Let's say you WANTED to do controlled demolition of the WTC towers:

[spooked911]

what would it look like and how would it be different from how the buildings came down on 9/11?

(Obviously, you wouldn't have pre-demolition plane crashes, fires and people in the buildings. The question is: once the towers started coming down, how would they look different from what happened on 9/11?)

[catnhatnh]

1. Well....

....if you or I planned it they would probably appear vacant....

[spooked911]

2. So-- no one can say how a controlled demolition job of the twin towers

would look different from what happened on 9/11 (with the exceptions already noted, of course)?

Could "real" controlled demo have brought the towers down any better?

[LARED]

3. OkeeDokee

Get all the office stuff out, strip the interior of as much friable stuff as possible to keep the dust down

Remove as much redundant structure as possible to weaken the building.

The demolition charges would start at the bottom in the core and work up (just like one sees in nearly all building demolitions)

So with this very sketchy plan the differences would be a lot less dust and debris, and the building would collapse from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

[spooked911]

4. if you started from the bottom, isn't there a high chance that

the towers would tip as they came down?

[hack89]

6. No

where is the lateral force to overcome gravity and the weight of the towers?

[spooked911]

8. Puh-leeze.

you're telling me if the charges at the base don't go off properly that the tower won't tip?

[janedoe]

10. The timing would need to be perfect.

Also, the entire building would need to be perfectly symmetrical.
I think we've all seen that this is not true.

[Make7]

12. How did they do it for WTC7?

Was WTC7 "perfectly symmetrical?"

-Make7

[janedoe]

13. Please refer to the topic of this thread.

"Let's say you WANTED to do controlled demolition of the WTC towers:"

It is my understanding that WTC1 and WTC2 are the "WTC towers."

[Make7]

16. Let me explain my question in more detail.

LARED wrote: "The demolition charges would start at the bottom in the core and work up..."

To which spooked911 replied by questioning whether or not the towers might tip over if something went wrong.

Following that line of reasoning you wrote:

janedoe's Post #10:
The timing would need to be perfect. Also, the entire building would need to be perfectly symmetrical.

So I am wondering how they were able to make WTC7, which was not a perfectly symmetrical building, collapse from the bottom up?

If they could do it successfully for WTC7, then why would it not be possible for WTC1 and WTC2?

-Make7

[janedoe]

18. Please stay with the topic of this thread.

[Make7]

21. If you don't want to answer the question, ....

...might I suggest that you just not reply at all instead of suggesting that I am not sufficiently staying on topic according to you.

Or why not say that you don't want to embarrass me or cause me unhappiness? That seem to work well for you the last time.

-Make7

[janedoe]

24. Last time

Last time, I said I didn't want to address your questions because I didn't want to embarrass you. You were defending LARED's model (even though he had already admitted it was wrong), and demanded that I should agree that LARED's model is correct (as well as a list of other incorrect statements you made). LARED also acknowledged it should be a calculus problem, but he had over simplified it and had made a mistake in his simplification.

You may have noticed that I responded to his post (in which he revealed his "model") within a minute of reading it, and within 9 minutes of when he posted it. I immediately saw his error and was trying to give him the opportunity to correct it. Hint: "What height did you use?" I also asked why he chose a fudge factor of 1/3. If he had read my post#55 and thought about what I was asking, I'm sure he would have wanted to go right back, then, and make corrections to his post. But, instead, you answered my post, defending LARED's calculations and questioned my algebraic ability.

Did you become an engineer without passing any algebra courses? Can't you figure out the height used in his calculation with the information given? Not very impressive.

-Make7

You may want to review my post#55.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=49830

You may also want to review the several posts I made after that, including post#87 and #91.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=50155

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=50181

:hi:

[Make7]

31. Well, two out of four is more than I expected.

Once again, I feel I should preface this with what LARED said before presenting his "model":

This is a very crude energy balance. Not meant to be rigorous in any way shape or form; only meant to get a feel for the forces at work.

At this point he presented his equations and used algebra to arrive at a solution.

janedoe wrote:
LARED also acknowledged it should be a calculus problem...

Actually what LARED said was:

The model simply compares the transformation of energy from potential to kinetic and work energy. And yes, of course developing a continuous function describing this relationship would be quite useful.

He did not say his "very crude energy balance" should be a calculus problem, he said it would be useful to develop one using calculus. The fact remains, for that discussion, he was using algebra. So was I. And so were you.

janedoe wrote:
...instead, you answered my post, defending LARED's calculations and questioned my algebraic ability.

Did you become an engineer without passing any algebra courses? Can't you figure out the height used in his calculation with the information given? Not very impressive.

-Make7

How exactly is that response defending LARED's calculations? It is only questioning your ability to solve a simple algebra problem. You were able to come up with the proper answer, so I guess I should apologize - you are able to solve basic algebra problems. And in a later post, you were even successfully able to rearrange the equations LARED originally presented.
____________________

I did a simple spreadsheet analysis of how the rate of acceleration for a given collapse time compares to gravity. Here are the results:

  time of       rate of        compared
 collapse     acceleration    to gravity
-----------------------------------------
 8.2235757     40.4570958     +25.799017%
 9.2235757     32.1601052      +0.000000%
10.2235757     26.1764326     -18.605886%
11.2235757     21.7196895     -32.463872%
12.2235757     18.3113161     -43.062014%
13.2235757     15.6465388     -51.347986%
14.2235757     13.5237930     -57.948542%
15.2235757     11.8054556     -63.291614%
16.2235757     10.3949627     -67.677460%

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I get the same exact results if I use LARED's original equations. Is comparing the theoretical rate of acceleration to gravity not a valid method to see how much force is being used to pull the building to the ground versus the amount of force being used for everything else? (i.e. breaking up the building, overcoming air resistance, etc.)

-Make7

[janedoe]

35. Too bad you can't change the facts

...only your perception of reality.

LARED never presented results for rate of acceleration or changes in gravity.
Your post is dishonest and and does not warrant my time.

Have a good life. :hi:

[Make7]

42. I didn't even realize I was. Show me.

janedoe wrote:
LARED never presented results for rate of acceleration or changes in gravity.

I never said that he did. I said that I did a spreadsheet comparing the rate of acceleration for different collapse times to the rate of acceleration of gravity. Here are the results:

  time of       rate of        compared
 collapse     acceleration    to gravity
-----------------------------------------
 8.2235757     40.4570958     +25.799017%
 9.2235757     32.1601052      +0.000000%
10.2235757     26.1764326     -18.605886%
11.2235757     21.7196895     -32.463872%
12.2235757     18.3113161     -43.062014%
13.2235757     15.6465388     -51.347986%
14.2235757     13.5237930     -57.948542%
15.2235757     11.8054556     -63.291614%
16.2235757     10.3949627     -67.677460%

What I said was that these numbers match the results when using LARED's equations. Try it - I'll even help by posting your thoughtful rearrangement of his equations:

   k= 1 - 2h/(gt²)

____________________

Since you're being so friendly, I'll repeat my hint about your "corrected" figure of 16 seconds for LARED's "model."

   hint

I was hoping we could continue the discussion in the other thread, but here is also fine with me.

:) Make7

[Make7]

34. I'll give you a hint.

hint

[LARED]

15. Isn't it possibe

that if you were starting at the top and charges did not go off properly the building would tip over.

BTW, no matter what the building could not tip over and fall as a unit.

[vincent_vega_lives]

53. It may begin to tip

but it wouldn't get far before disintegrating at a structural level. Most of the towers were empty space.

[philb]

7. The explosions in the basement appear to have been a partial job

But whether you got tipping would depend on the symmetry of what happened at any level it seems. If you take out all the support on the N but not the S, it would tend to tip to N.

[janedoe]

9. What about the timing?

If the charges don't all go off at exactly the same time, wouldn't one side start falling before the other side? And, if this happened at the base, you have a huge amount of angular momentum that you can't reverse.

[vincent_vega_lives]

52. You clearly don't understand the concept.

The buildings were not constructed rigidly enough to support much lateral stresses. Once tipped, they would disintegrate under their own mass, as one tower did during 9-11.

You seem to be thinking of the towers as a much smaller structure with much more relative strength and much less mass, like in that pic someone posted of the tipped building in Japan.

[LARED]

14. No

Gravity has its way no matter what.

[janedoe]

17. Are you referring back to your trash-compactor model, again?

You assumed gravity was all that was required to squash the WTC by placing another one on top of it -- and assuming a safety factor of 1/3.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=50155

Gee... according to your model, it's amazing it ever supported its own weight. Gravity alone would have killed it.

[LARED]

19. janedoe , cut the crap.

You know what you are saying is bullshit. My error was treating the building as a particle rather than a solid body. The only difference is a factor of 1/2 as PE changes from MGH to MGH/2. Which changes the fall time for a thirty percent work energy transfer from 11.2 seconds to 16 seconds. Still well within the observed fall time.

So cut the crap.

Less knowledgeable people may believe your sophistry but you ain't fooling me. If you're really an engineer, you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself why you advance such nonsense.

[pox americana]

23. Speaking of nonsense

you have a disturbingly low standard of accuracy for someone claiming to be an "engineer."

Just an observation.

[spooked911]

28. Hey, LARED-- how's grad school?

[Make7]

20. Please stay with the topic of this thread.

Post #18

[janedoe]

22. The topic is about bringing down the WTC towers.

LARED suggested (post#14) using gravity, "Gravity has its way no matter what. "

With his trash-compactor model, he is right. Using a safety factor of 1/3, the building would come down just with gravity, alone. You wouldn't need to even give it a swift kick!

Perhaps that swift kick is the difference between letting it fall naturally, and choosing to make it fall. And, I believe they would look the same. This addresses the question asked in the initial post, doesn't it?

By the way, how long do you think they would take to fall if you used a safety factor of 5 instead of 1/3? A safety factor of 5 is more realistic of the building's design, don't you think? But, then, LARED's model wouldn't be able to show it could come down in 16 seconds... or even come down at all.

Hey, maybe that's why it went up. But, of course blowing up buildings also makes them go up.

[LARED]

25. Very interesting

posted by janedoe

By the way, how long do you think they would take to fall if you used a safety factor of 5 instead of 1/3? A safety factor of 5 is more realistic of the building's design, don't you think? But, then, LARED's model wouldn't be able to show it could come down in 16 seconds... or even come down at all.

What safety factor? Either you are purposefully misrepresenting what the model defines or you really have no clue.

Which is it?

[janedoe]

26. Question

If it only takes 1/3 of the building's potential energy to crush it, why wasn't it already crushed before 9-11?

[LARED]

27. You're joking right?

That's either a joke or your have just suscessfully answered my question posed in post 25.

BTW, no has said it takes only 1/3 of the building potential energy to crush it. You are once again distorting the issue. The building was not crushed. The guess, read carefully now, guess of 1/3 was a guess to see what happens to the fall time if 1/3 of the available energy when into work energy. IE breaking apart the building as it fell. Breaking something and crushing it are two different things.

[spooked911]

29. Are you really distinguishing between "breaking" and "crushing"?

Gimme a break.

How's grad school, anyway?

[LARED]

30. Yes,

The reason is that within a technical use of the word crush and break, there is a huge difference between the amount of energy needed to break something verse crushing the same object.

Consider a brick. It is fairly easy to break and extremely difficult to crush.

Grad school is fine. I took the summer off, but will be starting again in the fall.

[spooked911]

33. The thing is, the twin towers WERE crushed

"crushed" seem slike a much better word to describe what happened to the towers than "broken".


The towers did not "break".

The towers were crushed, pulverized, smashed, demolished, obliterated, cremated, disintegrated or exploded. Every one of these words is closer to what happened than the towers "breaking".

I assume you've seen the videos of the towers coming down?

Is "broken" really the right word to describe their fall?

[janedoe]

36. LARED makes an excellent point!

LARED's energy model showed it would take 16 seconds to break the building with the available energy.

And, as you pointed out,

The towers did not "break".
The towers were crushed, pulverized, smashed, demolished, obliterated...

So, what would this mean?
According to LARED:

The reason is that within a technical use of the word crush and break, there is a huge difference between the amount of energy needed to break something verse crushing the same object.

When he said, "...a huge difference between the amount of energy..." I assume "crushing" will take much more energy (not less energy). So, where do you suppose that huge amount of additional energy might come from?

I think LARED has just shown us that some other (huge) source of additional energy was required to bring the towers down within 16 seconds. Gravity, alone, could not have done it.

Thanks, LARED!

:nuke:

[LARED]

37. So, what would this mean?

You have provided a truly a pathetic attempt creating a purposefully false argument. Well done as usual.

Is this type of sophistry the best a structural engineer, materials expert and engineering professor can muster? Is it really the best you have? Really?

Are you Jim Hoffman by any chance, your arguments sound just like his.

[pox americana]

38. Don't worry, David Horowitz is defending your academic freedom. n/t

[LARED]

41. Another brilliant rebuttal cloaked as an incoherent statement. (n/t).

[spooked911]

39. Sophistry? She is making a very clear argument.

You already said crushing takes more energy than breaking.

Didn't you also calculate it took 16 seconds to "break" the buildings using gravity?

Ergo, it follows logically that to crush the buildings in 16 seconds it takes more energy than can be supplied by gravity.

What part of this doesn't make sense?

I know-- you say the buildings really were "broken", not "crushed".

But let's get real here.

The buildings were CRUSHED.

Are these word games? Yes.

But isn't that what this is all about? It seems you are devoting a significant portion of your life to refuting the notion that the twin towers were brought down by demolition. Why you choose to do this, only you can say. I'm curious though, how seriously do you ever take our arguments?

[LARED]

40. You must be kidding

You are buying into janedoes sophistry that because she thinks the building was crushed rather than broken it is now a clear argument for demolition.

Pardon me while I LMAO.


Are these word games? Yes

But isn't that what this is all about?

Hardly. It's about truth. If you want to believe the BS that the WTC was demolished by some evil cabal within the USA, you are free to indulge in fantasies. You are not entitled to redefine reality.


It seems you are devoting a significant portion of your life to refuting the notion that the twin towers were brought down by demolition. Why you choose to do this, only you can say. I'm curious though, how seriously do you ever take our arguments?

Because I want to. Simple. You devote even more of your life advocating a fantasy that the WTC was brought down by demolition among other things. I assume you do that because you want to as well. Or do you have a Messiah complex and are going save mankind by stopping the BFEE.

Regarding your question about if I take our arguments seriously, some are very interesting, but most are not taken seriously. There is no reason to take them seriously

[spooked911]

43. I am curious-- why do you bother with us whacked out CTers?

Why not just leave us to our "messianic" fantasies?

I mean, if I want to waste my time on this, why is it your business to say I am wrong?

I understand this is a public forum and I suppose you get a thrill from the verbal sparring here.

But here's the thing, we are trying to get some justice for what we perceive as a crime.

What exactly is it that you are trying to do? Defend these crimes? Try to convince us they don't exist? Just argue for the sake of arguing?

I suppose you will say you only care about the truth. But I don't see how you will ever see the truth when you are completely fixated on the idea that there was no demolition, that it was impossible.

The whole problem is that you hardly seem like a disinterested party. Rather you seem to be a very strong advocate of the "official story", and it is not clear why.

[Make7]

44. I think you may have answered yourself.

spooked911 wrote:
I mean, if I want to waste my time on this, why is it your business to say I am wrong?

:) Make7

[staticstopper]

46. Good questions

Maybe his/her mind is made up and they know they have the truth and they want to protect it.


That they stay away from making larger political statements makes me wonder....but I guess that is why they don't get into trouble from the

[Christophera]

54. Excellent Logic, But Not Crushed, Expanded, Same Difference

spooked911 has said it very plainly and LARED is basically helping make the point. I find this ironic and it has happened to me.
Boloboffin argued the "falling the wrong way" issue, referring to the tops of the towers, and ended up being right in a small way while delivering me information that proved my point and allowed a complete analysis of both towers and where/how they fell.

http://algoxy.com/psych/9-11scenario.html#anchor1410743

Pulverization is normally done with a crusher, but it can be achieved with high speed/pressure expansion as in, high explosives, if you desire quick results.

[Christophera]

45. The Government Asserts They Were "Faulty Towers".

Wasn't their a murder mystery called faulty towers? A drama. I'd like to read/see that. You never know.

Anyway, the guy that built the steel, Mohawks mostly, put up a web page right after Eager came up with his erroneous truss failure theory. The steel workers had pictures of the floor beams and a searing commentary that stated in simple construction engineering terms that the building had super strength compared to other skyscrapers.

I like the way you phrase this.

The towers were crushed, pulverized, smashed, demolished, obliterated, cremated, disintegrated or exploded. Every one of these words is closer to what happened than the towers "breaking".

And I assert here,

http://algoxy.com/psych/9-11scenario.html

That building it to demolish and placing high explosives in the center of the concrete planes forming the rectangular core, is the only way to properly place and dsitribute the explosives to get the effect we saw.

Bombs blow holes in things. I am ashamed of 9-11 researchers that assert that "bombs" were placed in the towers. The towers did not have "holes" blown in them, they were "wholly" blown up in a uniform continous, high speed series of detonations that were very efficient.

[vincent_vega_lives]

51. If the WTC towers were crushed

they would not have resulted in the tower of scattered debris. They disintegrated at structural connections between the outer walls, floors, and core. The only part of the building that was crushed were the floors and anything between them.

[Christophera]

55. Good Description Of What Happens In The 9-11 Scenario

It almost sounds like you are thinking like I think. Every now and then you come across with a real clear piece of thinking that reflects the actual performance of materials and structure and I recognize it.

Yes it did come apart at the floor beam/box column joints, exterior and interior box columns. There were 2 major explosive areas or directions.

1. The C4 coated rebar of the core.

2. The C4 layer between the corrugated steel panels and the lightweight concrete poured onto it.

I have sources that are not fully credible but do provide explanation for the disintegraton of the structural joints. Other sources are. There are people who remember hearing about forced evacuation of workers from the floors just before they were poured. Anyway, my sources indicate that there were virtual puddles of thick plastic poured around all the interior box columns and at the floor beam joints with the exterior box columns when workers returned following the evacuations.

The delay paths detonated 4 floors at 75 MS intervals, then 40 feet of core, repeating until the 48th where it changes to deal with the 2 floors of mostly concrete where major elevator/mechanical equipemnt was.

This photo below is a core detonation instant. Note the fountains of concrete (dark brown/grey) arcing up and out.



and the below is a series of floors detonating.

[Make7]

32. Using controlled demolition.

LARED did not suggest using only gravity to cause the collapse of the building.

Do you intentionally misinterpret what others write, or do you just not understand?

He was saying that if the demolition started at the bottom, gravity would cause it to fall straight down.

-Make7

[Make7]

56. I fail to see how you could so completely misunderstand.

janedoe wrote:
By the way, how long do you think they would take to fall if you used a safety factor of 5 instead of 1/3? A safety factor of 5 is more realistic of the building's design, don't you think? But, then, LARED's model wouldn't be able to show it could come down in 16 seconds... or even come down at all.

It is not a "safety factor" or a "fudge factor." That 1/3 represents the ratio of the energy expended by the collapsing building overcoming resistances compared to the available potential energy of the building.

Even if someone were to make a completely outrageous calculation of the collapse time, like 96.7 seconds, the ratio would not be greater than one. (It would be 99/100 for 96.7 seconds.) In his example, the energy expended will not exceed the available potential energy of the building. The "safety factor" will never have a value of more than 1. But I'm sure you already knew that.

-Make7

[Make7]

50. Actually the CENTER of the "other" tower would have been at the top.

I think you may have made a mistake in "correcting" LARED's "model."

Check this out and let me know what you think:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=49321&mesg_id=52426

-Make7

[spooked911]

11. oh yeah, let's also say you can't clean out the buildings because of

"national security". ;)

[janedoe]

5. How do you improve a perfect job?

Well, it was NEARLY perfect -- but they did an excellent save job on the WTC2 chunk.

[staticstopper]

47. I waffle back and forth about the wisdom of even

going over questions about why the towers fell, but then the other day I over-heard a couple of right-wing/current administration supporters puzzeling over why they came down...they talked about how weird it was, about how strange that BOTH came down after each building took totally different sorts of hits.

But like I said here before, I never talk to any people in person about my ill feelings about the official story...it seems too personal or something I can't put my finger on. So I did not speak up.

[spooked911]

49. Yes, I know what you mean. But a similar thing happened to me a

couple of days back. I brought of the twin towers being hit by airplanes to my wife, I said NOTHING about demolition (we had never really talked about this before actually), and she was saying-- yes, it was odd how quickly and completely they collapsed. Like she hadn't even thought of it before, and I swear this was with no prodding from me.

The point is that people have a lot of latent interest/curiosity in the collapse of the towers-- AND there are plenty of reason to question what happened.

[Kevin Fenton]

48. Depends why you want to knock them over

If you wanted to demolish them in the ordinary way (i.e. after clearing them, to make way for another building to replace them), then you'd destroy the core first (I don't known whether from the bottom or the top), then the outer wall columns, to make them collapse inwards.

If you wanted to demolish them as a part of a false-flag operation and make it look like it was caused by the planes, the demolition would very clearly start by the impact holes, the top would then come down onto the initial floor and the rest of the building would then collapse. You'd certainly use a lot less explosives than employed on 9/11 (less telltale squibs) and you'd probably leave a bit of the towers standing at the bottom. You would actually try and disguise the fact it was explosive demolition, at least a little bit.

If, on the other hand, you already had explosives in the towers and only had under an hour to alter the firing sequence to at least make an attempt to give the impression of a "natural" collapse, then you'd see exactly what we did.