WTC 1 - The Obvious Case Against the Collapse/Crush Down Hypothesis - Debunking the Conspiracy Theories of Prof. Bazant and NIST

By Anders Björkman (M.Sc)

Just drop Anything on Something

Start with a solid rubber ball, mass m (kg) and drop it on the floor from height h = 3.7 meters height = the height that WTC1 upper part is assumed to drop. The ball free falls with acceleration g (9.81 m/s²) due to gravity, makes contact with the floor and normally bounces. The ball was not rigid and deformed upon contact with the floor. Why? The floor applied a force on the solid rubber ball, so that it deformed, absorbed some of the kinetic energy E involved (E = m*h*g) and then released it and bounced up. Evidently the ball also applied a force on the floor that also deformed, absorbed the remainder of the energy involved; maybe the floor vibrated a little. This is Newton's third law at work.

Then do the same thing with a solid sphere of steel. Drop it on the floor. If the floor is strong enough, the same thing will happen as with a rubber ball! The steel sphere bounces. If the floor is not strong enough, i.e. it cannot produce a force big enough to deform the steel sphere, so that it bounces back, the floor will be damaged - maybe a hole is formed in it, and the steel sphere drops through the hole at reduced speed and contacts something else below, or the floor is just partially damaged ... and catches the steel ball, i.e. arrests it.

Finally drop anything weak (an egg or a lemon?) on something strong! PLAFSH! The weak anything (the egg or lemon!) is crushed against the strong something!

Don't forget that!

Try to compress a lemon with another lemon. What happens? Both lemons compress.

Now you have learnt a little what can happen when you drop anything on something and try to compress something. This basic knowledge is used in this paper.
-----------------------------------------------------
If the upper, 53 meters tall, 13-15 storeys upper part of WTC 1 actually dropped on the structure below is a matter of semantics. Drop suggests that it was not being held at all. I prefer that it came into contact after local structural failures and downward displacement and that it was prevented from dropping by the connections between the two parts. Anyway, only the velocity at contact is of interest and it was not high in the WTC 1 case. Assuming a 'drop' of 3.7 metres, it does not produce a big velocity; it is around 8 m/s. If the 'drop' is dampened by intermediate connections the velocity is much less.
-------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bazant (described below) and NIST suggest that the energy initiating or released at the WTC 1 destruction was enormous but in a serious ships collision it can be up to 10 times bigger!! NIST should learn from ship collisions! Bazant also assumes that the WTC 1 upper part was rigid (!). A rigid object is indestructible and will destroy anything non-rigid. But ships and WTC 1 upper part are not rigid.
-------------------------------------------------------
The official explanation(s) of the WTC 1 (photo left) global collapse (sic) is that the alleged release of potential energy (PE), of the mass of an upper part C above all supporting columns after sudden, local deformation and buckling, due to downward, alleged near free fall movement in an initiation zone (indicated by red) and impact of a structure below, exceeds the strain energy (SE) that can be absorbed by the same columns below and above and that all this was due to gravity only.
[SEE THE PICS AT THE LINK]
-------------------------------------------------------
Evidently this crush down model and theory is complete nonsense, but it is the official explanation(s) of the WTC 1 destruction on 9/11! A small, fairly weak part C, 95% air, cannot possibly crush a big part A of similar structure only due to gravity and compress it into a 87.3 meters tall tower of rubble on the ground after 10 seconds! Anyone that has just dropped anything on something knows this. Try then to crush this something! You need a big force for that, which gravity alone cannot provide.

http://heiwaco.tripod.com/nist3.htm

Note the pic above: There is no upper block crushing the lower sections- it's been obliterated. Furthermore gravity alone will not cause the debris to be thrown out laterally as is seen. Where is that pile-driving mass ? It does not exist. The building here is being ripped apart by forces other than gravity.

Put up or Shut up: A Year in Review

Update September 17, 2011:

So it's been a little bit over a year since physicist Steven Jones told us "what we need to know about peer-review" while also essentially telling 9/11 "debunkers" to put up or shut up. Let's see if they have stopped just being loud and have gotten loud and clear...

In October 2008, long time 9/11 "debunker" Dr. Frank Greening and three of his colleagues were published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' peer reviewed Journal of Engineering Mechanics (JEM). Their paper "What Did and Did Not Cause Collapse of WTC Twin Towers in New York" promoted the pile-driver or crush-down theory in which the tops of the Towers act as giant sledgehammers. Greening was the third author of the paper, the first being engineer Zdenek Bazant who wrote another paper also published by the JEM on 9/13/01 essentially promoting the theory.

As the website 911research.wtc7.net pointed out, "Bazant must be a super-genius to understand how two skyscrapers could crush themselves to rubble, a newly observed behaviour for steel structures, and write a paper about it in just two days."

The problem for Greening and company is that JEM published a peer-reviewed refutation of his hypothesis by chemical engineer James R. Gourley and are now set to publish another such peer-reviewed refutation by Anders Björkman, M.Sc. in July of this year, making it the 6th mainstream peer-reviewed paper published by members of the 9/11 truth movement.

Björkman's paper can currently be read at his personal website. It closes with the following statement, "Simple observations of any video of the WTC1 destruction prove the Bazant, Le, Greening and Benson model wrong."

Indeed.



Dr. Greening, why don't you do as James Gourley has done with your work and write a peer-reviewed refutation of the latest paper he was involved in regarding 9/11?
You know, the one in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal, published by Bentham.org, that reports to have found remains of nano-thermite, a high-tech military explosive, in dust recovered from the WTC.



The one that you have only attempted to refute on an internet forum where you presented disputed calculations regarding how energetic the material was, but no argument that the material was anything but nano-thermite.
As Steven Jones said:

Debunkers may raise all sorts of objections on forums, such as "Oh, it's just paint" or "the aluminum is bound up in kaolin." We have answered those questions in the paper, and shown them to be nonsense, but you have to read to find the answers...

Here's what you need to know (especially if you are not a scientist): UNLESS AN OBJECTOR ACTUALLY PUBLISHES HIS OR HER OBJECTION IN A PEER-REVIEWED ESTABLISHED JOURNAL (yes that would include Bentham Scientific journals), THEN THE OBJECTION IS NOT CONSIDERED SERIOUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT NON-PUBLISHED OBJECTIONS EITHER...

IF it is so easy to publish in Bentham Scientific journals, or if these are "vanity publications" (note: there is no factual basis for these charges) -- then why don't the objectors write up their objections and get them peer-reviewed and published?? The fact is, it is not easy, as serious objectors will find out.

Being a chemist this is right up your alley and you don't need his samples to refute his work. So what are you waiting on Dr. Greening? Related Info:

Debunking Dave Thomas, Ryan Mackey, and Zdenek Bazant et al.

Super Duper Thermite: A Year in Review

Thermite Denial - A Year in Review

9/11 Truth Movement: Year in Review