SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking out of the downtown Saint Paul Dunn Brothers coffee. He runs into Chuck DUUUUHHHH, third-shift Twitter operator for “Minnesotans for Rand Paul”.
DUUUUHHHH: Hey, Merg! Did you seen the NEWS of the hotel FIRE in DOOBBAI?
BERG: Well, yeah – but before we get to that, I gotta say I’m amazed that you actually talk like you type on Facebook and Twitter, with occasional interjections in all caps.
DUUUUHHHH: Ha HAH. So there was a building fire, but it wasn’t hot ENOUGH to melt STEEL. Why DIDN’T the hotel fall TO the ground?
BERG: Because the fire was apparently in the cladding, on the facade, and never had a chance to weaken the structural steel.
DUUUUHHHH: Because steel melts at 2000 DEGREES FARRENHEIGHT, and so it didn’t LIQUIFY the GIRDLES.
BERG: Girders.
DUUUUHHHH: THAT is your opinion!
BERG: Sure, whatever.
DUUUUHHHH: So by your logic, since it wasn’t not enough TO liquify steel, the HOTEL should HAVE fallen to the ground! Like Building SEVEN!
BERG: That’s kinda a non-sequitur.
DUUUUHHHH: That’s JUST your opinion! You’re not an engineer!
BERG: No, that’s true. But I have some command of basic logic. Look – you see to be of the opinion that if every skyscraper fire doesn’t end in a complete implosion, then 9/11 was an inside job.
DUUUUHHHH: Don’t be a sheeple! The GOVERNMENT lies to people all THE time! Why would a building fall when jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to melt steel?
BERG: Sure, government lies. No argument
But steel doesn’t have to melt to be a problem. Steel loses its strength and becomes basically pliable hundreds of degrees below its melting point:
DUUUUHHHH: He’s no engineer!~ And that doesn’t explain why all three BUILDINGS fell inside their FOOTPRINCE.
BERG: All three buildings transferred their weight via a web of girders to their central cores, which transferred the weight to the ground. Since the weight is all going down the middle of the building, where would you expect them to fall?
DUUUUHHHH: That’s just your opinion! You’re JUST closing your mind to all the engineers AND physicists who QUESTION the OFFFICIAL 9/11 story!
BERG: And you’re closing yours to the many engineers who point out that steel bends at a lower temp than jet fuel burns, and that buildings fall in the direction their weight transfers, absent some other force.
DUUUUHHHH: But you’re ignoring the fact THAT steel melts at 2000 degrees!
BERG: I answered that above.
DUUUUHHHH: And why did all three buildings FALL INSIDE their own footprint?
BERG: We just talked about that.
DUUUUHHHH: And why DID THE buildings collapse when the TEMPERATURE wasn’t enough TO LIQUIFY steel?
BERG: Um…?
DUUUUHHHH: And without getting STEEL UP to 2000 degrees, it had to be a controlled demolition, OTHERWISE how do you explain the building FALLING IN its footprint?
BERG slowly tiptoes away.
And SCENE.
The point of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum is that what draws people to conspiracy theories is the first half of the phrase ‘secret knowledge.’ The details of the alternate explanation for (insert whatever you’d like here) isn’t nearly as important as that it is secret. Believing in it puts you above the mass of humanity and makes you one of the elect.
Not to mention that “impact from an airliner” might have dented the support columns and made them more susceptible to buckling. But that said, I’ve personally gotten steel to bend by heating it with a blowtorch. Made a cool tool suitable for a cleanroom that way, and got asked by the local machinists how I did it.
Without resorting to a conspiracy theory explain the German elite’s benign attitude toward the rapping hoards in the square at Cologne?
DMA, according to the mayor of Cologne, it was just “sexual frankness”.
Popular Mechanics did a whole issue that was Posner like in it’s refutation of the Keepers Of Odd Knowledge Society points on WTC collapse. I keep it at the ready when my FB friends use the “Inside Job” nonsense.
It’s a funny video but won’t shut up anybody. The presenter concedes jet fuel burns at 1500 degrees but he does not demonstrate soft steel at that temperature, he specifically says his steel is 1800 degrees, 300 degrees hotter than jet fuel. So jet fuel could not have caused his soft steel and by implication, could not have softened steel enough to collapse the buildings. The demonstration does not prove the conspiracy is wrong; he would have needed to bend steel heated to 1500 degrees to do that. Run the demo again at 1500 degrees or explain how heat trapped in the building added the extra 300 degrees – then you’ve got something.
Bait-and-switch. Hey, I’d call it out if a liberal did it. I’m just playing fair.
Popular Mechanics did a whole issue
A couple of years ago I decided to try a subscription to PM, remembering that it used to be a fun mag. I cancelled it with extreme prejudice after 6 months. PM has devolved into a propaganda rag for Global Warming/Climate change idiots and oozing green spin and libturd talking points from every article and editorial. Shame. Do they once in a while come up with an unbiased article – yes. But for the most part I would not even line a birdcage with it.
Bait-and-switch.
I think it is more complicated than that. Jet fuel burns at 1500 in controlled conditions at sea level, etc. I am just a lowly chemist and not a chemical or an industrial engineer, but I tend to believe burning temps and characteristics would change depending on how much oxygen is available. And, while everyone is focusing on jet fuel, what was used to heat WTC? I do not know, but I suspect there were quite a few NG pipes running throughout the building and guess at what temp NG burns – 3000F. And last but not least, think of all the energy stored in the building when it was built. Once you get over the activation energy hump, that is a lot of energy to be released.
jpa – of course you are right, it’s just that I never thought about the energy stored in the erection of the building. Each story adds to the kinetic energy stored, each additional pound lifted an additional foot adds more kinetic energy. Enormous amounts of energy, just waiting to be released.
POint well taken on 1800F vs. 1500, but it’s worth noting that structural studies indicate a lot of structural steel loses a lot of its strength by about 550C or 1200F. So he did overkill for whatever reason.
When I bent the steel, it wasn’t glowing anything like that piece of steel, BTW. Dull red glow, not quite sure how hot it was.
The presenter concedes jet fuel burns at 1500 degrees but he does not demonstrate soft steel at that temperature, he specifically says his steel is 1800 degrees, 300 degrees hotter than jet fuel.
He also shows that steel is so elastic at 1800 degrees that it has almost zero load-bearing capacity.
If steel only loses 50% of its load-bearing capacity at 1500, while that still collapse a building?
I would like to see him do the same thing at 1,500F, though.
A very quick search of temp effect on structural steel yields textbook tables and figures that show steel loses half of its integrity around a 1000F. Again, think about all that stored energy looking for a release.