911 Buildings Blasted Into Dust – Do the Physics!
911 Buildings Blasted Into Dust – Do the Physics!
By Bob Podolsky
Since the 9/11/2001 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, there has been much discussion about how the attack was achieved and who was responsible. The “official” explanation, as explicated in the final report of the 9/11 Commission, is itself a conspiracy theory – claiming that nineteen Saudi Arabs, armed only with box-cutters, caused the collapse of three WTC towers and punched a hole through three heavily reinforced walls of the Pentagon. Being a scientist with a masters degree in theoretical physics and twenty years of technical experience in systems analysis, I couldn’t let the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission go unexamined.
Despite the fact that thousands of scientists, scholars, architects, engineers, military personnel, intelligence officers, Fire investigators, demolition experts, attorneys, politicians, pilots, plus 9/11 Blog sites and those of us on facebook have knowledgeably disputed the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission, the mainstream media, including NPR, has consistently belittled and attempted to discredit alternative accounts of the events of 9/11, by describing them pejoratively as conspiracy theories and associating them with assassination theories, UFO theories, Illuminati theories, and various other theories that are usually disbelieved – whether or not they are correct.
What is a Conspiracy?
So let’s get real. If two or more people were involved together in creating an event, their collaboration was, by definition, a conspiracy. If someone offers an explanation of how an event, or series of events, took place, that explanation is, in scientific terms, a theory. So by definition, the 9/11 Commission’s report is a conspiracy theory.
In science, if a theory is an attempt to provide an explanation that fits the objectively verifiable facts, it is inherently a good thing. Once the theory has been made public, it is up to other scientists to determine to what extent the theory is consistent with the facts – thereby determining to what extent (if any) the theory is valid.
It was around 2003 that I came to realize that many of the assertions of the 9/11 Commission Report seemed inconsistent with the publicly reported facts. So I decided to check out a couple of the key elements of the official theory on my own. I did this by seeking answers to two simple questions concerning the collapse of the WTC buildings:
A. Did the burning jet fuel provide temperatures high enough to account for the softening and melting of structural steel that had to have taken place for the towers to have collapsed in the manner described by the Commission’s report?
B. Was there enough energy available in the system comprised of the aircraft and building together to account for the destruction of the building as described in publicly available descriptions of the damage done to the buildings?
Thermodynamic Laws
For those interested in the details of how I answered these questions, I explain them below. But first, I’ll give you the results of those findings. In a nutshell, the answer to both questions is “NO“. In the case of question (A), this means that the Commission’s report violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the answer to question (B) means that the Commission’s report violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. And therefore the Commission’s conspiracy theory is INVALID.
I should mention, for those unfamiliar with science, that the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics are “Laws of Nature” – like the Law of Gravity. No scientist or engineer has ever seen a violation of these laws – ever.
Resulting Conclusions:
In light of all the information above and the analysis and observations listed below, I am compelled, as a scientist, to arrive at the conclusion that the attacks of 9/11/2001 were indeed an “inside job”, perpetrated by members of our government – probably (to speculate) to justify the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq that have destroyed the lives of millions of people at home and abroad.
On this note I must mention that, despite all contrary propaganda, (as I’ve said in my book, “The BORG Wars“) ALL WARS are fought for control of resources – Oil, gas, minerals, arable land, water, seaport availability, and slaves, for example. And both Afghanistan and Iraq contain trillions of dollars worth of such resources. From this we see that the deaths of a few thousand Americans on 9/11 was almost trivial, compared the evils that the perpetrators of 9/11 are prepared to commit to have their way.
The big questions are “who dunnit” and “at whose behest” were these extremely unethical acts committed? We may never know the answers with certainty – but we can make an informed conjecture. Whoever concocted the 9/11 conspiracy, they had to have been very powerful people indeed. So my money is on the top echelon of the B.O.R.G., as explained in the preceding link, to name the ultimate perpetrators – and on elements of our government to answer the who dunnit question.
Outline of My Analysis
I was recently invited to publish the calculations by means of which I arrived at the above conclusions. However, I have decided instead to outline the methodology I used to make the calculations, which I made with a hand-held calculator of limited capability. It is my hope that others, with access to much more sophisticated mathematical tools, will replicate my calculations and get far more accurate results. My methodology was as follows:
A. I assumed that the elevated temperatures in the WTC towers had to be due to the burning of aircraft jet fuel, the burning of furnishings present in the towers (carpeting, desks, chairs, etc.), or possibly natural gas (if there were gas-lines in the towers).
1. As does every scientist and engineer worth his salt, I had access to look-up tables (in real books) telling me at what temperatures things burn. I used them.
2. I also looked up the temperatures at which structural steel softens, becomes malleable, and melts.
3. Based on the black color of the smoke generated and the red and orange flames visible in videos of the events, I reached the conclusion that persistent temperatures within the burning towers could not have been above 750° Fahrenheit.
4. Since this temperature is less than half that required to soften steel (2000° or so), let alone melt it (3000° or more), and since
5. Heat cannot flow “uphill” any more than water does (2nd Law of Thermodynamics),
6. I conclude that the impact of the aircraft and the consequent heat generated could not possibly have collapsed the towers as described in the Commission’s conspiracy theory. This conclusion is especially relevant to Tower 7, which was not hit by a plane and suffered zero damage from the burning of jet fuel.
B. The calculations needed to answer question (B) above are much more complicated.
1. For starters I noted that after each tower’s collapse, the pieces that remained required relatively little cutting up before being placed on big flat-bed trucks to be hauled away. So as a first approximation I assumed that all the steel members in the building were reduced to chunks no more than 60′ long and 10′ wide.
2. To determine what this meant, I went to a site such as http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/index.html (I don’t remember which one I used), where the steel construction is described in detail. I divided the calculations into five parts:
a. Determine the energy required to separate all the floors from one another and from their vertical supports.
b. Determine the energy required to cut up each floor into 60′ linear sections.
c. Determine the energy required to turn 90% (my estimate) of the concrete in the structure into dust.
d. Determine the plane’s kinetic energy and
e. The chemical energy in the plane’s fuel.
3. To calculate (2.a.) above, I used a typical horizontal cross section of the building (WTC-2) and assumed (throughout this analysis) that 1/16″ of steel was removed at the moment the destruction occurred.
4. I totaled up the cross sectional area and multiplied the sum by 1/16″ to determine the amount of steel that had to be removed to cut the cross section through the building.
5. Next I multiplied by the number of floors above ground level in the building, to get a total of the volume of steel that had to be removed throughout the building.
6. Then I calculated the energy required to melt (as with a cutting torch) all of the steel totaled in (B.5.) above.
7. Then I applied the same method as used above to determine how much energy it took to cut up all the floors into 60′ by 10′ chunks or sections, and added this number to the result of calculation (B.6.) above, giving me the total energy involved in destroying the steel elements of the building.
8. Finally, I turned to a description of the concrete in the building that I found online, that gave me the crush-resistance specifications of the concrete used in the construction of the building and the quantity of concrete used. From that specification I was able to determine the work (energy) needed to crush 90% of the concrete that had gone into the building’s construction. And I added that amount of energy to the result of calculation (B.7.) above – at last yielding an approximate value of the total energy that had to have been released in the building’s destruction.
9. My next task (much easier) was to determine how much energy was available to wreak the destruction described above. Since detailed description of the Boeing 767-222 that struck the tower was available to me online, I was able to determine the kinetic energy of the plane and the chemical energy of its fuel.
10. To this number I added the potential energy inherent in the building itself by multiplying the weight of the building by the approximate height of the building’s center of gravity above ground.
11. Totaling these numbers and applying a rough (much smaller) number (approximation) for the burning of the building’s contents, I finally derived a reasonable estimate of the energy available to destroy the building.
At last I was ready to answer Question B that I posed at the outset. According to my assumptions, estimates, and calculations, the energy available to damage the building was less than 1% of the energy that had actually destroyed the building. This finding proves to my satisfaction that the 9/11 Commission explanation violates the First Law of Thermodynamics – and is therefore NOT VALID and IMPOSSIBLE.
A Few Final Comments
Having proven to myself that the official 9/11 Commission Report is grossly incomplete at best (or a pack of lies at worst), I began to look at other publicly available information concerning the events of that day. A few items (out of many) particularly caught my attention:
- The unprecedented “free-fall” implosions of three WTC buildings into their footprints.
- The presence of thermate in the dust debris around the fallen towers.
- The persistent presence of molten steel beneath the fallen towers.
- The lack of verifiable security at the WTC in the weeks preceding the attacks of 9/11.
- The stand-down of USAF defense protocols the morning of 9/11, as reported by a military officer who was present when Dick Cheney ordered the stand-down.
- The report of a qualified military plane-spotter, who said he saw a missile-capable USAF drone approaching the Pentagon just before the attack at that location.
- The FBI confiscation of all the security videos around the Pentagon that could have photographed the strike at that location.
- The assertion by experienced Boeing 767 pilots that even highly trained and experienced 767 pilots could not possibly have maneuvered such a plane into the Pentagon as radar indicated the attack was committed.
- The absence of wings, engines, and tail pieces from the area surrounding the Pentagon point of impact.
- The fact that the hole made in the outside wall of the Pentagon was significantly smaller than the diameter of the 767 fuselage.
- The penetration of three highly reinforced Pentagon inner walls by a presumed thin-skinned, predominantly aluminum aircraft structure.
- The failure of the government to release factual data concerning any of the discrepancies listed above.
- The failure of the mainstream media to investigate and report the aforesaid discrepancies – choosing instead to dismissingly label challenges to the official conspiracy theory as “conspiracy theories”.
Footnote:
I’m happy to report that I’m not the only one examining the physics/energy issues of the WTC attacks. Someone called “meremarck” has recently weighed in on the subject at opednews.com. Their approach, while different from mine, is competent and well thought out. For those interested, it is well worth a read.
Thank you for trying to “do the math” about the destruction of the twin towers. I am an architect with over 40 years of experience and very much aware of the false narrative told to us by the government and media about 9/11. I signed AE911T’s petition and even served on their board for a while.
I have been doing independent research into the destruction of the twin towers and share my findings/collaborate with several physicists and engineers at the 911 Free Forums.
There were many interesting and unique aspects to the towers and their demise. The explanation offered by NIST about what caused their destruction is not credible. However, NIST did NOT explain their actual collapse. I challenge you to cite where there is any official explanation of the mechanism of the collapse phase of the destruction of the twin towers.
So their explanation of sagging trusses pulling in and buckling the facade columns is false. But their absence of an explanation of their collapse is neither true NOR false. But we are left with the observations such as the apparent time of collapse and analysis of the material coming off the towers… its speed and direction… acceleration and so forth… and of course the timing of the actual destruction.
Careful study of the observables indicate that there were distinct phases of the destruction which blended into one another… ie the collapse progressed from one phase to another. Each phase can be described and “measured”… and meaning can be extracted from this data.
One also needs to understand how the towers were constructed and take this into consideration as to how they “came apart”… and ended up as a pile of steel and mostly mangled metal and dust. Technical understanding involves not only physics, but statics, structural engineering, materials science, chemistry, fluid dynamics the behavior of gases. Lots of “science” was at play in their destruction.
First I want to address the very common misconception that the towers could not collapse from the top down. They DID not collapse from the top down. Look at the video. Let’s take the North Tower. What we observe is that there is no movement or distortion in the building after the plane strikes. There is a huge wound and fires raging mostly above the plane strike which centered on the 96th floor.
The first observation to note is the slight movement and tilting of the 360 foot tall TV antenna. This 36 story unguyed structure was supported by a space frame (3 D truss) which transferred the antenna loads to the columns in the core. The antenna actually was above only 3 rather small columns. The hat truss (space frame) also provided a rigid fixing for the antenna.. a moment connect as it were. So the first movement was the antenna indicating that the hat truss had begun to fail… or several of its panels. We don’t know why.
The we observe that the top 14 stories begin to disappear from their bottom… it appears that the roof line is dropping and floor 97 disappears the remaining 13 stories drop then floor 96 and the remaining 12 stories drop and so on. Debris and dust pours out.. is expelled at the 96th floor level as each floor crash or disappears at that level. Those 14 stories weighed about 15,000 tons and the contents of those floors weighed an additional 15,000 tons. This does not include the weight of ANY columns. In Phase 1 we observe 30,000 tons… 14 stories of building destroyed “from the bottom up” in about 4 seconds.
One has to ask… what happened to those 30,000 tons of floors and their contents? Answer… it dropped down… pulled by gravity… it bounced out and landed outside the footprint,,, the way water will radiate from a kitchen spout hitting the bottom of the sink. The destruction of the top does not look like a single massive explosion like a huge bomb… it looks like a “CD where a building comes crashing down to earth… but this comes crashing down at the 96th floor.
Since the mass did not disappear and we see only some of it go over the side we must assume that MOST of it came down with in the footprint. And as such it landed on… the 96th floor which was 31,300 sf supported on 88 trusses and 6 cross trusses spanning between facade and the perimeter or the core. The columns of the core, the hat truss, the water tanks and mechical equipment, the structure of the antenna itself, the restaurant equipment from WOW… and the office contents and the floor slabs themselves came raining down.
Floor 96 was designed to support an imposed live load of 58 pounds per square foot of STATIC load. But as much as 30,000 tons were coming down on its 30.000 square feet as a DYNAMIC load from as high as 160 feet above it. each square foot was assaulted by 2,000 pounds of dynamic load which it perhaps equivalent of 20,000 pounds of static load. Of course this assault was spread over the 4 second elapsed time of Phase I.
Floor 96 was unable to arrest the descending mass. It was shattered and fractured and it too dropped down along with the rest of the mass onto the 95th floor and then the 95th and the mass above on to the 94th floor
Phase II is the runaway rapid collapse of the entire remaining floors below floor 96. The collapse was not uniform as in a 30,000 SF wall of debris… parts raced ahead and some lagged a few stories. But observations show the collapse front raced down through the tower at 60″ mph… or about 100′ per second which is a bit over .1 seconds per floor.
The gathering mass had to displace the air contained within the closed windows/wall of each floor. That air was displaced in about 1/10 of a second and traveled at speeds outward or up to 400 mph. Do the match. This is a very destructive force… and what an explosion is all about… rapidly expanding gas… which moves at high velocity. A cubic yard of air at mid span of the long span floor moved 30 feet in .1 seconds. That’s wind! And it destroyed the floor, blasted the glass and carried all the light weight material outward just ahead of the massive debris plunging through the tower.
Phase II took about 10 seconds or so. It produced a thunderous roar and in the beginning witness heard the rapid succession of floors being blasted …boom, boom boom boom boom… staccato separated only by the .1 second interval between floor collisions/attacks.
No columns were crushed. No columns could resist the falling debris. It wasn’t falling ON THEM but on the floors attached to their sides and those connection sheared off like butter. Half way down to the bottom the pressure was in excess of 50,000 psi and it pulverized everything to fine grained dust. At the end of the collapse the pressure was as much as 100,000 psi. You wont find toilets or door handles or file cabinets… not even a computer that remain recognizable after 100,000 psi has been applied to them… or perhaps 6 or 7 seconds churning amidst tens of thousands of tons or rubble… grinding everything friable into sand and smaller sized grains.
The facade was unable to stand without the bracing the floors provided. The facade peeled off, was pushed by the collapsing floor rubble and toppled away from the building… landing up to 430 feet away… not unreasonable considering it was pushed off rather energetically by the floor rubble from 1200 feet in the air. Parts of the falling facade were as wide as the entire building and 10 or 15 stories high.
Finally the core columns remained. The supported the floors …the 24 perimeter ones… and some floors inside the core/ Those floors resting on beams which were the bracing for the core columns. And those floors were assaulted as the floors outside the core. And when they fractured they broke many of the bracing beams. This left the core columns without bracing and their slenderness ratio shot up as each floor of bracing was stripped away. They became too slender for their cross section. Too slender is unstable. When the slenderness ratio exceeds 150 for a steel column it buckles under its own weight… and that’s precisely what happened to the few columns which were jostled apart by the avalanche of debris.
How much energy does it take to knock over a mile row of dominos? How about a mile of dominos where each domino is 1/100 larger than the previous one. You could with that sort of progression and “stored PE” knock over a building.
Was there enough PE in the towers for the to “self destruct? That design? You betcha. BUT… and there’s a big BUT… you need to get the threshold mass to kick off the progressive floor collapse. But once you do… the towers come down one two three… lickity split with no more explosives or energy inputs.
So I am 100% certain that the towers collapse was DRIVEN by gravity. It was not CAUSED by gravity. We don’t yet know what caused the top 14 floors to break apart… to crash down on 96… to kick off Phase II.
We do know that steel DOES lose strength when heated. But the office fires seem hardly hot enough to sufficiently weaken the columns for them to buckle and then become unable to carry their loads. But the columns also are subject to load redistribution. Of the 47 core columns we can assume that with a safety factor or 2… for example… that half the columns could support the full load if… if it was reasonably re distributed… such as every other column was OK.
But what happens when 29 columns are failed… naturally from heat or unnaturally from heat or explosives? The remaining 18 will not carry the load… not with a FOS of 2. So you see you don’t have to have EVERY column fail… just one more than the ratio of the safety factor and then the others will rapidly be over stressed and fail…progressive failure. You can bank on it.
You physicists like to reduce it all to thermodynamic equations and miss the trees for the forest here. On the micro level Laws 1, 2 and 3 are all at work and it all adds up.
NIST didn’t lie about this. They lied about heat causing trusses to sag 9 feet and then 2 – 5/8″ Ø bolts at the end of each truss remaining intact and being able to pull in columns which were made from .625 or even .875″ thk plate (for tower 2). THAT IS TOTAL RUBBISH.
Get over it. The towers in Phase II collapsed from released gravitational PE which was MORE than adequate to crush the floors.. and the columns fell from Euler buckling— they were not crushed nor exploded.
Now if you want to do serious research instead or knocking over strawmen.. look into Phase I and what freed up those 30,000 tons. But you are in good company. The eminent professor Bazant was also blowing hot air with his calculations because he failed to observe the collapse.
Understanding is gained through technically informed observations of the collapse (event) and intimate familiarity with the actual structure of the building collapse being observed.
If you are lacking in any of this… it’s garbage in = garbage out.
I thank you if you’ve taken the time to read this far. You can find much more technical discussions about these matters at the 9/11 Free Forums
the911forum.freeforums.org
You might learn something…. I did.
Jeffrey Orling, RA
Reguardless, it’s all about Bldg 7. Absolutely no explination as to how they pushed button to bring down Bldg 7 on Command. Where is flight 77 as it didn’t hit the Pentagon, fighter planes sent 200 miles east, as the supposed missle was headed to the Pentagon, and we are to believe our Government leaders that there was no conspiracy. We had the same thing happen on Dec 7, 1941. But will the voters in this nation wake up and learn who and what they are voting for? Come on Citizens, lets ReVote and ReStore America, be a Patriot, defend our Bill of Rights and our Constitution, and have our government issue real US currency, not Federal Reserve paper that we are paying interest on. Do we have a legitimate government anymore? I’m here to be your next President when you wake up and want to return our nation to WE the PEOPLE.
Very well put together. I see you too have had many long nights, that can easily turn into weeks of researching this topic. Just a couple of things to point out for you next time.
You said:
“The unprecedented “free-fall” implosions of three WTC buildings into their footprints”.
This is false and can work against you. The only building that experienced free fall was tower 7. This is admitted by NIST in their 2008 final report. They were forced to correct it through questions by professional physicists at a televised hearing. NIST denied free fall for 7 years prior.
watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDvNS9iMjzA
In the case of falling into their footprints, that is also false for all three towers. Building 7 was a classic demolition….however, the building tilted slightly and landed outside the foot print a bit. Debunkers play and prey on this. The best way to say this statement is that ” WTC 7 fell virtually into it’s own footprint in a controlled demolition like manner, in which the structure experienced 2.25 seconds of free fall acceleration”
In the case of 1 and 2 tower, this was something never seen before in demolition. It was explosive not implosive. 1 and 2 fell closer to 2/3 free fall, which is still way, way to fast for the way it was built. It did however experience “constant acceleration ” as the roof line from the North Tower fell through the damaged zone for the first 2 or 3 seconds without any recordable “jolts” of deceleration. In other words, there was not enough of an impact from the “top block” to the in tact structure to carry the collapse beyond the first few seconds. It should have stopped from the resistance of the columns beneath (236 perimeters per floor). Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8z8ks8Mqyk&feature=related
The twin towers exploded outward not inward, which is why they could not have fallen into their footprint and were not an implosion. This is also a debunker handbook play that can make you look bad. It’s unfortunate, but on this side of the argument, there is no room for error.
“The presence of thermate in the dust debris around the fallen towers.”
There is no presents of “thermate” in the WTC dust. There have been “nanothermite” composite that are still active and can be reacted 9.5 years later. The red/gray chips explode at 430 C. You might be confused with the FEMA finding of sulphur residue on the piece of steel found by one of their engineers. Thermate is Thermite with the addition of sulphur. This allows the steel to melt at a lower temperature.
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvQDFV1HINw&feature=player_embedded
Also, there are billions of microscopic spheres made up of iron present throughout all the dust from 9/11. There spheres are in a tear drop shape which constitutes surface tension as to how they became that shape. Moreover, they would have had to have once been molten to achieve that shape. Molten iron spheres is the main bi product of thermite/nanothermite/thermate. Nanothermite is a high tech military engineered explosive. Themite and thermate do not explode, they just burn really hot and really fast.
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d5iIoCiI8g
“The persistent presence of molten steel beneath the fallen towers.”
This is ok except say ” some sort of molten metal that was present for weeks after the destruction”. Then follow that up with the NASA thermal images that prove it. Or this one: FDNY Captain, and first responder on 9/11/01 Phillip Ruvolo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCdRA09pztM
A simple candle flame burns at 1800 degrees F. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire
Yet you claim that the fire in the WTC was 750 degrees F, or less than 1/2 of a candle flame. Some mixture of Jet fuel paper, furniture and carpeting was buurning as less then 1/2 the temperature of a simple candle. And you then base your analysis on this.
Wait … I know. Wikipedia is also part of the conspiracy that destroyed the WTC. Yea — thats it…
A candle really burns as a much lower temperature than 750 degrees. And if you measure a higher temperature, that just proves that THEY have altered all those instruments that you purchased.
The rest of the paper shows a similar intellectual depth.