progressive collapse of known buildings

[spooked911]

see these examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prwvj-npt5s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmiApjHn4e8&mode=related&search=

What is noteworthy is the order and timing of these collapses. First, the buildings clearly come down in discrete sections, not en masse, or as a block. Second, at best, I count 8-10 stories taking a good five seconds to go all the way down.

Contrast this with the twin towers, where 110 stories went down in 12-15 seconds, in one massive collapse.

I know detractors of demolition will say it has to do with the building construction and so forth. However, the point is that collapses take time to go through each floor.

It is ludicrous to say 110 stories underwent progressive collapse in 15 seconds (max), when buildings one-tenth the size took much longer times when they collapsed.

[zappaman]

1. Hmmmm

How does this relate to rabbit cages...?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x56836

[OnTheOtherHand]

2. so, you're saying that the collapse of the Towers is like no known demolition?

Why, you're quite right about that. ;)

It is ludicrous to say

If you had a sound engineering argument, you wouldn't be reduced to hollow performances of ridicule.

[spooked911]

12. I do have an engineering argument but you apparently need more than that

which I have on my list of things to do but haven't had time to do.

I just thought this comparison was interesting.

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. if you really think so, why not submit it for peer review?

I'm not an engineer, but I've read engineering arguments. I haven't seen that you have one. (Hand-waving along the lines of 'it should take longer to smash through all the floors' doesn't count; that's an unsubstantiated assertion.)

[zappaman]

15. this hasn't been submitted for peer review?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x56836

[OnTheOtherHand]

17. (biting my tongue) n/t

[terrafirma]

3. "...it has to do with the building construction and so forth"

DING DING DING.

Simply amazing how you can willfully ignore even your own words.

[jberryhill]

4. That and a few other things...

[spooked911]

6. such as???

[jberryhill]

7. Nuh-uh.. I'm not telling you how to make mini-nukes

Lord only knows what you'd blow up.

[spooked911]

10. IOW

you don't know

[spooked911]

5. so what about the WTC made it collapse so damn fast?

5 times faster than these collapses?


50 stories in ~5 seconds
vs
10 stories in ~5 seconds


Hmmm?

[terrafirma]

8. Well, in order to answer that

It would help to know how those two buildings you referenced were constructed, what materials were used, etc...

Since you're the king of deducing things strictly from YouTube videos, perhaps you can fill in those blanks.

[spooked911]

11. looks like the buildings in the vids are reinforced concrete columns and slab floor

are you saying reinforced concrete buildings collapse five times slower than steel frame towers?

[terrafirma]

16. Now come on...

You know that more goes into a structure than just "reinforced concrete columns and a slab floor". Was each floor constructed exactly the same way? Using the exact same quantities of the exact same materials?

... You see what I'm getting at?

You want to compare these buildings to the Twin Towers, boiling the argument down to the simplest of terms, while pretending to compare apples to apples.

And nothing could be further from reality.

[William Seger]

14. Baloney

"50 stories in ~5 seconds" would be 1.5 g.

[spooked911]

19. ???

what are you saying? You think the WTC "collapsed" more slowly than 15 seconds?

[William Seger]

20. Huh? No, I'm saying...

... that as usual, your paranoid delusions about controlled demolitions appear to have seriously affected your ability to make accurate observations. We know that more careful researchers have found that the collapses were in the neighborhood of 0.6 g average acceleration -- even David Chandler puts it at 0.67 (although I have no confidence in the accuracy of any of his analyses). But your eyeballed guess of "50 stories in ~5 seconds" would be 1.5 g, which is physically impossible so we know it must be wrong even without considering other estimates. If your eyeballed guess is that inaccurate, comparing it to your other eyeballed guess is pointless, but anyway that guess also appears to be wrong. I can only clearly see about 6 stories of fall in that video before dust obscures everything, but I would put that at 2.5 seconds, which would be an acceleration of about 0.7 g.

In short, your claim that the towers collapsed significantly faster than a Verinage demolition is baloney.

[OnTheOtherHand]

22. that would depend on which 50 stories, no?

I don't have the patience to work this out -- it is so painfully irrelevant -- but I think if one chooses the right 50 stories, it may be correct that they collapsed in about 5 seconds. For arbitrarily tall towers, one could estimate an arbitrarily large number of stories that collapsed in about 5 seconds.

It's hard to tell whether that is spooked's point, but he does have an unusual view of relevance.

[William Seger]

23. Spooked's claim being baloney doesn't depend on which 50 stories

If he meant something other than the first 50 stories, that would just mean his problem was more serious than a bad estimate.

[OnTheOtherHand]

25. yeah, the comparison to verinage is baloney regardless

The part about how many stories fell in 5 seconds, and what acceleration that implies, is open to interpretation. (Of course, that's part of the problem with spooked's arguments: often one can only guess what he actually means.)

[Codeine]

9. Maybe there was a heavy concrete block on top? nt

[cherokeeprogressive]

18. Doesn't there need to be a control group of UNknown buildings for comparison?

Just sayin' (or ASKING, as it were...).

[Rosa Luxemburg]

21. some of the steel core remained while the rest of the building collapsed

then what remained of the steel core seemed to disintegrate! Weird. The buildings could not have been too well built. Did the ground give way or something?

[ryan_cats]

24. I hate to use such an unrelaible source but...

The core didn't disintegrate, it stood for a few seconds and then collapsed from the bottom:


Notice how the water tower is at different heights in each photo. It gives the illusion that the steel just evaporated. What happened is that part of the core stood for a few seconds and then collapsed from the bottom. I saw a video of it and it is really obvious.

The steel isn't turning to dust, it' sinking and since dust is lighter than steel, the dust sticks around. Watch the clip below, it's also from Dr. Wood's site.
You can clearly see the steel collapse, look at different parts. The steel sinks to the ground, the dust sticks around since it is dust particles and it appears that when the spire collapses, more dust comes off of the steel as it sinks to the Earth.


The steel did not disintegrate. Go to Dr. Woods site and tell me she has an idea of what she's talking about:
www.drjudywood.com

She must have spent a fortune designing that site...