Quote from anttt69 :

If you do get this dual monitor setup running pls post some feedback about it as I am thinking of doing something similar.

I'm running dual monitors and I will never go back. It really is so much more productive to be able to have two windows open (at a usable size) when you're working between them. And screw the bar in the middle, LFS still looks awesome with two screens. And you could always just set it to one screen... so you won't lose any functionality. In other words... IT'S WORTH IT.

Ok, so - all these people saying that there were bombs placed underground and at ground level at the base of the tower... what exactly would have been the point? To blow up the building and cause it to collapse? It doesn't make ANY sense. The buildings collapsed from the top down - so what effect did these explosives at the bottom have? Nothing. Even blasts as large as they claim occurred are nowhere near big enough to largely threaten the structural integrity of the building. I'm talking about the blasts that supposedly happened before the building collapsed, not as it collapsed.

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:05.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Then why were there still pools of molten steel SIX WEEKS after the buildings fell if as you say the steel didn't melt ??

You know what - this ONE anomaly does not in any way change my opinion that the towers collapsed because they failed structurally. Just because ONE little thing cannot be explained, does not mean that the entire story is false.

Oh, and - please, state any other reasons why you think the towers were brought down by explosives. We have MANY reasons as to why the towers were not sabotaged, but so far all you've pointed out is this. And all the reasons I've given so far cannot be argued with. I'd like to see you come up with as many points that cannot be debunked. I look forward to your list.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

Jet fuel (1500 degrees) manages to melt 48 4" thick steel pillars leaving nothing standing. x2 - OK

There is no way you wrote that after having read the entire thread. I suggest you go back and READ before you make yourself look even more ignorant. At the very least, read just MY posts, which will explain - in a perfectly logical fashion - how everything collapsed.

If you still have your doubts after that, by all means let's hear them. But everything you've pointed out so far has already been explained.

Quote from Not Sure :

Funny how that magic super hot burning jet fuel didn't make pentag0n collapse..

The pentagon is not supported by a steel frame. The supporting columns are concrete. It is an entirely different design.

Quote from Scrabby :

Kill Bush.

+1 (So, uh, is this site FBI and CIA proof?)

Quote from flymike91 :

One of the main reasons I don't believe conspiracy theorists is because the US government would never kill 5,000 of our own people. Period.

Well, that makes one of us.

Quote from -DrftMstr- :

MM2 ahh the good old days

Amen to that. I remember that game. That's what a REAL cruise server should be like, lol.

Quote from Hankstar :

Cool, Stang.

The fire's still a problem for me though. Faulty fireproofing aside, we're talking about metres-thick solid steel being sufficiently weakened by a mere methanol fire. Steel's melting point under ideal conditions (say, in a foundry) is +1500 Celsisus. You'd have to get close to that to cause the steel to soften even a little. Methanol, a highly volatile hydrocarbon, boils at 60 C and burns very quickly at only a few hundred degrees. I find it highly implausible that kind of volatile, rapidly-burning fire caused so much catastrophic damage to so many thousands of tons of steel and hastened a simultaneous failure of an entire building. Yes there would have been hundreds of litres of methanol, but it would still have produced nowhere near enough energy to compromise the steel. Throwing burning liquid on metal, even in a confined space like a building core, would be as unlikely a way to melt or soften it as I can imagine.

Allow me to quote from another website:

Quote :

In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, Figure 6-36).

However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers.

UL did not certify any steel as suggested. In fact, in U.S. practice, steel is not certified at all; rather structural assemblies are tested for their fire resistance rating in accordance with a standard procedure such as ASTM E 119 (see NCSTAR 1-6B). That the steel was “certified ... to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours” is simply not true.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

And to respond to thisnameistaken:

I do see where you are coming from, and tbh, I really can't say one way or the other why the core disintegrated as it did, as I have no background on the properties of concrete. I think I'll do a bit of research on this and see what I can come up with.

I can only guess that the reason it may not have had a significant impact on the top part, was that it was able to easily punch through the floors falling onto it - as the floors were not really connected to anything at this point. But I also cannot really offer a solution to that either. I understand your point of view - I'm just arguing mainly because it's fun! I'll try and gather some evidence to support either side if I can.

I can, however, quote this, also from the above article:

Quote :

NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. These elapsed times were based on: (1) precise timing of the initiation of collapse from video evidence, and (2) ground motion (seismic) signals recorded at Palisades, N.Y., that also were precisely time-calibrated for wave transmission times from lower Manhattan (see NCSTAR 1-5A).

As documented in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, these collapse times show that:

“… the structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass at and above the impact zone. The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that energy through energy of deformation.

Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos. As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass.”

In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass.

From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely.

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:55.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

This is a 400m tall skyscraper. I - as someone who knows very little about skyscrapers - would think a sway of ten feet is probably nothing to a structure like that. Aren't they designed to sway more than that anyway, to cope with wind and stuff?

Correct, and that's my mistake. I meant to say 10 SECONDS. The point is that it absorbed an enormous amount of energy and had to dissipate it primarily through a bit of sideways motion. Whatever it was, I think we can be fairly certain it moved a bit more than it usually does on a blustery day.

Quote :

But hang on; you talk about how heavy the free-falling lump is, and how it would take a lot of force to push it off-course. It's falling onto a much bigger, heavier lump of identical building and it's crushing it during a 300m (or more) freefall - that is surely considerable resistance? Regardless of what the majority of the materials were, there's still 300m of (cracked or otherwise) reinforced concrete to consider.

It's just surprising - incredulously so - to me that anything falling through that sort of chaotic mess of structural materials would not encounter anything that would push it off-course throughout several hundred metres of travel.

Well, you have to consider a few things. First off, the bottom structure was nothing if not about to collapse on it's own, when the top part broke away. Remember that the building was suspended. So the bottom was ready to give way at the slightest bit of pressure, where as the top was still 'theoretically' intact. But I don't have an absolute explanation for this.

As for the veering off course, I think the thing to consider here is that the building was comprised mainly of either horizontal or vertical components. There were no angles or anything to force things to collapse at odd angles. Also, the building was constructed so that each floor was a solid piece, that means that the floors collapsed in a sort of pancake fashion as the top fell. I am speculating here, but it's not that far out to guess that they were at least somewhat guided by the central core they surrounded as they fell.

Like I said, I don't have a true explanation of this, so this is mostly just my looking at it and saying, 'This is what I think would happen, based on my knowledge of how stuff works.'

Quote from Hankstar :

Also FTR, I'm still not satisfied that two jetliner impacts and fast-burning methanol fires managed to turn a billion tons of concrete and steel - engineering to withstand exactly such things - to dust in mere seconds.

Well, the thing to remember here is that the building was not REALLY engineered to withstand the fire. The FIREPROOFING was designed to withstand it, but that failed as a result of both a cost saving measure when it was applied and the fact that most of it was knocked loose by the impact.

Also, the fire didn't have to turn a billion tons of steel to dust. It just had to cause enough trusses on a few floors to collapse to 'invalidate' the skeleton and cause it to buckle in/outward.

And, I realize now that you weren't the original person I was replying to. Sorry 'bout that!

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:36.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

So presumably the plane strike took out the central concrete column on the floors it damaged? And the force of the concrete column section that was still intact on the floors above - when the trusses gave way and it began to fall - was enough to crush the intact concrete column on the floors below to dust? All the way to the ground?

I don't know. However, there are other factors to consider. First, I can definitely see a decent portion of the central core underneath being pulverized not only by some of what was left of the core, but by 20 floors worth of also solid concrete floors. there would also have been significant lateral stresses imparted on the core further down as the outer skin peeled away - before the bolts failed. Also consider that there is the possibility that the impact did damage the core much farther down. The building was reported to have swayed something like 10 feet if I recall. There are people who recall windows being shattered from the stress, and seeing cracks in the drywall. It is likely the core was not at 100% strength for at least part of the way down.

Quote :

And - despite there only being one central support that was made from anything other than steel trusses - you believe it would be normal for the whole structure to fall perfectly vertically for 400 metres? Is it not likely that throughout that drop - if it wasn't a controlled demolition - there would have been some sort of deviance created by resistance encountered on the way down that would've pushed the falling mass in some direction other than straight down?

Well, first off, if you look at the video, it is fairly evident that the portion of the tower that did collapse is still a VERY heavy piece of building, and it's very unlikely that anything that big and heavy is going to be pushed very far off course. Also, you have to consider that the only significant resistance to this falling motion would have been the VERTICAL core, as the floors surrounding it would not offer much resistance. If anything - the core would have likely punched a hole through the falling portion, rather than shove it in another direction. The majority of the building was turned to jelly when the top part initially broke free, so it offered much less resistance than it would have offered, were the support structure not completely destroyed. I cannot back this argument up with fact, but, in MY OPINION, it really just doesn't look like there was much of anything that would have caused the building to fall at an angle.

Quote :

Anyway I'm glad we're now talking in terms of skyscrapers and not piddly little examples that bear no relevance at all. Although I see Sam is now concerned with melting nails by pulling them out of planks...

Lol...

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:33.

What exactly have you been doing on that computer? Do you let anyone else use it? Do you visit any "questionable" sites? You really don't get infections like that unless you provoke it, so try and be a tiny bet aware of the sites you are visiting online.

I recommend you install a decent firewall if you don't already have one. ZoneAlarm is free and is recognized as one of the best. And install and use Firefox, as it is a safer browser in general - though I'm certain you've already done THAT!

Quote from Hankstar :

Funnily enough Stang, I stopped reading at "you are an idiot".
Strange how personal attacks completely devalue an argument, however compelling that argument might be

I agree with you. In fact, I find that, generally, the amount of swear words and personal attacks in a post is directly proportional to the stupidity of the person posting. However, I simply cannot believe that you are that narrow minded that you don't have the ability to understand simple, and extremely relevant analogies, so I couldn't resist a little. I promise there are no other derogatory remarks in the rest of the post

You, my friend, are an idiot. I will try to explain this to you, so that you understand what we are pointing out, but I have very little faith that you will actually understand:

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I don't happen to believe that the discussion of how hammers and eggs interact has much relevance,

Uhmm - if you can't understand what he was trying to demonstrate, well I really can't help you there. The point was that the lower portion of the building was easily capable of supporting the weight of the upper portion at rest. However, it was no match for the combined momentum/inertia of the upper half as it started to fall.

Quote :

nor the behaviour of a yardstick nailed to a pair of desks with force exerted on it. Yes it will cause the desks to pull towards eachother - is that relevant to a discussion of what a skyscraper would do? Do we know what else was supporting it / the load-bearing properties of all the materials involved and the structure / the actual loads involved? No. So idle remarks about sticks and desks are (no special offence intended to the original poster) - for the purpose of this discussion - utterly ****ing useless.

Maybe it's good enough for you though. It seems very simple explanations are generally appealing to you.

First off, you have no idea how much I know about anything, so let's not jump to conclusions. I happen to know quite a bit about the construction of the WTC. Part of this is due to the fact that my dad knew the chief designer of the project. He knows them because my grandfather was an architect. He designed the Colosseum in new york that was recently knocked down. It was chosen to be Madison Square Garden, but at the last minute, the deal went to another contractor for reasons I don't quite remember. He was, however, the first architect to use sound-absorbing tiles, and air curtains in a building. Nothing fantastic, but definitely innovative. He also designed many other things, such as many Macy's buildings and other department stores. My grandmother designed the interiors of these buildings and also worked on the electrical schematics of the USS Missouri battleship. So, yes, my family actually does have quite a bit of engineering background.

However, the majority of my knowledge comes from the History Channel, as well as a decent amount of online research regarding this topic, as I was very interested in the design of the towers and why they collapsed following the attack.

Let me describe, in a bit more detail, the construction of the North and South Towers, so that you may understand what I am trying to explain. The towers were designed to provide the maximum amount of open space on each floor as possible. Up until then, all large buildings needed a multitude of internal support pillars in order to distribute the weight of the building in a feasible manner. If you've ever been in a tall building, particularly an older one, you'll notice that the usable space inside is actually fairly small. This makes the building terribly inefficient, not only space-wise, but in terms of the actual interaction between the people who work inside them.

The WTC designers solved this problem using the innovative design that not only freed up interior space, but is most likely the reason they were able to withstand the impacts they were subjected to on 9/11. To create space on each floor, the designers decided to focus the majority of the support structure at the center and at the exterior of the building. The resulting design consisted of a concrete central core (housing stairs/elevators/etc...) and an exterior skeleton to transfer the load. This design (of primarily steel - as opposed to heavy masonry) was lightweight and created what is (was) one of the most redundant structures in the world.

The central core actually supported most of the weight of the building. The outer skeleton transferred the loads of the supported floors UP, to the top of the structure, where a massive series of trusses transferred the weight to the central core. In other words, the building was "hung" on the center core. This design was very redundant mainly because the vertical support columns that made up the interior were very close together. This meant that if one or two of them were damaged, the load could be transferred to adjacent columns and up to the top.

The floors of the building were supported on trusses (I assume you know what those are) stretching from the central core to each vertical support column on the outer skin. These served two purposes. First, as stated, was to support the floor, but second - and crucial to understanding why the towers collapsed - they held the outer skin to the building. If you take a sheet of paper and try to stand it on it's edge, it will flex and flop and fall over. The same goes for this external support structure. The trusses supporting each floor also served to hold the skin against the building.

Each truss was attached by a series of bolts. It actually was not that complex of a setup. This is where my ruler analogy comes in. One desk is the central core, the other is the external skeleton. The ruler, nailed to both desks, will support a given load, and also keep the desks at a specific distance. When the heat from the fire warped these trusses, the bolts, which had been designed ONLY to support a vertical load, were over-stressed and snapped. One by one the trusses started to fall. When enough trusses collapsed, the outer support structure buckled as it was no longer held in place. When this happened, all the floors above suddenly lost their support and collapsed. The floors underneath also lost a significant amount of support, which is part of the reason why the building collapsed so quickly once this happened.

If you have any doubts about anything I described, feel free to look it up, but don't jump to conclusions that just because you are not an engineer, that no one on this forum has any background on the topic.

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:12.

Quote from Polyracer :

I have seen an image of one of those main supporting columns which clearly shows that it was highly likey to have been cut by explosives, I have seen comparitive images which show how the charge was set and what the column looked like after demolision.

Both images showed a pretty clean cut in the column at a 45 degree angle,
maybe coincidence.....

I'm not going to pretend I know much about that particular topic, but isn't it just as likely that the beam was subjected to almost the same amount of force as a detonation charge during the collapse?

Even better, do you know where in the building that "questionable beam" came from? Because it may have very well been hit with an explosive blast when the PLANE HIT THE TOWER AND EXPLODED?

Then again, maybe not. There are very few certainties in this debate, unfortunately.

Anyway, I'm off to take a calculus test, which means that throughout the whole thing, all that's going to be running through my mind is this thread... lol.

Quote from Hankstar :

Considering skyscrapers of the time were over-engineered to withstand exactly such impacts, both WTC 1&2 came down almost at freefall speed and fell very, very neatly into their own footprints.

Ahh, people use this as an argument, but they miss one critical point. They DID withstand the impacts, which is what they were designed to do. BOTH of them withstood the impacts. What they were NOT designed to do was to withstand the heat, which is something that is very, VERY difficult to design for.

As for freefall speed, I don't see why that is so surprising. When you have 20 stories worth of building falling down, there is not much that has the necessary inertia to actually slow that down very much. Sure, you could argue that it's 1/5th of the building hitting 4/5ths, but it didn't hit 4/5ths all at once, it hit each floor individually. If you have someone hold up 100 sheets of paper, and you try and shoot a marble through them, it won't penetrate the first sheet. Space those sheets out an inch apart, and it's likely that you'll get through at least half of those sheets. If you look at the footage, you can see that the outer skeleton started peeling away as the building fell. As this was where most of the support was, it stands to reason that there was not much else resisting the downward collapse. In fact, as the 'skin' peeled away, it's likely that the floors underneath started falling even before they were hit. This leaves only the central core to resist the collapse, and being relatively small, that got crushed.

Quote from Racer X NZ :

The whole point is that there are a number of things which don't make any sense if you accept the official theory. That to me means that the official theory is wrong.

Just because something cannot be explained doesn't mean it's wrong. Human history dictates this. Science, religion... EVERYTHING we know as fact today, was once unexplainable, and people did what people are doing now - they came up with alternate explanations (e.g. witches, gods... government conspiracies) to satisfy their needs to have things make sense. It's human nature.

Here's some more stuff for you to "alternately explain:"

13 Things That Do Not Make Sense

Quote from tristancliffe :

Here's a hint - the jet fuel did not need to melt the steel to cause it to lose the ability to hold a building up.

Exactly. Take two desks, put them almost three feet apart, and then lay a yard stick in between them. The force the yard stick exerts on the desks at each end is 100% directed straight down. Now, push down on the middle, so as to bend the yard stick a bit. The ends of the ruler will slide inward a bit. Steel, as with any metal, expands as it gets hot, and gets more pliable. The yard stick here represents the trusses holding the outer skeleton upright against the central core. As they got hot, they sagged. Now imagine if you nailed each end of the yard stick to the desk. When you're not pushing down on it, there is no real force exerted on that nail. However, as you push down, the yard stick wants to pull inward, and you can easily bend the nail if you push hard enough. That's what happened to the WTC.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Just so you know, we are talking about the building near the twin towers that WASN'T directly hit by a plane.

Ahh - sorry. Got a little sidetracked. Well I don't know much about that...

...but what the hell, I'm sure there's a logical scientific explanation for that one too!

Quote from TAYLOR-MANIA :

And that ^ is exactly the theory of someone who doesn't want to know the truth. Things go so much deeper than that though.

No, this that is the theory of someone who understands that when an airplane is hijacked, it can be flown anywhere. Someone who understands that when a 757 flies into a building, it can destroy 25% of the outer skeletal support structure and ignite a massively hot fire. Someone who understands that for cost-reasons, the steel was not correctly fireproofed and started to warp under the heat, and that the small bolts holding the trusses in place were not designed to withstand any significant amount of lateral sheer force. And that when subjected to these forces, the bolts failed and the trusses collapsed. And that when enough trusses collapsed, the outer skeleton folded much like a thin aluminum coke can does when you stand on it and tap the side lightly.

Someone who understands that some things in the world today can be explained by plain old physics, however boring that might be.

Last edited by Stang70Fastback, Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:42.

Here's my theory:

A plane hit each of the towers. They burned as a result, eventually melted, and collapsed. The planes hit them because terrorists wanted them to. Building 7 collapsed because two 100+ story buildings collapsed right next to it.

Quote from kroozin :

try what i done

http://teamshiftlock.freeforums.org/hand-break-t34.html

Thread title should be KNEX Handbrake...

What, you mean like MORE drag than if they were racing alone?

Quote from Gekkibi :

Are you sure? I used handbrake from Fiat 127!

Hey, as long as it works. The handbrake in my REAL car doesn't even work!

Quote from Gekkibi :

I used real handbrake modified to work as a joystick axis, but it went broken. No time to fix it. And what would simulate real handbrake more than a... Real handbrake?

In that case, frikkin' sweet. I'll take two please

Lmao