Help debunking a 9/11 theory

[Fordama]

The following poorly constructed page claims to show "proof" that the heat generated by the exploding fuel and resulting fires in the WTC was insufficient to weaken the building's steel support.

A while back a friend of mine who works at Boeing doing work with chemical propulsion told me that it wasn't really an issue at all. He's not going to be availabe to me for a couple of weeks so I'm looking for a little help debunking this so-called proof.

My degree was in mathematics, not chemistry or engineering, so combined with the bizaare structure of that page it was hard for me to address it.

Fordama

 

[Mr. Skinny]

There was an entire episode of Nova (PBS) that explored this very thing.

They believe that much of the fireproofing was stripped off the steel members by the debris from the impact of the aircraft.

They said the jet fuel probably burned out very quickly, but that the resultant fire was hot enough to melt critical steel structural members, allowing the collapse to occur.

There is an old thread here about it (if it didn't get pruned).

 

[Bjorn]

Maybe you'll find this article interesting:

A panel of Boston area-based civil and structural engineers convened to discuss the fate of the superskyscrapers, struck by hijacked passenger planes, in front of an overflow audience on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their starkly sobering analyses highlighted the vulnerabilities of ultra-tall buildings to fire and pointed out steps that could be taken to lessen them.

http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/sciam/

 

[NightG1]

So it wasn't the jet fuel but the buildings still came down??? This dosen't sound like a terribly exciting conspiracy theory to me. Does this person offer an alternate explanation as to the cause of the collapse beyond the heat provided by the burning jet fuel? I remember the PBS program Mr. Skinny refers to and their analysis showed a considerable about of blunt force and compression damage to the structure from the aircraft slamming into the buildings in addition to the damage caused by the burning fuel and resulting fire. From what I remember (and Mr. Skinny can correct me) some of the internal steel support structure was destroyed in the impact of the plane. The remaining steel was overbalanced by the increase in distrubuted weight of the upper floors. The fire then caused just enough of the remaining steel supports to soften to allow one floor to collapse into the floor below. After that, it was like dominoes as the cascade of collapsing floors gained speed and mass until the building was on the ground.

I don't think he is taking the physical damage caused by the planes into account -- but then what do I know.

 

[subgenius]

I think a UFO had something to do with it. I remember a thread here about it with a convincing video.

 

[curious]

39,857 x 1,690 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the water vapor from 25° to T° C,
97,429 x 845 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the carbon dioxide from 25° to T° C,
349,680 x 1,038 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the nitrogen from 25° to T° C,
500,000 x 450 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the steel from 25° to T° C,
1,400,000 x 3,300 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the concrete from 25° to T° C.

The assumption that the specific heats are constant over the temperature range 25° - T° C, is a good approximation if T turns out to be relatively small (as it does). For larger values of T this assumption once again leads to a higher maximum temperature (as the specific heat for these substances increases with temperature).

T=280, is that really "relatively small"? With the concretes mass dominating the equation and it's specific heat being 7 times greater than steel I think assuming T is uniform is a big flaw.

While I only have rudimentry knowledge of the subject just using the same data I can come up with a very different result by assuming* uniform energy distributuion instead of uniform temperature.

If you add up the concrete, steel, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapor it has a mass of 2,386,966 kg. The 500,000 kg of steel equals 20.95% of that weight. 20.95% of the 1,364,000,000,000 Joules of energy is 285,758,000,000 Joules. Since 500,000 x 450 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the steel from 25° to T° C we get:

285,758,000,000/(500,000 x 450) +25=T (for the steel)

T=1295 Degrees Celsius.


[size=-2]*By assuming uniform energy distributuion based upon mass I'm oversimplifying but I think it's a good counter argument anyways. [/size]

 

[DaveW]

It also doesn't take into account that things lit on fire burn... like building materials! (ie, he is saying only the jet fuel burned).

I found a little annoying piece of possible misinformation, too: Jet Fuel is (usually) Kerosene-type, but is not kerosene like you put in the camper-style heaters. I don't know how much this affects his calcs for heat input of the fuel, combustion temperature, etc, but it might be another source of error.

 

[Mr. Skinny]

So it wasn't the jet fuel but the buildings still came down??? This dosen't sound like a terribly exciting conspiracy theory to me. Does this person offer an alternate explanation as to the cause of the collapse beyond the heat provided by the burning jet fuel? I remember the PBS program Mr. Skinny refers to and their analysis showed a considerable about of blunt force and compression damage to the structure from the aircraft slamming into the buildings in addition to the damage caused by the burning fuel and resulting fire. From what I remember (and Mr. Skinny can correct me) some of the internal steel support structure was destroyed in the impact of the plane. The remaining steel was overbalanced by the increase in distrubuted weight of the upper floors. The fire then caused just enough of the remaining steel supports to soften to allow one floor to collapse into the floor below. After that, it was like dominoes as the cascade of collapsing floors gained speed and mass until the building was on the ground.

I don't think he is taking the physical damage caused by the planes into account -- but then what do I know.

Night,

I think we are remembering essentially the same things from the program.

IIRC, you are correct, that some of the steel was damaged by the impact, however, I think the buildings had been designed to withstand an aircraft impact (although, perhaps a slightly smaller one).

I also seem to recall that the WTC was a somewhat unconventional (for the day, anyhow) structure that concentrated stresses to the outer skin, allowing more interior space/freedom.

I think they said that some connecting steel at the outer edges began to fail, and caused the outer skin to be unable to support the floors.

Order the Nova tape/CD. It was really quite good, Ford/Night

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

The following poorly constructed page claims to show "proof" that the heat generated by the exploding fuel and resulting fires in the WTC was insufficient to weaken the building's steel support.

A while back a friend of mine who works at Boeing doing work with chemical propulsion told me that it wasn't really an issue at all. He's not going to be availabe to me for a couple of weeks so I'm looking for a little help debunking this so-called proof.

My degree was in mathematics, not chemistry or engineering, so combined with the bizaare structure of that page it was hard for me to address it.

Fordama

Don't even bother. Just smack the idiot to the ground and move on. No matter how much evidence you provide, these idiotic conspiracy loonies will never give up their precious conspiracies. So your wasting your time even gaathering the evidence.

For an example of this in action, see any Rouser2 thread on this board.

 

[Fordama]

Re: Re: Help debunking a 9/11 theory

Thanks for the help guys. Some very useful stuff.

Don't even bother. Just smack the idiot to the ground and move on. No matter how much evidence you provide, these idiotic conspiracy loonies will never give up their precious conspiracies. So your wasting your time even gaathering the evidence.

For an example of this in action, see any Rouser2 thread on this board.

You're probably right. The way I look at it though, while I may not convince the "true believers" to come back to reality, I can influence fence-sitters and others who may get swayed easily.

The alternative theory was that the building was rigged with explosivies. Of course the massive illogic of flying planes into a building rigged for demoltion compleltey escaped them. I detonation of explosives to immediately destroy the buildings and kill tens of thousands.

When I pointed that out they came up with the theory that the government didn't really want a huge loss of life, but a very visible disaster that didn't kill as many people!

Here's what some of them offer as "proof" of demolition.

The mindset is so amazingly similiar to creationists discussing evolution.

Fordama

 

[Kopji]

I for one, would be almost relieved to discover that our current government were capable of pulling off such a wildly imaginative deception.

 

[curious]

I for one, would be almost relieved to discover that our current government were capable of pulling off such a wildly imaginative deception.

^Hey, that's a good strategy to try. Do these consipracy nuts really think BushCo is that clever? Surely if they could pull off a deception of the magnitude of 9/11 they wouldn't have had any trouble just planting some WMD's in Iraq to back up the pretext for the war.

 

[Kopji]

Makes me kinda doubt the whole thing without spending even two seconds on the fuel calculations.

Edited to add:
Sheesh, if Bush were this smart, Fahallah would have been the subject of an 'accidental' nuclear explosion at the beginning of the war, and it would have been blamed on Saddham.