Fetzer vs Jones

[JamesB]

In the grand Piano debate , Wood states :



Does she know anything at all about physics? Is she really an engineering PhD ??

But she is not just an engineer now she "specializes in optics in relation to mechanics"!

Actually why isn't Bob Bowman leading the effort? He claims he was head of the Star Wars research program. If anyone would know, it should be him.

 

[CurtC]

In the grand Piano debate , Wood states :

Lets say you drop a billiard ball in a vacuum, no air resistance, so that it can rush up to speed as fast as possible. Then, when it reaches the speed of terminal velocity, it remains that speed from thereafter.

Does she know anything at all about physics? Is she really an engineering PhD ??

To be as fair as possible to poor Judy, that quote is taken out of context, and this was worded poorly, but her point was at least valid. She's trying to calculate how long it would take an object whose terminal velocity is 40 m/s, to fall 417 m. The constant-speed part is easy, and for the part of the fall that it was accelerating, she takes the conservative simplification and models it as an acceleration in vaccuum, followed by the constant-speed fall for the rest of the way. This yields a fall time of 12.5 seconds (well, she carries it out to the tens of microseconds, but we're being nice here), which disproves Jones' claim that an object falling could reach the ground in 11 seconds.

 

[CurtC]

And for the eleventy-billionth time, the towers did not fall in a freestream, and were therefore not subject to drag effects. Totally different mechanics.

To be pedantic, the towers did have to push a fair amount of air out of their way, but the fact that each tower weighed something like a billion pounds makes the air resistance completely negligible for calculating the fall time, so figuring a vaccuum is perfectly accurate.

 

[R.Mackey]

To be pedantic, the towers did have to push a fair amount of air out of their way, but the fact that each tower weighed something like a billion pounds makes the air resistance completely negligible for calculating the fall time, so figuring a vaccuum is perfectly accurate.

And again, it's a subtle point... but you cannot treat the contribution from air as drag, so comparison to vacuum or not is misleading.

The energy loss from towers expelling air will be hard to calculate. Some of it will be pushed out quite slowly -- deep down in the structure as collapse progresses -- and energy loss from this process will be virtually zero. Only the faster exhalation, that which creates lots of turbulence, will resemble a drag calculation. Overall, the drag equation is a poor model. That's the point I keep making, and not a single Troother has gotten it yet.

In any event, this energy loss will be negligible compared to the energy needed to destroy the structure. The effective ballistic coefficient of the structure will be, naturally, huge.

 

[Anti-sophist]

Gawd, Fetzer is truly a buffoon. He is so wrapped up in wanting to be right that he changes his argument while still using the same basic lie.

Would someone please post the page numbers for the 10 and 9-second collapses of the WTC towers? Even when faced with a gross error on his part, he establishes a death grip on another lie.

From http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2.

Please note that is _not_ the time it took for the top of the building to reach the ground. They compare freefall speed from the top of the tower to freefalling debris from the collapse zone, and wonder why the numbers don't match.

Truthers ignore this willfully, as best as I can tell.

 

[tsig]

And how many times have we seen Fetzer raving on in his sputtering fashion about how thermite, er, um, superthermite, er, um, thermate was absolutely proven, proven I tells ya, to be what brought down the towers?

And now, one of his lengthy diatribes to Jones from the links above, he says to Jones,



<cue Wicked Witch of the West voiceover here>
They're melllllltttttting....

Now if you change superthemite with supertermites you'll have a theory I could buy into