I TRIED TO BE PATRIOTIC
911: THE TERRORISTS SUSPEND LAWS OF PHYSICS!!
DID THE BUILDINGS FALL... OR WERE THEY PUSHED?
By J. McMichael
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Carol A. Valentine, President Public Action, Inc.
Curator, Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum
http://www.Public-Action.com Copyright, October, 2001
May be reproduced for non-commercial purposes
[The following was received in the form of an e-mail
newsletter published by Carol Valentine]
---------------------------------------------------------
The following was written by J. McMichael
(jmcmichael@care2.com ) and sent to me under the title
"I Tried To Be Patriotic." I have taken the liberty of
cleaning up some typos, and pass it on to you with
permission.
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I TRIED TO BE PATRIOTIC
By J. McMichael
I tried to believe. I watched those quarter mile high
buildings fall through their jaw-dropping catastrophes
over and over again. I listened to the announcer and
the experts explain what had happened. And I worked at
my pitiful lack of faith, pounding my skull with the
remote control and staring on the flickering images on
the TV screen.
But poor mental peasant that I am, I could not escape
the teachings of my forefathers. I fear I am trapped
in my time, walled off from further scientific
understanding by my inability to abandon the Second
Millennium mindset.
But enough of myself. Let us move on to the Science
and Technology of the 21st Century. Those of you who
cannot believe should learn the official truth by rote
and perhaps you will be able to hide your ignorance.
Here are the bare bones of the WTC incident: North
tower struck 8:45, collapsed 10:29; South tower struck
9:03, collapsed 9:50;
Time Line of Terror
8:45 a.m.
American Airlines Flight 11, Boston to Los Angeles
with 92 people onboard, crashes into the north tower
of the World Trade Center in New York City.
9:03 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 175, Boston to Los Angeles
with 65 people onboard, flies into the south tower of
the World Trade Center.
9:31 a.m.
Speaking from Florida, President George Bush pledges
the United States will hunt down the guilty parties.
9:40 a.m.
American Flight 77, en route from Dulles Airport,
Washington DC, to Los Angeles with 64 people onboard,
crashes into the Pentagon.
9:48 a.m.
The U.S. Capitol and the West Wing of the White House
are evacuated.
9:49 a.m.
The Federal Aviation Administration bans all aircraft
takeoffs in the United States.
9:50 a.m.
South tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
9:58 a.m.
Emergency operator in Pennsylvania receives a call
from a passenger on United Flight 93, Newark to San
Francisco with 45 people onboard, stating the plane
was being hijacked.
10:00 a.m.
United Flight 93 crashes about 80 miles southeast of
Pittsburgh.
10:29 a.m.
North tower of the World Trade Center collapses.
11:00 a.m.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani orders lower
Manhattan evacuated.
11:40 a.m.
With U.S. military on nuclear alert, Bush taken to
Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
1:20 p.m.
Bush boards Air Force One for Offutt Air Force Base
in Nebraska, headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Air
Command.
2:51 p.m.
U.S. military deploys missile destroyers and other
equipment in New York and Washington.
5:20 p.m.
Another World Trade Center building collapses.
7:00 p.m.
Bush arrives in Washington.
8:31 p.m.
Bush addresses the nation, vowing to punish "evil acts."
source
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/sept112001.html
Return
Using jet fuel to melt steel is an amazing discovery,
really. It is also amazing that until now, no one had
been able to get it to work, and that proves the
terrorists were not stupid people. Ironworkers fool
with acetylene torches, bottled oxygen, electric arcs
from generators, electric furnaces, and other
elaborate tricks, but what did these brilliant
terrorists use? Jet fuel, costing maybe 80 cents a
gallon on the open market.
Let us consider: One plane full of jet fuel hit the
north tower at 8:45 AM, and the fuel fire burned for a
while with bright flames and black smoke. We can see
pictures of the smoke and flames shooting from the
windows.
Then by 9:03 (which time was marked by the second
plane's collision with the south tower), the flame was
mostly gone and only black smoke continued to pour
from the building. To my simple mind, that would
indicate that the first fire had died down, but
something was still burning inefficiently, leaving
soot (carbon) in the smoke. A fire with sooty smoke is
either low temperature or starved for oxygen -- or
both.
But by 10:29 AM, the fire in north tower had
accomplished the feat that I find so amazing: It
melted the steel supports in the building, causing a
chain reaction within the structure that brought the
building to the ground.
And with less fuel to feed the fire, the south tower
collapsed only 47 minutes after the plane collision,
again with complete destruction. This is only half the
time it took to destroy the north tower.
I try not to think about that. I try not to think
about a petroleum fire burning for 104 minutes, just
getting hotter and hotter until it reached 1538
degrees Celsius (2800 Fahrenheit) and melted the steel
(steel is about 99% iron; for melting point of iron,
see below
Iron 26 Fe 55.845(2)
Thermal Properties and temperatures
Melting point [/K]: 1811 [or 1538 °C (2800 °F)]
Boiling point [/K]: 3134 [or 2861 °C (5182 °F)]
(liquid range:
1323 K)
source:
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Fe/heat.html
I try not to wonder how the fire reached temperatures
that only bottled oxygen or forced air can produce.
And I try not to think about all the steel that was in
that building -- 200,000 tons of it (see World Trade
Center information for stats). .
I try to forget that heating steel is like pouring
syrup onto a plate: you can't get it to stack up. The
heat just flows out to the colder parts of the steel,
cooling off the part you are trying to warm up. If you
pour it on hard enough and fast enough, you can get
the syrup to stack up a little bit. And with very high
heat brought on very fast, you can heat up the one
part of the object, but the heat will quickly spread
out and the part will cool off the moment you stop.
When the heat source warms the last cold part of the
object, the heat stops escaping and the point of
attention can be warmed. If the north tower collapse
was due to heated steel, why did it take 104 minutes
to reach the critical temperature? (See Time Line of
Terror).
Am I to believe that the fire burned all that time,
getting constantly hotter until it reached melting
temperature? Or did it burn hot and steady throughout
until 200,000 tons of steel were heated molten - on
one plane load of jet fuel? (Quantity of steel in WTC)
Thankfully, I found this note on the BBC web page
( How the World Trade Center fell ):
"Fire reaches 800 [degrees] C - hot enough to melt
steel floor supports." That is one of the things I
warned you about: In the 20th Century, steel melted at
1538 degrees Celsius (2800 F)
Basic Information
Name: Iron
Symbol: Fe
Atomic Number: 26
Atomic Mass: 55.845 amu
Melting Point: 1535.0 °C (1808.15 °K, 2795.0 °F)
Boiling Point: 2750.0 °C (3023.15 °K, 4982.0 °F)
Number of Protons/Electrons: 26
Number of Neutrons: 30
Classification: Transition Metal
Crystal Structure: Cubic
Density @ 293 K: 7.86 g/cm3
Color: Silvery
table source:
http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/fe.html),
but in the 21st Century, it melts at 800 degrees C
(1472 F).
This might be explained as a reporter's mistake -- 800
to 900 C is the temperature for forging wrought iron.
As soft as wrought iron is, of course, it would never
be used for structural steel in a landmark skyscraper.
(Descriptions of cast iron, wrought iron, and steel
and relevant temperatures discussed at Metrum.
But then lower down, the BBC page repeats the 800 C
number in bold, and the article emphasizes that the
information comes from Chris Wise, "Structural
Engineer." Would this professional individual permit
himself to be misquoted in a global publication?
I feel it coming on again -- that horrible cynicism
that causes me to doubt the word of the major
anchor-persons. Please just think of this essay as a
plea for help, and do NOT let it interfere with your
own righteous faith. The collapse of America's faith
in its leaders must not become another casualty on
America's skyline.
In my diseased mind, I think of the floors of each
tower like a stack of LP (33 1/3 RPM) records, only
they were square instead of circular. They were
stacked around a central spindle that consisted of
multiple steel columns stationed in a square around
the 103 elevator shafts.(See Skyscraper Report and
University of Sydney Report)
With this core bearing the weight of the building, the
platters were tied together and stabilized by another
set of steel columns at the outside rim, closely
spaced and completely surrounding the structure. This
resulting structure was so stable that the top of the
towers swayed only three feet in a high wind. The
architects called it a "tube-within-a-tube design."
The TV experts told us that the joints between the
floors and central columns melted (or the floor
trusses, or the central columns, or the exterior
columns, depending on the expert) and this caused the
floor to collapse and fall onto the one below. This
overloaded the joints for the lower floor, and the two
of them fell onto the floor below, and so on. Like
dominos (see Washington University Professor Harmon).
Back in the early 1970s when the World Trade Towers
were built, the WTC was the tallest building that had
ever been built in the history of the world. If we
consider the architectural engineers, suppliers,
builders, and city inspectors in the job, we can
imagine they would be very careful to over-build every
aspect of the building. If one bolt was calculated to
serve, you can bet that three or four were used. If
there was any doubt about the quality of a girder or
steel beam, you can be sure it was rejected. After
all, any failures would attract the attention of half
the civilized world, and no corporation wants a
reputation for that kind of stupidity -- particularly
if there are casualties.
I do not know the exact specifications for the WTC,
but I know in many trades (and some I've worked), a
structural member must be physically capable of three
times the maximum load that will ever be required of
it (BreakingStrength = 3 x WorkingStrength). Given
that none of those floors was holding a grand piano
sale or an elephant convention that day, it is
unlikely that any of them were loaded to the maximum.
Thus, any of the floors should have been capable of
supporting more than its own weight plus the two
floors above it. I suspect the WTC was engineered for
safer margins than the average railroad bridge, and
the actual load on each floor was less than 1/6 the
BreakingStrength. The platters were constructed of
webs of steel trusses. Radial trusses ran from the
perimeter of the floor to the central columns, and
concentric rings of trusses connected the radial
trusses, forming a pattern like a spider web.
Where the radial trusses connected with the central
columns, I imagine the joints looked like the big
bolted flanges where girders meet on a bridge --
inches thick bolts tying the beams into the columns.
The experts tell us that the heat of the fire melted
the steel, causing the joints to fail. In order to
weaken those joints, a fire would have to heat the
bolts or the flanges to the point where the bolts fell
apart or tore through the steel. But here is another
thing that gives me problems -- all the joints between
the platter and the central columns would have to be
heated at the same rate in order to collapse at the
same time -- and at the same rate as the joints with
the outer rim columns on all sides -- else one side of
the platter would fall, damaging the floor below and
making obvious distortions in the skin of the
building, or throwing the top of tower off balance and
to one side.
But there were no irregularities in the fall of the
main structure of those buildings. They fell almost as
perfectly as a deck of cards in the hands of a
magician doing an aerial shuffle.
This is particularly worrisome since the first plane
struck one side of the north tower, causing (you would
think) a weakening on that side where the exterior
columns were struck, and a more intense fire on that
side than on the other side. And the second plane
struck near the corner of the south tower at an angle
that caused much of the fuel to spew out the windows
on the adjacent side.
Yet the south tower also collapsed in perfect
symmetry, spewing dust in all directions like a Fourth
of July sparkler burning to the ground. Oh, wait. Here
is a picture showing the top 25 floors of one tower
(probably south) toppling over sideways.
Why are there no reports of this cube of concrete and
steel (measuring 200 ft. wide, 200 ft. deep, and 200
ft high), falling from a 1000 feet into the street
below?
But implosion expert Mark Loizeaux, president of
Controlled Demolition Inc. in Phoenix, MD is of the
opinion that it happened:
Observing the collapses on television news, Loizeaux
says the 1,362-ft-tall south tower, which was hit at
about the 60th floor, failed much as one would like
(sic) fell a tree. (University of Sydney Report 2
I have seen a videotaped rerun of the south tower
falling. In that take, the upper floors descend as a
complete unit. All the way, the upper-floor unit was
canted over as shown on the BBC page, sliding down
behind the intervening buildings like a piece of stage
scenery.
That scene is the most puzzling of all. Since the
upper floors were not collapsed (the connection
between the center columns and the platters were
intact), this assembly would present itself to the
lower floors as a platter WITHOUT a central hole. How
then would a platter without a hole slide down the
spindle with the other platters? Where would the
central columns go if they could not penetrate the
upper floors as they fell?
The only model I can find for the situation would be
this: If the fire melted the floor joints so that the
collapse began from the 60th floor downward, the upper
floors would be left hanging in the air, supported
only by the central columns. This situation would soon
become unstable and the top 40 floors would topple
over (to use Loizeaux's image) much like felling the
top 600 ft. from a 1300 ft. tree.
This model would also hold for the north tower.
According to Chris Wise's "domino" doctrine, the
collapse began only at the floor with the fire, not at
the penthouse. How was it that the upper floor simply
disappeared instead of crashing to the earth as a
block of thousands of tons of concrete and steel?
The amazing thing is that no one (but Loizeaux) even
mentions this phenomenon, much less describing the
seismic event it must have caused.
Where is the ruin where the 200ft x 200ft x 50 story-
object struck? Forty floors should have caused a ray
of devastation 500 ft. into the surrounding cityscape.
In trying to reconstruct and understand this event, we
have to know whether the scenes we are watching are
edited or simply shown raw as they were recorded.
But let us return to the fire. Liquid fuel does not
burn hot for long. Liquid fuel evaporates (or boils)
as it burns, and the vapor burns as it boils off. If
the ambient temperature passes the flash point of the
fuel and oxygen is plentiful, the process builds to an
explosion that consumes the fuel.
Jet fuel boils at temperatures above 176 degrees
Celsius (350 F) and the vapor flashes into flame at
250 degrees Celsius (482 F). In an environment of 1500
degrees, jet fuel spread thinly on walls, floor, and
ceiling would boil off very quickly. And then it would
either burn, or run out of oxygen and smother itself.
Or it would simply disperse out the open windows (some
New Yorkers claimed they could smelled the spilled
fuel).
In no case would an office building full of spilled
jet fuel sustain a fire at 815 degrees C (1500 F) for
104 minutes -- unless it was fed bottled oxygen,
forced air, or something else atypical of a fire in a
high-rise office building. Certainly, the carpets,
wallpaper, occasional desks -- nothing else in that
office would produce that temperature. What was
burning?
OK, since it was mentioned, I am also upset with the
quantity of concrete dust (see University of Sydney
Report 1).
No concrete that I have ever known pulverizes like
that. It is unnerving. My experience with concrete has
shown that it will crumble under stress, but rarely
does it just give up the ghost and turn to powder. But
look at the pictures -- it is truly a fine dust in
great billowing clouds spewing a hundred feet from the
collapsing tower. And the people on the ground see
little more than an opaque wall of dust -- with inches
of dust filling the streets and the lungs afterward.
What has happened here?
I need a faith booster shot here. I would like to find
a pictures of all those platters piled up on each
other on the ground, just as they fell -- has anyone
seen a picture like that? I am told it was cumulative
weight of those platters falling on each other that
caused the collapse, but I don't see the platters
pilled up liked flapjacks on the ground floor.
Instead, the satellite pictures show the WTC ruins
like an ash pit:
I am told by a friend that a Dr. Robert Schuller was
on television telling about his trip to the ruins. He
announced in the interview that there was not a single
block of concrete in that rubble. From the original
425,000 cubic yards of concrete that went into the
building, all was dust. How did that happen?
I have just one other point I need help with -- the
steel columns in the center. When the platters fell,
those quarter-mile high central steel columns (at
least from the ground to the fire) should have been
left standing naked and unsupported in the air, and
then they should have fallen intact or in sections to
the ground below, clobbering buildings hundreds of
feet from the WTC site like giant trees falling in the
forest. But I haven't seen any pictures showing those
columns standing, falling, or lying on the ground. Nor
have I heard of damage caused by them.
Now, I know those terrorist must have been much better
at these things than I am. I would take one look at
their kamikaze plans with commercial jets and I would
reject it as -- spectacular maybe, but not
significantly damaging. The WTC was not even a
strategic military target.
But if I were a kamikaze terrorist, I would try to hit
the towers low in the supports to knock the towers
down, maybe trapping the workers with the fire and
burning the towers from the ground up, just as the
people in last 20 stories were trapped. Even the
Japanese kamikaze pilots aimed for the water line.
But you see, those terrorists were so sure the
building would magically collapse that way, the pilot
who hit the north tower chose a spot just 20 floors
from the top.
(ABC News Report)
And the kamikaze for south tower was only slightly
lower -- despite a relatively open skyline down to 25
or 30 stories.
The terrorists apparently predicted the whole scenario
-- the fuel fire, the slow weakening of the structure,
and the horrific collapse of the building - phenomena
that the architects and the NY civil engineering
approval committees never dreamed of.
Even as you righteously hate those men, you have to
admire them for their genius.
Few officials or engineers have been surprised by this
turn of events -- apparently everyone certified it for
airplane collisions, but almost no one was surprised
when both collisions caused utter catastrophes in both
towers. In fact, their stutters and mumbles and
circumlocutions would make a politician blush:
"Eventually, the loss of strength and stiffness of the
materials resulting from the fire, combined with the
initial impact damage, would have caused a failure of
the truss system supporting a floor, or the remaining
perimeter columns, or even the internal core, or some
combination."
University of Sydney Report 1)
In a hundred years of tall city buildings, this kind
of collapse has never happened before. Never. It was
not predicted by any of the experts involved when the
WTC towers were built. But now that it has happened,
everybody understands it perfectly and nobody is
surprised.
Is this civil engineering in the Third Millennium -- a
galloping case of perfect hindsight?
Only one I have found candidly admitted his surprise:
Observing the collapses on television news, Loizeaux
says the 1,362-ft-tall south tower, which was hit at
about the 60th floor, failed much as one would like
(sic) fell a tree. That is what was expected, says
Loizeaux. But the 1,368-ft-tall north tower, similarly
hit but at about the 90th floor, "telescoped," says
Loizeaux. It failed vertically, he adds, rather than
falling over. "I don't have a clue," says Loizeaux,
regarding the cause of the telescoping.
(University of Sydney Report 2)
There was one highly qualified engineer in New Mexico
who thought the collapse could only happen with the
help of demolition explosives, and he was foolish
enough to make the statement publicly. But then he
recanted ten days later and admitted the whole thing
was perfectly natural and unsurprising. I wonder what
happened in those ten days to make him so smart on the
subject so quickly.
From the Albuquerque Journal:
Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico
Institute of Mining and Technology says the collapse
of the twin towers resembled those of controlled
implosions used in planned demolition.
"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after
the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were
some explosive devices inside the buildings that
caused the towers to collapse," Romero said.
A demolition expert, Romero is a former director of
the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at
Tech, which studies explosive materials and the
effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other
structures.
He said he and Denny Peterson, vice president for
administration and finance, were en route to an office
building near the Pentagon to discuss defense-funded
research programs at Tech. Romero told the Albequerque
Journal that he based his opinion on video aired on
national television broadcasts.
The detonations could have been caused by a small
amount of explosive put in more than two points in
each of the towers, he said. "It could have been a
relatively small amount of explosives placed in
strategic points," Romero said.
And then, as though demonstrating how normal this
"building collapsing" phenomenon is, WTC buildings Six
and Seven "collapsed," too:
"Other buildings - including the 47-story Salomon
Brothers building [WTC 7] - caved in later, weakened
by the earlier collapses, and more nearby buildings
may still fall, say engineers."
( BBC Report )
and
It seems no building in the area, regardless of
design, is immune to galloping WTC collapse-itis. It
never happened in the 20th Century, but welcome to the
physical universe laws of the Third Millennium.
Pardon me, but this recitation has not given me the
relief I hoped for. I must get back to work.
I believe in the president, the flag, and the Statue
of Liberty. I believe in the honesty of the FBI and
the humility of military men. I believe in the network
news anchor-persons, who strive to learn the truth, to
know the truth, and to tell the truth to the audience.
And I believe all of America is so well educated in
the basic physics discussed above, they would rise up
in fury if anyone tried to pull a cheap Hollywood
trick on them.
Hand me that remote, will you? I believe [clonk]. I
believe [clonk]. I believe ...
J. McMichael
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