[Phys-L] Re: Here we go again. WTC brought down by aircraft, not.

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 13:22  -0800 11/13/05, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

> Professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC:
>
> The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the
> World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of
> the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor.
> http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635160132,00.html
>
> ===
> Professor Has Theory About 9/11 Attacks:
>
> A BYU professor has developed a new theory about the terrorist attack in
> New York on September 11, 2001. He believes planes alone did not bring
> down the world trade center.
> http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_314234334.html
An engineer friend of mine tells me that the
WTC's main structural support was at the center,
around the elevator wells, and the outer walls
were pretty much disconnected from the various
floors.

When the planes struck the building, the fuel
started a very hot fire in the region of the
impact, which heated the structural supports at
the center beyond their capability to withstand
the weight of the above floors. When the first
one gave way, the floors above fell straight down
on the ones below, successively exceeding the
impact load limit on each lower floor as the ones
above hit it, so the buildings simply telescoped
on themselves, and this is why they came down so
symmetrically--that is the way they were designed
to fail.

Although, he also told me that if the insulation
on the structural girders had been thicker, it is
likely that they would have survived and the
buildings might not have collapsed. The designers
did not plan for an airplane full of fuel
striking the buildings. They did take into
account the possibility of an aircraft strike,
but they assumed that it would be a plane
approaching for a landing, and therefore rather
low on fuel, such as was the case in the 1945 (?)
strike of the Empire State Building. The idea
that an airplane loaded with 50,000 lb., or so,
of jet fuel would ever strike one of the
buildings, causing a persistent, high temperature
fire, was simply not a part of building
designers' thinking when the WTC was built.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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