"The governments view is just a conspiracy theory too. There's no proof to what they've told us."
Just that Bin Laden and Zawahiri have publicy boasted about the successful (in their eyes) plot.
" .. explain how they could fall at the rate of gravity"
Answer, how about gravity
".. all I'm doin' is asking questions."
The standard response when challenged
"If I turn my propane camp stove on for like four hours, like shouldn't the grates melt but they don't do they."
Yeah I know, when I put my cast iron frying pan on the stove it too doesn't melt. Well bonehead, ever seen a blacksmith - apparently not.
".. 9/11 - 4,000 people died that day"
Idiot - roughly 3,000 people died.
"You can try to out yell me"
Says the bonehead as he out yells the hosts.
I only wish these cretins would answer the very simple question - how does a government keep a conspiracy quiet when said conspiracy would of necessity involve many hundreds and likely thousands of participants.
The whole "steel doesn't melt in fires" requires a bit more explanation that what is usually given.
A blacksmith, much like every other application in which metal is melted, uses a bellows to provide sufficient oxygen to the fire to get hot enough to make metal workable by hand.
Rosie, Jesse, et al would actually be close to correct if they stated that it was the first time that steel was melted by a fire fed by ambient air.
Of course, melting isn't what happened. The heat that was created simply weakened the possibly damaged beams enough for them to buckle under the load which they were designed to carry. At that point in time, the building failed locally and gravity took over.
The upper section of the north tower was approximately 60 million kg. Let's call a story 3.3 m and gravity 10 m/s^2 for convenience and figure out the energy released when the top part dropped a story: about 2000 megajoules.
Let's then do a quick conversion on that number to something people might find a bit more illuminating:
Half a ton of TNT. Per story.
"It looked like an explosion!".... No shit.
Also let's quickly discuss the "rate of gravity", which I believe I heard Jesse refer to as the "speed of gravity" in another clip.
Gravity is an unrelenting 9.8m/s^2. If the tower fell at that rate, the very top of the tower would have hit Mach 3 before impact. But it didn't, and wouldn't because of air resistance at the very least, and guess what: You couldn't see the difference anyway so the whole topic is dumb.
The lesson to be learned is not to confuse "dropping quickly" with freefall.
Dara: In addition to your comment - regarding "steel:
"Strength loss for steel is generally accepted to begin at about 300ºC and increases rapidly after 400ºC, by 550ºC steel retains about 60% of its room temperature yield strength. This is usually considered to be the failure temperature for structural steel. However, in practice this is a very conservative assumption; low loads, the insulating effects of concrete slabs, the restraining effects of connections etc. mean that real failure temperatures can be as high as 750ºC or even higher for partially exposed members." [External Link]
The conditions for a higher temperature failure rate include:
low loads
insulation (partial at least) from heat
structural integrity
The twin towers met none of those conditions after being struck by the two planes. Additional background for those interested:
"Hot finished carbon steel begins to lose strength at temperatures above 300°C and reduces in strength at steady rate up to 800°C. The small residual strength then reduces more gradually until the melting temperature at around 1500°C. This behaviour is similar for hot rolled reinforcing steels. For cold worked steels including reinforcement, there is a more rapid decrease of strength after 300°C." [External Link]
Dara,
How did you get Mach 3 as your velocity calculation for the top of the tower before impact?
Additionally, see the Journal of Metals, here: [External Link]
The money quote: "Thus, the failure of the steel was due to two factors: loss of strength due to the temperature of the fire, and loss of structural integrity due to distortion of the steel from the non-uniform temperatures in the fire."
The idea that the beams "melted" has always been a straw-man, and I'd be amazed that people still pushed it, except that I'm resigned to the fact that people in general aren't critical thinkers.
Geoff:
Good eye. Mach 0.3 (~100 m/s)is the correct answer for 9 seconds of freefall(400m).
First it starts with rounding gravity from 9.8 to 10, then all of a sudden you're supersonic...
Why are greater and greater numbers of normal looking and sounding individuals so easly rooked into silly, easy to debunk conspiracy theories?
It's just so stupid.
Dara
"Gravity is an unrelenting 9.8m/s^2."
Could you change that to something like "Acceleration of an object due to Gravity is an unrelenting 9.8m/s^2."
Cheers
"Gravity is an unrelenting 9.8m/s^2."
On Earth.
Dara... "Gravity is an unrelenting 9.8m/s^2." , true. To more places of precision, though, it holds at exactly sea level over *some* parts of the equator. Changes [slightly] with altitude, latitude, a bit with longitude and with subsurface structure. [Worden Gravimeter time...] But yeah, at two places, at low altitudes, it holds. OK, I'm being a smart-ass.
But as we said in skool: There is no such thing as gravity. The world simply sucks.
Ran,
"But as we said in skool: There is no such thing as gravity. The world simply sucks."
Gravity wells...deep!
JM,
Why say with words what you can say with units?
Ran,
That's why I didn't use more significant digits.
and 8's,
You're right, I should have specified for the benefit of the moonbats.
No doubt this guy, fellow AWAer, would have something to say to the Body...
[External Link]