When I asked if you agree with with him, you replied,
"Take any object, a block or a stick for example. Hold it
at an angle, then drop it. Does it fall over sideways, or
does it travel straight to the ground at the same angle?"
Your "explanation" seems strange, since the tall buildings
are resting on the ground, so if supports on just one side
are destroyed, the unsupported side of the building begins to
drop and the undamaged columns act as a fulcrum causing the
building to tilt. That`s precisely what takes place in this
video, and exactly what all knowledgeable and credible experts
would expect.
http://tinyurl.com/yuaxsp
So, I have two questions for you.
1. How can you accept as credible or believable, a reference
who so grossly represents both evidence and basic physics?
If anyone ever pointed out disinformation and/or ignorance even
half that blatant on one of the references I use, I`d dump
it in a hurry. Eagar`s disinformation was broadcast on millions
of TVs all over the globe, yet, attempts to expose his errors
and reveal the truth and facts get little notice by the same
corporate media. That too, should tell you something.
2. What do falling blocks and sticks have to do with the tilting
of a tall narrow structure that`s resting on the ground?
SUBJECT: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11 GO >>>
From: Henry
Subject: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11
investigation !!
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:22:46 -0400
Organization: Cornell University
Lines: 312
Sender: hhh3(at)cornell.invalid
Rob Kleinschmidt wrote:
> But his credentials include postiions of great responsibility
> in the construction of not only the main and auxilliary gyms
> at San Ramon High School, but also a Baskin Robins, a
> TOGOS sandwich shop, an entire SPCA facility and several
> other equally important landmark buildings.
I notice that you`re again trying to avoid the facts and
evidence by impotently "attacking" the messenger. Apparently,
the founder of http://ae911truth.org/ and the 300 plus members
haven`t written anything that you can quote as misleaidig or
innaccurate. Sure is easy to do that when a magic fire cartoon
conspiracy kook cites a reference. DO you have even *one*
who can explain WTC7`s free fall and symmetric collapse?
Here`s what the experts say about WTC7. Let us know if you dispute
any of it, and why.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
The Destruction of WTC 7
Latest updates:
5 Sep 06: NIST postpones its report until 2007, will consider if
explosions occurred
25 Sep 06: a demolition expert and two structural design professors: WTC
7 was a controlled demolition
13 Dec 06: Heikki Kurttila (DEng): WTC 7 fell as fast as an object
falling the same distance through air
1 Jan 07: Frank Legge (Ph.D.): The rate of descent of WTC 7 almost
equals gravitational free fall
12 Feb 07: Several witnesses to controlled demolition come forward
4 Mar 07: Structural Engineer William Rice refutes official explanation
of WTC collapses
World Trade Center 7 was the third skyscraper destroyed on September 11
2001. It was not hit by a plane. The picture on the left shows WTC 7
after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
The final investigation report on its collapse has been postponed many
times. As of this writing (almost 6 years after the destruction), it
still has not been published.
This steel-framed skyscraper, completed in 1987, was located 110 meters
(350 feet) away from the closest of the Twin Towers ("WTC 1" on the map
below). The building`s tenants included the CIA, the Internal Revenue
Service, several banks, the Mayor`s Office of Emergency Management, and
the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. A large number of records of
ongoing investigations of Enron and other companies were destroyed with
WTC 7.
No airplane hit WTC 7, but its south facade was damaged by debris
ejected from the North Tower, which collapsed at 10.30 am. There is
conflicting information about the amount of damage. For example, in the
pictures shown in a preliminary official report the southwest corner is
badly damaged, whereas in the photograph taken by Aman Zafar in the
afternoon the same corner is intact  see my photo comparison. The
building was reported on fire at 4.10 pm by CNN, although the fires seem
to have started several hours earlier. The fires, whose origin is
unknown, appeared on a number of floors, and the building collapsed at
5.20 pm.
A high-resolution video of the collapse is available here. The
slow-motion video animation below shows the totality and symmetry of the
destruction.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, speculated that office
fires caused the collapse of the building. It, however, acknowledged in
its report in May 2002: "The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how
they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. [...]
the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence." Later in
2002, Larry Silverstein, the owner of WTC 7, gave in the America
Rebuilds TV program a famous "pull it" statement that has commonly been
interpreted as meaning that the building was professionally demolished.
Did WTC 7 collapse as a result of office fires, or was it demolished
with explosives? The answer can be sought by examining the way in which
the building collapsed.
Collapse Speed
As one can observe from the videos of WTC 7`s collapse, shortly
following the destruction of its penthouse structures, the building fell
to the ground in 6.5 seconds. This is a phenomenally short time: a stone
dropped from the top of the building would have reached the ground
(covering a distance of 174 meters) in 5.95 seconds  if there were
no air resistance! However, in principle the distance analyzed should be
that from the top of the building to the top of the debris pile, not to
the ground. As the exact height of the debris pile is not documented, it
is more useful to examine the early stages of the collapse, during which
the debris pile does not need to be taken into account.
According to the video analysis presented in the 9-11 Eyewitness
documentary, starting from the state of rest, WTC 7 fell 100 meters in
4.5 seconds. This results in an acceleration of 9.8 m/s2, corresponding
to a free fall.
To verify this, I examined the fall of a corner of the building in one
collapse video using Blaze Media Pro video editing software. The corner
fell 56 meters (=the distance between the Start and End lines in the
animation below) in 3.47 seconds. This results in an acceleration of 9.3
m/s2, which corresponds to a very low resistance factor of the
structural supports: only 5 percent of the force of gravity of the
building`s falling upper section.
I also measured an acceleration of 8.5 m/s2 for the middle part of the
wide facade in the picture, which means that the force of resistance of
the structural supports was 13 percent of the force of gravity of the
falling upper section (see the calculation in more detail here).
My measurements therefore support the conclusion presented in 9-11
Eyewitness that the skyscraper fell virtually unimpeded. The lack of
structural resistance seems to be explainable only by the destruction of
the structural supports through the use of explosives. WTC 7 dropped
rather than collapsed. It came down as if only air had separated the
roof of the building from the street below.
WTC 7 fell on average 7 floors per second (47 / 6.5). One second after
the onset of the collapse, the speed of descent was almost 10
meters/second; after two seconds, almost 20 meters/second; and at the
end, about 60 meters/second (over 200 kilometers/hour). According to the
analysis of Frank Legge (Ph.D.), the rate of descent of WTC 7 closely
matches the rate of gravitational free fall, which  combined with
the uniformity of the descent throughout the breadth and length of the
building  is irrefutable evidence of controlled demolition.
Heikki Kurttila, a Finnish Doctor of Engineering and accident
researcher, has made detailed calculations about the collapse speed of
WTC 7. He concludes that the short collapse time and low structural
resistance "strongly suggest controlled demolition". Kurttila notes that
an apple dropped from the height of WTC 7`s roof would have taken about
0.5 seconds longer to reach the ground than it took the skyscraper to be
completely destroyed.
Structural Features of the Collapse
A striking feature in the collapse of WTC 7 is symmetry. The collapse
progressed evenly throughout the building, and the debris piled up
almost entirely within the foundations of the building (see the picture
below).
The symmetry of WTC 7`s descent means that all of its steel supports
 25 central and 58 peripheral columns  were destroyed almost
simultaneously. Any asymmetry in the damage to structures would have led
to asymmetrical collapse. By contrast, a fully symmetrical collapse
without controlled use of explosives would not have followed the
principle of least resistance. Local fires and structural damage here
and there could not have weakened all the central and peripheral support
structures in a way that would have caused all of them to give in at the
same moment. The simultaneity of the destruction of support structures
throughout the building can, however, be explained by controlled demolition.
A controlled demolition is also suggested by the drop of the center of
the skyscraper moments before the surrounding structures started to
fall, as well as by the fact that the outer walls were pulled inwards.
In a controlled demolition the collapse is caused by first destroying
the weight-carrying core of a building, which "pulls" the exterior walls
inwards ("implosion"). Although the lowest floor with fires was
reportedly the sixth floor, the building seems to have undergone a
traditional demolition, beginning from the bottom floor. An emergency
worker who witnessed the collapse of WTC 7 was interviewed on 9/11. He
described hearing what sounded like a "clap of thunder", followed by
what looked like "a shockwave ripping through the building", with
windows busting out, and "about a second later the bottom floor caved
out and the [rest of] the building followed after that". The videos
showing the collapse support his description.
At least one high-resolution video of the collapse of WTC 7 clearly
shows one more characteristic of controlled demolition: streamers of
dust emerging out of the building.
A Dutch demolition expert Danny Jowenko (right), who owns a demolition
company and has been in the business for almost 30 years, concluded in
September 2006 that WTC 7 "is controlled demolition. [...] A team of
experts did this. This is professional work, without any doubt."
Hugo Bachmann, a Swiss professor emeritus for structural design and
construction, said in Tages-Anzeiger : "In my opinion WTC 7 was with
great probability brought down by controlled demolition done by
experts". In addition, Jörg Schneider, another Swiss Professor
emeritus for structural design and construction, interprets the existing
videos as indices that "WTC 7 was with great probability brought down by
explosives".
Fire Endurance of Steel
Steel is very fire-resistant material. In tests conducted by Chorus
Construction in several countries, the fire endurance of steel-framed
parking garages was examined by feeding fires with hydrocarbon fuel.
Steel beams and pillars heated to a maximum of 360 degrees Celsius, and
the breaking of steel was not even close. In Cardington fire endurance
tests, modelled on conditions in real buildings, unprotected steel was
subjected to temperatures of up to 1100 degrees Celsius (2012 F), but
there was no collapse. In the Windsor Building in Madrid, an almost
24-hour intensive fire did not collapse the building. Moreover, the
fires in WTC 7 were insignificant compared to fires in Windsor Building
and all other skyscraper fires. The latest case is the all-engulfing
fire in Al Nasr Tower in 2006. Fires have never collapsed a single
steel-framed highrise to the ground.
In the picture of WTC 7 to the right, the fires are limited to small
areas, almost all windows are intact, and no red heat indicative of
temperatures capable of softening steel is visible. The situation is the
same in other photographs taken of the building in late afternoon. In
this video a fair amount of smoke, but no flames, can be seen. By
contrast, WTC 5, which was badly damaged by the collapse of the North
Tower next to it, burned very powerfully: its floors were covered by a
sea of flames and all windows were broken. However, this building,
despite the fact that it had weaker support structures than WTC 7, did
not collapse into a debris pile, but remained standing.
Characteristics of the Debris
The debris of WTC 7 was extremely hot weeks after the collapse of the
building. Thermal imaging by NASA showed that the top of the debris pile
had a temperature of 730 degrees Celsius five days after the collapse.
Deeper, and immediately after the destruction, temperatures were
probably considerably higher. Residual temperatures like this cannot be
explained by office fires or by an ordinary, gravity-driven collapse.
When the potential energy of a building experiencing an ordinary
gravitational collapse turns into thermal energy, the result is only a
few degrees` average increase in temperature.
According to several reports, molten metal (also suggested by this video
footage) was found under the debris pile of WTC buildings. To melt
structural steel, temperatures exceeding 1500 degrees Celsius are
required. Such temperatures are never achieved in office fires. In
addition to molten metal, partly evaporated steel beams were found in
the debris of WTC 7. As professor Jonathan Barnett pointed out in a New
York Times interview, the fires in the building could not have produced
temperatures capable of evaporating steel. However, the use of
explosives like thermite can produce temperatures (even 3000 degrees
Celsius) that can melt and even evaporate steel.
FEMA`s investigators were not allowed to work in the collapse zone
itself. They were allowed to examine the debris of WTC skyscrapers only
in landfill areas used as temporary storage for the steel debris before
its recycling. By May 2005, when FEMA finished its preliminary report
calling for further investigation, all the steel debris had been sold
and shipped into the Far East. Only 156 pieces of steel were chosen for
futher analysis, of which a ridiculous total of 4 were from WTC 7. Even
these no longer seem to exist.
As WTC 7 was evacuated over six hours before its destruction, there were
no grounds for the rapid removal and recycling of the steel debris.
Quite the contrary: as WTC 7 was one of the three greatest building
collapses in recorded history (the other two being the North and South
Towers), the debris of the building should have been meticulously
examined. Many individuals and publications, such as the Fire
Engineering Magazine, protested strongly against the rapid destruction
of the evidence.
Witness statements
Craig Bartmer, a NYPD officer, states that he saw WTC 7 come down and
heard a number of explosions in rapid succession. He is convinced that
the skyscraper was brought down with explosives. Several rescue
personnel have also come forward saying they were told that the building
would be brought down by means of explosives. The above-cited testimony
about the shockwave and the lowest floors collapsing first supports
controlled demolition. Interestingly, a news report on a Finnish TV
channel on September 12, 2001, stated that the authorities brought
Building 7 down with explosives due to the apparent danger of collapse.
Final Words
Was WTC 7 destroyed as a result of controlled demolition? Everyone can
draw their own conclusions from the way in which the building was
destroyed and the temperatures produced in the destruction.
If and when the building was demolished, it must have been wired with
explosives before September 11th. An operation of that magnitude could
not have been accomplished during a couple of chaotic hours. This is why
the official hypotheses have not touched on the most obvious explanation
for the collapse of the skyscraper. It is revealing that the 9/11
Commission, which published its report in 2004, does not mention in a
single sentence the destruction of the third skyscraper resulting from
the terrorist attack in New York.
FEMA`s work has been continued by the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, which has again postponed its report on WTC 7, this time
until 2007. NIST is now saying that it is also investigating the
hypothesis that explosions initiated the collapse. Interviewed in the
March 2006 issue of New York Magazine, Dr S. Shyam Sunder, NIST lead
investigator, summed up the present state of the investigation:
NIST did have "some preliminary hypotheses" on 7 WTC, Dr. Sunder said.
"We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the
structure, on the fifth to seventh floors." Then Dr. Sunder paused. "But
truthfully, I don`t really know. We`ve had trouble getting a handle on
Building No. 7."
SUBJECT: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11 GO >>>
From: Henry
Subject: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11
investigation !!
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:47:47 -0400
Organization: Cornell University
Lines: 66
Sender: hhh3(at)cornell.invalid
Rob Kleinschmidt wrote:
> On Mar 30, 5:41 pm, Henry wrote:
>> So, I have two questions for you.
>> 1. How can you accept as credible or believable, a reference
>> who so grossly represents both evidence and basic physics?
>> Eagar`s disinformation was broadcast on millions
>> of TVs all over the globe, yet, attempts to expose his errors
>> and reveal the truth and facts get little notice by the same
>> corporate media. That too, should tell you something.
> And that`s exactly the point that you don`t get. I don`t
> have to.
You cited him as a credible reference, yet he misrepresents
crucial evidence and has no credibility. Are you saying that
accuracy and credibility don`t matter to you?
> The analysis has been reviewed and will continue
> to be reviewed by engineering departments all over the world
> including Cornell, MIT, Cambridge and BYU.
Who at Cornell has reviewed the details of the tower
collapses and where is their research? I emailed dozens
of professors, and none of them were willing to discuss
the topic. That has been true for all the so called "experts"
I`ve contacted about their collapse theory. They get very
quiet when the discussion moves beyond the level of "global
collapse was inevitable", or "nothing could withstand that
impact and inferno".
> Some of the things you learn to trust in engineering are
> peer review and collaberative efforts pooling expertise
> in different fields.
> People like Quintierre will find problems with parts of the
> analysis and sugest alternatives.
>
> Start with the credentials of the nist team
> http://wtc.nist.gov/pi/
Why aren`t Thomas Eagar`s blatant errors mentioned by
his peers on the NISTY team?
> and compare them with this guy Gage, whose
> career seems to be building sandwich shops
> and gymnasiums.
Does Gage provide any facts or evidence as blatantly
wrong as Eagar`s? Does he provide any facts or evdidence
that you disagree with? If so, what?
>> 2. What falling blocks and sticks have to do with the tilting
>> of a tall narrow structure that`s resting on the ground?
> I would not attempt to explain the exact causes of the
> collapse, though perhaps somebody in the Cornell
> school of engineering might walk you through it if
> you asked nicely.
I already tried. They won`t discuss it. But that was last year.
I`ll try again.
Regardless, I`m asking you about your falling blocks and sticks.
What do falling blocks and sticks have to do with the tilting of
a tall narrow structure that`s resting on the ground?
SUBJECT: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11 GO >>>
From: Henry
Subject: Re: !! Architects and Engineers expose cover-up and request new 9-11
investigation !!
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:51:08 -0400
Organization: Cornell University
Lines: 36
Sender: hhh3(at)cornell.invalid
S`mee wrote:
> Henry bring those loons ALL 300 with you. I`ll use small words that a
> 8th grader will understand.
Use them here and now to explain the sudden explosive
disintegration of the undamaged side of WTC2`s perimeter
frame.
Observe the rotating and disintegrating block on the South
Tower.
Notice that the corners are curved, as the block`s internal
destruction is already taking place. If it had not been destroyed
through demolition, it would have continued to rotate and fall off
the building as an intact block. Also, notice that the block is
tilting towards the corner where it was impacted. The opposite
corner was undamaged by impact or fire, as proved by photo
evidence.
As the top section of that tower is rotating, the high strength,
fire resistant perimeter columns on one side of the building are
being compressed, and on the opposite side, where the building
was not damaged by fire or impact, the weight above them is greatly
reduced.
Why do you think the undamaged steel perimeter frame with reduced
weight above it is exploding and collapsing at the same rate as
the fire and impact damaged side that has most of the weight of the
rotating block on it? Seems more than a little odd, doesn`t it? Here`s
some information on the perimeter columns.