# WTC Collapse: Need airtight answer please! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 31, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226 "2014-01-31T19:14:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/141 "2014-02-03T22:28:19Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Three possible reasons come to mind: > > 1. Engineering schools mostly concentrate on putting things up, seismic safety being the major exception; > > 2. It would be big enough to be a significant expense for a demonstration that would have little or no benefit; and > > 3. It would be really creepy. > > As a subset of #3, if modeling of portions of the collapse has been done, the results are buried in engineering journals and have gone unnoticed by net denizens. Actually, this is just the kind of project a school would do. It would make a hell of a senior project, and they could examine how design differences would affect the outcome. The reason they do no is the whole square/cube thing. Scaling is quite difficult. I do scale work at a wind tunnel for NASA and we cannot model dynamics of flexible structures at all. To be able to do that you need a tunnel where you can use heavy gas or pump out a portion of the air. For a collapsing structure you would have to even more scaling troubles. A better way to do it would be to model a small portion of the building at full scale, though this would be insanely expensive and beyond what a university could do. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/142 "2014-02-03T22:30:11Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Wow, there are still people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job? Their lives must be incredibly dull. I hope that, at this point, they’re either too ingrained and vain to admit being wrong or they just argue to entertain themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/143 "2014-02-03T22:31:00Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > So, what’s the allegation here? The government gives money to engineering schools, on the condition that they don’t make physical models to study 9/11? They threaten the faculty of every engineering school? All engineering school instructors are government agents? What? Yep. Maybe I shouldn’t spill the beans, but you are exactly right. When you join the faculty of an engineering school, briefing personel from several government agencies come by to let us know what needs to be kept on the down low. At 8 am, they had a lecture on the materials science gains from the Roswell crash. At 11 am they were up to how the Eldritch runes on the JFK bullet caused it to behave erratically. Unfortunately, the catered lunch was delicious, and they didn’t get to covering 9/11 until late in the afternoon. I was pretty sleepy by the time the talk got to that point. All I caught was something about nanotech explosives and metamaterial cloaking gear used by the Controlled Demolition employees to plant the bombs in secret. A little after five they got to Obama’s birth certificate. Apparently, it’s worse than we feared - he was actually born in an alternate universe where “Hawaii” refers to the continent of Africa. After several interdimensional jumps, he lost the paperwork, but fortunately… Gotta go, knock at the door. Brb… ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/144 "2014-02-03T22:36:21Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Yep. Maybe I shouldn’t spill the beans, but you are exactly right. When you join the faculty of an engineering school, briefing personel from several government agencies come by to let us know what needs to be kept on the down low. Look what happened to the technology building in Holland. Loose lips sink ships, er…buildings. Someone talked… ---
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/145 "2014-02-03T22:36:49Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > I guess the square cube law didn’t work in 1940 on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge model. > > At 2:45 > > That model was 54 feet long. > > A 1:100th scale model of the north tower would only be 13’ 9" and would not have to be built in a wind tunnel. And they could use 3D printers. The support material would have to be weaker relative to the weight to compensate for the square cube law but we would still have to have accurate data on the mass distribution. > > psik It is much easier to model a flexible structure than a collapsing one. For the bridge you need to scale certain aerodynamic properties and elastic properties. Very doable. For a collapse you need to model the failure properties, not so easy. Also, I am not sure how you would take into account gravity on a different scale, which is the source of all the destructive energy. These are not so important for the bridge. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/146 "2014-02-04T00:13:04Z")
I have a theory. The towers never existed at all in the first place. Anyone who ever claimed to go there, any photographs or videos you’ve ever seen of it, or even any personal memories of going into the buildings or touching them are hoaxes planted by the government. The government uses chemicals put into jet fuel used by commercial airlines to mess with our memories and our skepticism. They doctored movies, photographs and video footage of New York to make us all think those two towers existed, so that after being there for a while, they could make people believe they had been destroyed in a terrorist attack. The people who supposedly died that day were never born. They never existed and their supposed families had their minds altered to believe as much. (have I topped the worst conspiracy theories yet?) ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/147 "2014-02-04T00:29:16Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > The people who supposedly died that day were never born. They never existed and their supposed families had their minds altered to believe as much. > > (have I topped the worst conspiracy theories yet?) What’ll really bake your noodle is that the Towers have always existed, and always will. You live in them right now. Actually, your memories of the outside world are what are false. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/148 "2014-02-04T00:36:18Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > What’ll really bake your noodle is that the Towers have always existed, and always will. You live in them right now. Actually, your memories of the outside world are what are false. Oh, wow, it’s like a PKD novel! _The Man in WTC2_! ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/149 "2014-02-04T01:25:37Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > What’ll really bake your noodle is that the Towers have always existed, and always will. You live in them right now. Actually, your memories of the outside world are what are false. _Inception_ meets _The Matrix_ meets _Total Recall_ meets… ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/150 "2014-02-04T01:44:05Z")
And the planes were actually UFO holograms. But shhh, that’s just what the alternative media _wants_ you to think! ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/151 "2014-02-04T01:48:34Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > ROFL > > The only alternative explanation you will encounter is the release of pressure built up inside caused by the falling top portion of the building. > > Of course this “PRESSURE” would build up throughout the lower portion of the building going down stairwells and elevator shafts presumably. So how could it ever become great enough to cause those ejections? That “EXPLANATION” is ridiculous. > > It is so curious that in 1940 a 1:200th scale model of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge could be built in a wind tunnel which duplicated the oscillating behavior of the real bridge but in 12 years we don’t have a physical model of the collapse. What engineering school has even discussed building one? :smack: > > psik And why would we need a scale model of the collapse? They had the physical evidence to exam. The floor joists were warped from heat and the attaching bolts to the vertical columns survived. The vertical columns were bent inward at the point the joists connected to the columns. This is where it failed. The building fell down. It didn’t blow over. There’s no point in building a wind tunnel model. The Tacoma Narrows bridge failed because of harmonic resonance caused by wind. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/152 "2014-02-04T01:52:52Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > :eek: > > Please tell me at least one of those harassers was either arrested or sued successfully. AFAIK, no. And it’s becoming more common. The Denver theater shooting? Didn’t happen. It’s all fake. Sandy Hook? Didn’t happen. It’s all fake. Sooner or later, one of these nutters is going to confront a surviving family member and get the ever-lovin’ shit beaten out of them. Or also possible, a nutter is going to shoot one of them to ‘help expose the lie.’ ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/153 "2014-02-04T02:05:39Z")
**Patch** : That’s just sad. To the CTers, both IRL and posting here: _X-Files_ and _Men In Black_ are fiction. Don’t get your scientific education from them. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/154 "2014-02-04T02:14:13Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > Of course this “PRESSURE” would build up throughout the lower portion of the building going down stairwells and elevator shafts presumably. So how could it ever become great enough to cause those ejections? That “EXPLANATION” is ridiculous. Actually, your claim is even more ridiculous than the sort of nonsense that you typically spout in these threads. Each floor of each tower of the WTC was an acre in extent. The total elevator and stairway shafts on the floors with the most elevators was a bit less than 6,000 square feet. You are pretending that the all the air ten feet deep in an acre could be compressed through a space of about one seventh the same area without having any affect on windows that were already being shattered as the walls in which they were mounted were torn loose as each ceiling fell in. After that bit of foolishness, I expect you to tell us that there is no problem standing in front of a window during a tornado because a the wind would just flow around the house without damaging the windows. ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/155 "2014-02-04T02:30:50Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > You are pretending that the all the air ten feet deep in an acre could be compressed through a space of about one seventh the same area without having any affect on windows that were already being shattered as the walls in which they were mounted were torn loose as each ceiling fell in. Do you know what “squibs” we are talking about? These were ejections occurring 5 or more stories ahead of the collapse front. > **[FAQ #5: What Caused the Ejections of Dust and Debris in the Twin Towers?](http://www1.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/585-faq-8-squibs)** > > Did you know that 3 towers fell on 9/11? World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed on 9/11 after the Twin Towers but was never hit by a plane. How?... I am not trying to explain what caused them. I am simply saying the explanations we get are ridiculous. psik ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/156 "2014-02-04T02:39:07Z")
Sorry for this semi-hijack, but regarding Dr. Steven Jones’s credibility … is he the physicist from Brigham Young University who reported in the late 1990’s that he had repeated [Dr. Duncan MacDougall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_(doctor))’s experiments of weighing people as they died to see if a soul had mass, only instead of weighing dying humans, it was done by dunking insects sealed in plastic bags into liquid nitrogen, and that his lab had gathered evidence that the animals did indeed lose a tiny but consistent amount of weight at the point of death? If that is indeed him, would this not indicate (along with some of his other claims) that he has occasionally reported scientific findings that **(A)** most other scientists would find questionable, **(B)** are out of his field of expertise, and **(C)** lend support to his pre-existing beliefs? If so, I suspect that I would probably regard his 9/11 conclusions regarding nano-thermite with even more skepticism than I already have. Am I completely mis-remembering this? ---
**Author:** ![psikeyhackr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/97f17d/32.png) [@psikeyhackr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psikeyhackr)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/157 "2014-02-04T02:39:11Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > And why would we need a scale model of the collapse? They had the physical evidence to exam. The floor joists were warped from heat and the attaching bolts to the vertical columns survived. The vertical columns were bent inward at the point the joists connected to the columns. This is where it failed. The building fell down. It didn’t blow over. There’s no point in building a wind tunnel model. The Tacoma Narrows bridge failed because of harmonic resonance caused by wind. What percentage of the steel of the building was available for examination? > **[9-11 Research: WTC Steel Removal](https://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html)** > > Disposal of the steel remains of the World Trade Center buildings,expeditious steel removal There were 2900 perimeter wall panels on each tower from the 9th floor to the top. Total weight was 27,000 tons so the average was 9+ tons. Can you find how many different weights there were and the quantity of each weight? There are more than 200 buildings around the world over 800 feet tall and gravity is pretty much the same all over the planet. Can you find the tons of steel and tons of concrete on each level of any of them? People who can BELIEVE on the basis of insufficient data do not need models. psik ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/158 "2014-02-04T02:40:09Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > It is so curious that in 1940 a 1:200th scale model of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge could be built in a wind tunnel which duplicated the oscillating behavior of the real bridge but in 12 years we don’t have a physical model of the collapse. What engineering school has even discussed building one? :smack: > > psik The model built of the TN bridge demonstrated the resonance effect. What didn’t it show? The bridge’s collapse. Physical scale models rarely show what happens to their full scale systems. That is why they have limits. Ask Mr. Langley about how scaling things from a model doesn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/159 "2014-02-04T02:48:33Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > What percentage of the steel of the building was available for examination? > > [9-11 Research: WTC Steel Removal](http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html) > > There were 2900 perimeter wall panels on each tower from the 9th floor to the top. Total weight was 27,000 tons so the average was 9+ tons. > > Can you find how many different weights there were and the quantity of each weight? There are more than 200 buildings around the world over 800 feet tall and gravity is pretty much the same all over the planet. Can you find the tons of steel and tons of concrete on each level of any of them? > > People who can BELIEVE on the basis of insufficient data do not need models. > > psik The NIST crew selected the pieces they felt they needed and that were critical to the investigation. They did not need to examine every little bit of the tower. You can whine about it all you want, but these are Structural Engineers, Materials Engineers, Civil Engineers and other relevant disciplines. They have more relevant education in one junior member’s assistant then the entire truth movement combined. Even before the NIST report was finished, most architects and engineers had a very good idea of the basics behind what actually happened and were adjusting their structures accordingly. The [Comcast Center](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast_Center_(Philadelphia)) in Philadelphia was built with a concrete core to prevent such a collapse from happening. Truthers whining about how much steel was examined is just a game of ‘If I ran the zoo’. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2014, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226/160 "2014-02-04T02:49:08Z")
> [@psikeyhackr](#): > > What percentage of the steel of the building was available for examination? > > [9-11 Research: WTC Steel Removal](http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html) > > There were 2900 perimeter wall panels on each tower from the 9th floor to the top. Total weight was 27,000 tons so the average was 9+ tons. > > Can you find how many different weights there were and the quantity of each weight? There are more than 200 buildings around the world over 800 feet tall and gravity is pretty much the same all over the planet. Can you find the tons of steel and tons of concrete on each level of any of them? > > People who can BELIEVE on the basis of insufficient data do not need models. > > psik Oh, lord. Not [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16924047) bullshit again. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtc-collapse-need-airtight-answer-please/680226.md?page=9)