Serious People and Unserious People

[Brainster]

I wanted to point out this excellent read (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/12/03/the_science_of_how_buildings_fall_down/) on how real world structural engineers are having to incorporate more thought into their designs in order to cope with the possibility of terrorism.

In a dangerous era that has seen major public edifices from the US embassy in Kenya to New York's World Trade Center reduced to smoking rubble by terrorists, structural engineers believe they need a deeper understanding of how damage inflicted on one part of a building can ripple through the rest of the structure in a devastating and often mystifying phenomenon known as "progressive collapse." The aim of the contest is to encourage young engineers to start thinking hard about how to protect against risks once considered unthinkable.

Of course Steven Jones hops on the result (http://www.911blogger.com/node/12808) of an experiment cited in the article and says this proves that the building could not have collapsed due to gravity:

This experiment provides further reason to doubt the “official story” that gravity alone was enough to cause complete and rapid destruction of the WTC Towers and WTC 7. WTC 7, a 47-story skyscraper, was not even hit by a plane, yet it completely collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11/2001. This experiment confirms our argument that buildings are designed to stand, not give up and fall down completely even if a key support column is destroyed in an instant (see technical articles in the JournalOf911Studies.com).

[Architect]

There was a partial redesign of the Scottish Parliament during construction in order to accommodate bomb-proofing. This is not, in itself, something new in the mainland UK due to some 30 years of Northern Irish terrorism however the degree of strengthening and the like has increased significant. Vehicle barriers are also incorproated in the hard landscaping, although in a fairly subtle way that isn't immediately obvious.

I have also commented previously about revisions to UK building regulations in order to reflect the more onerous requirements of the Eurocodes regarding progressive collapse, which is based (amongst other things) on the Oklahoma bombinb and, to a lesser extent, WTC.

[Gravy]

Jones is correct that gravity alone didn't destroy WTC 7, and that it was indeed designed to stand up. After doing this for a few years, he's showing great improvement.

[OldTigerCub]

I wanted to point out this excellent read (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/12/03/the_science_of_how_buildings_fall_down/) on how real world structural engineers are having to incorporate more thought into their designs in order to cope with the possibility of terrorism.



Of course Steven Jones hops on the result (http://www.911blogger.com/node/12808) of an experiment cited in the article and says this proves that the building could not have collapsed due to gravity:

Quote:
This experiment provides further reason to doubt the “official story” that gravity alone was enough to cause complete and rapid destruction of the WTC Towers and WTC 7. WTC 7, a 47-story skyscraper, was not even hit by a plane, yet it completely collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11/2001. This experiment confirms our argument that buildings are designed to stand, not give up and fall down completely even if a key support column is destroyed in an instant (see technical articles in the JournalOf911Studies.com).

Gotta love it...of course pieces of a 110 story building falling on it had no effect...
Hopefully you'll have this one over at SLC, Brainster...More hillarity from Steven Jones!:p
(bolding mine)

[Dave Rogers]

Christ on a bike, I thought I'd seen the limits of what stupidity Steven Jones is capable of, but he hadn't even scratched the surface. He's arguing the following:

Premise: A 1/8th scale model of a three-storey concrete framed building of unspecified design did not collapse when one key column is removed.
Conclusion: A full-scale 47-storey steel framed building of tube-in-tube long span floor design should not collapse when one wall is cut in half and serious damage is done to other parts of the building by falling debris, a fire is allowed to burn unchecked for seven hours and eventually one key column fails.

The man is immune to reason.

Dave

[ref]

So, they dropped a 5,000 pound metal weight on a center support column made of glass. This column was part of the structure of a 1/8th scale model of a 3-storey building made of reinforced concrete.

You can really compare this experiment to the WTC buildings, Steven Jones.

[sts60]

Steven "identifies a chunk of concrete with rebar sticking out as a piece of solidified metal slag" Jones? That Steven Jones?

[Vincent Vega]

Why oh why can't people understand that the application of ENERGY dumped into the buildings as 'work' initiated the collapse. Energy transfer over short or long periods can be mechanical, thermal or chemical...but the end result can be the same.

In the case of the WTC it was mechanical and thermal energy equaling tons of TNT in terms of MJ.

[Swing Dangler]

I wanted to point out this excellent read (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/12/03/the_science_of_how_buildings_fall_down/) on how real world structural engineers are having to incorporate more thought into their designs in order to cope with the possibility of terrorism.
:

Yeah I came up with some thoughts on designs too as inspired by the NIST report....more fireproofing!

[Quad4_72]

Yeah I came up with some thoughts on designs too as inspired by the NIST report....more fireproofing!

Yes fireproofing other than spray on would indeed have been nice but sadly that is all that was present in the towers and when it was dislodged by jet impacts there was not much left to slow down the intense fires which weakened the steel and led to the eventual collapse of the towers. Good point Swing.

[LashL]

Yeah I came up with some thoughts on designs too as inspired by the NIST report....more fireproofing!

You're a little late with that insightful observation, Swingdangler. Damn, if only you'd come up with it a few decades ago, imagine the impact you might have made upon the world. :rolleyes:

[Brainster]

Along the same lines check out this rational discussion (http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/demolition-of-wtc-lets-not-overstate-the-case-please/) by Diane, a NY Truther, of the controlled demolition theories:

For an example of what I mean by overstating the case, a lot of folks have claimed that the sheer speed of collapse inherently violates Newton’s laws.

In fact, the towers did not fall with exactly free-fall acceleration. They fell a little bit slower than that.

The question is whether they fell slower enough to be consistent with an alleged purely “natural” collapse. That’s a quantitative question, not one that can be answered with simple hand-waving.

Zdnenek Bazant and other defenders of the official story have claimed that, once the collapse of either of the Twin Towers got going, the resistance of the columns to being shattered was “negligible” compared to the impact of the top part of the building falling on top of them.

Diane's post is not perfect, but it's clear to me that she's analyzing things with far more logic and rigor than is common. But check out this ridiculous response (http://www.portland-or.net/911truth/Demolition-is-an-Understatement.html):

It's a ridiculous claim! The Truth movement is not claiming that supposedly "the sheer speed of collapse inherently violates Newton’s laws." What we are saying is that IF there was a pancake collapse (which is what the US Government is claiming), then the near free-fall speed of collapse WOULD be a violation of the laws of gravity.

The event itself - the Collapse - actually took place. It took place according to the laws of Nature. No one can represent the Truth movement by claiming that the event "violated the laws of Nature". What we are saying is that the claim by the US Government is in violation of the laws of Nature.

If the paper by Diane was written in order to help the Truth movement restate its case in more clear and more useful terms, the paper itself needs to be re-articulated with clarity, especially when it purports to present "our case".

[Mangoose]

One simplistic argument, which some people mistakenly believe is very sound, even incontrovertible qualitative proof of demolition of the Twin Towers, is just to point to the explosive appearance of the Twin Tower “collapses.” .... The problem with it as an alleged proof of demolition is that the “collapses” of the Twin Towers were an utterly unique event, unique in many ways. Never before in the history of the world have any steel frame high-rise buildings anywhere near 110 storeys tall ever collapsed for any reason whatsoever. Therefore, we don’t know what the collapse of such a huge building “should” look like, if it were to collapse due just to airplane impact damage plus fire on upper floors.


Yes!! The wizard gave someone a brain.

In that case, it seems to me that the suddenly tipping floors could force quite a bit of air out of one or more broken windows on a floor lower than where the perimeter columns have failed. Still they might not be able to blow the dust out as fast as has been observed, but that’s another quantitave question...... I personally don’t know how to evaluate most of these arguments.


And honesty.

[HyJinX]

Yeah I came up with some thoughts on designs too as inspired by the NIST report....more fireproofing!

Or...less terrorist attacks. It's a toss-up for some folks.