity.

Sry for the rant but this is the problem with the whole 9-11 argument, the de-bunkers don't understand the physics involved, so can no more argue against controlled-demo than a dog...

Hence why moment of inertia is very important. Which is impossible to calculate unless you know the members...i.e. the structural drawings.

Edit: I was responding to myself but the tag didn't work. Or I hit the wrong button.

[edit on 11/15/2007 by Griff]

reply to post by bsbray11


FYI, all the trusses didn't fail at the same time. Many photos are available that show closeups of "hanging" floor slabs. I believe they were taken from a NYPD chopper. In one, there's several places, stacked vertically in the same building where they can be seen "hanging".

I can see some of your frustration now, I think I understand a little better. The specs for the Towers aren't available, correct. You're asking for load carrying capacity for the trusses, correct?

So educate me a little here then - why would the floor capacity mean much? The cores and the exteior columns carry all the vertical load. I belive it was something like 60% for the interior columns. The trusses carry the weight of a single floor and transfers its' weight to the inner/outer columns and stabilize the outer columns and prevent them from bowing in/out.

You also ask that it had to start somewhere - if you actually read the NIST, I believe it goes into detail about that. Like I said, it says how loads were transferred by the hat trusses from the pierced walls to other parts of the structure. It also says that when the load transfer ability was exceeded, global collapse initiated. So tell me what that means to you. To me, that says that the weakened columns gave all at once from the vertical loads. So I guess to answer you, they're saying that the global collapse didn't begin with the floors stripping off and impacting below, starting a chain reaction that also brought down the columns. They're saying that the floors sagged and bowed the exterior columns, reducing their ability to transfer load below it, since a box that bends is weaker. Then they're saying that the severed columns, weakened by heat, actually got shorter from compression loads. Then the whole thing went basically as a unit. To me, it's all about load transfer ability being compromised.

Granted, I understand that you would like to see the engineering specs. I get it. And they used visual evidence of cut exterior columns, hanging floors, exterior wall bowing, and used models to predict the damage to the core columns. And you disagree with that method. I get that too.

Here's something for your viewing pleasure - a closeup of one of the initiations. You can't see anything being ejected at the initiation, like you would expect if explosives were used. If it works...

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
2. A contradiction he makes is that thermite was used because it has no distinctive sounds, that would have been picked up by every camera and video recorder in Manhattan that day, yet in the very next breath he insists that explosives were used that were powerful enough to blast the exterior panels into neat 30 foot sections and to toss them hundreds of feet laterally. Make up your mind sir, was it thermite of was it CD charges!

Not if he was arguing that thermite was used to weaken the structure initially and then explosive charges were used to take out all the remaining supports.

This would make sense as those explosive charges could be explained away as the "building collapsing" - as so many times I've seen that said here.

Originally posted by Haroki
FYI, all the trusses didn't fail at the same time. Many photos are available that show closeups of "hanging" floor slabs.

During the collapse? Show them. I'm not talking about photos of damaged trusses from where the planes hit. That would be completely irrelevant, because we already know the plane damage was asymmetrical.

I can see some of your frustration now, I think I understand a little better. The specs for the Towers aren't available, correct. You're asking for load carrying capacity for the trusses, correct?

No, more of something along the lines of a moment of inertia, and there are multiple meanings of "moment of inertia," and I wasn't talking about angular rotation.

It takes a certain amount of force or energy to deform steel. If you had the structural drawings, you could get a handle on what kinds of shear failures you'd be talking about for a pancake collapse, and how many connections would have to be sheared, and what magnitudes of work (forces applied over dimensions of the member to be sheared). You could also get a good idea of the mass of each floor and the energy it would hit with if it just free-fell 12 feet, and I'm no dynamicist but I bet you could figure out the equivalent to the next floor's moment of inertia, and even model how the columns would behave.

The trusses carry the weight of a single floor and transfers its' weight to the inner/outer columns and stabilize the outer columns and prevent them from bowing in/out.

They did, but the spandrel plates did that for the outer columns, too, and there were at least reinforced floors in certain intervals with I-beams supporting the floors too.

Like I said, it says how loads were transferred by the hat trusses from the pierced walls to other parts of the structure.

This happened immediately after the planes severed the columns. The loads the severed columns were carrying, were immediately shifted onto other columns. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it will only result in failures if there is overloading despite the additional "safety" strength designed into the structure (and "failure" does NOT mean run-away catastrophe, even buckling or warping is considered a failure).

It also says that when the load transfer ability was exceeded, global collapse initiated.

This would be an obvious enough statement to make if it were already determined that this could've happened with fire and plane damage alone. NIST never settled the issue, though, because they never tested their hypothesis, they admitted to playing with model parameters to get the desired results where computer models were used, and they just went into the whole thing with their minds already made up that the collapses were purely the result of fires and planes.

So I guess to answer you, they're saying that the global collapse didn't begin with the floors stripping off and impacting below, starting a chain reaction that also brought down the columns.

I'm familiar with what NIST asserts. Are you typing all this for me or for you?

From their August 2006 FAQ:

Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers.

wtc.nist.gov...


They're talking about failures initiating on the face of a building, like this:





That's from a presentation NIST did with PBS NOVA. It's pretty much NIST's hypothesis, in graphical form. The hypothesis they never tested.

I think I've already asked this, but what's really going to go first, the columns, or the connection?:

To me, it's all about load transfer ability being compromised.

You don't seem to "get" that buildings are made to take abuse and still stand. The impacts hardly rocked the buildings, only severed a small minority of columns, and left the great majority of the building intact. If that's how the buildings took 767 impacts, what's so crippling about hydrocarbon fires that were spewing sooty smoke and roaming around the buildings for less than 2 hours in either case? Do you realize steel (withOUT fireproofing!) is required to function for at least 2 hours in fire? NIST tested the WTC steel and found it to be up to that standard.

Granted, I understand that you would like to see the engineering specs. I get it.

I don't think you do.

And they used visual evidence

Once again, you can't do that. Not like the NIST WTC team did. The whole point of the investigation was supposed to be to explain what caused the towers to collapse. Instead, NIST offered a theory and said, "If this theory is right, then here are the numbers that fit it," rather than getting the numbers first and then figuring out what must have failed and when, and then trying to determine how.

Here's something for your viewing pleasure - a closeup of one of the initiations. You can't see anything being ejected at the initiation, like you would expect if explosives were used.

Why put explosives on the exterior? Blow out the core structure and the whole thing looks like its falling on its own from the outside.

reply to post by Sublime620


Sublime... he stated that the FDNY heard...thermite.

If it were a mixture of both explosive devices and thermite..you STILL would have heard the explosions. Please see the thread I created with a video Mark Roberts created.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by bsbray11


Now I'm fairly sure that despite your claims otherwise, you've never read much, or none at all of the NIST. But instead are basing much on your views on conclusions given by CT sites.

The hanging floor slabs, away from the plane hits, but in the fire zone, are in the NIST Report. So are close up photos of the outer columns bowed in.

I disagree with your accusation of curve fitting by NIST. Did they ever make a statement about how using hard numbers was difficult to do since many factors couldn't be verified? Things like whether or not floors had pulled off the interior column connection (there's an answer there to one of your q's) and exactly how much damage was done to the core - which had to be modeled, since the engines/landing gear flew out the other side of the building in line with the cores.

Your statement about "sooty fires" is lame. Plastic and carpeting - both contain petroleum prodocts - will produce black smoke even under normal oxygen conditions. So will many other materials. Google it.

No, more of something along the lines of a moment of inertia, and there are multiple meanings of "moment of inertia," and I wasn't talking about angular rotation.

I should have been more clear and said "it also has everything to do with resistance to rotation, movement or deformation".

"Inertia".

Inertia is a non-quantifiable property of matter (not a unit of measurement) by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.

Moment of inertia is a quantifiable property though (usually in inches to the fourth degree) unlike plain inertia.

"moment"

In physics, the moment of force (often just moment, though there are other quantities of that name such as moment of inertia) is a pseudovector quantity that represents the magnitude of force applied to a rotational system at a distance from the axis of rotation. The concept of the moment arm, this characteristic distance, is key to the operation of the lever, pulley, gear, and most other simple machines capable of generating mechanical advantage.

Here's a good description of Inertial Moment.

The moment of inertia of an object about a given axis describes how difficult it is to change its angular motion about that axis.

And here explains the geometry of moment of inertia.

The moment of inertia of an object can change if its shape changes. A figure skater who begins a spin with arms outstretched provides a striking example. By pulling in her arms, she reduces her moment of inertia, causing her to spin faster (by the conservation of angular momentum).

All from Wikipedia.

Originally posted by Haroki
Your statement about "sooty fires" is lame. Plastic and carpeting - both contain petroleum prodocts - will produce black smoke even under normal oxygen conditions. So will many other materials. Google it.

That's actually not the point. Yes, all those will produce black smoke. Do you know what black smoke is? It is unburned carbon coming from the fire. Let me repeat. Unburned carbon. Meaning that it contributes nothing to the temperature of the fire and actually helps wick the heat away from it.

reply to post by Griff


Granted. But it also says that all the claims about "oxygen starved fires" to be unfounded when they base it on the black smoke. It seems like you agree to that ....

It also says that there was plenty of fuel to heat the steel. For example, the WTC2 collapse didn't initiate on the side the plane struck, but rather on the far side corner, where all the office debris got pushed by the plane debris.