cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board - View Single Post - BYU physics professor disputes WTC collapse explanation

All-American · 12-30-2005, 04:35 PM

I found Dr. Jones' statement incredulous when I first heard it and everything I've seen about it since has not changed my mind.

Consider the Support structure of the building:

When the WTC was constructed, the common mode of construction of skysrapers was a simple steel grid skeleton, which spread the weight of the building throughout the structure. As shown by the image above, the World Trade Center's support structure did NOT follow this mode of construction. Instead, the main support structures which carried the vertical load (weight of the building) are the 47 larger red tubes located in the center. On each face of the building are 59 steel columns that countered horizontal forces on the building (wind) in addition to shouldering some of the vertical load. This effectively made the WTC towers a box within a box.

Now, imagine a plane crashes into the building. It will cut through some of the 59 columns on the outside, but since they don't carry the weight of the building, this loss is minimal. The real damage would have been caused by the impact to the central structures. Every tube compromised by the impact of the airplane would have increased the load carried by the remainder of the support structures. After surviving the physical impact of the plane and the explosive fireball that immediately ensued, you have that fire. Even if it was not hot enough to melt the steel, the heat would have made the steel much less able to bear loads. Think of a blacksmith sticking a steel tool in the fire-- the hotter it gets, the easier it is to bend the metal, even though it doesn't melt. With the increased pressure caused by the destruction of support structures due to the physical impact of the plane, the remaining support columns would have carrying an extra heavy load and been even more susceptible to failure.

One of Dr. Jones' big points is that the collapse of the towers was too cleanly done to have been an accident. If the collapse was due to failure of support structures located in the center of the building, the outer support structure would have acted as a wall containing the rest of the falling building. The outer wall was a support structure in and of itself, and while it would not have survived the collapse, it would have channelled the falling building into an implosion.

Dr. Jones' astute observation shows only that we don't know everything there is to know about what happens when we fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers. The buildings acted as one designed as they were would have under those circumstances. The inconsistancies are relatively minor compared to the ones suggested by Dr. Jones in order to make his theories work out.

12-30-2005, 04:35 PM	#26
All-American Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 3,420	I found Dr. Jones' statement incredulous when I first heard it and everything I've seen about it since has not changed my mind. Consider the Support structure of the building: When the WTC was constructed, the common mode of construction of skysrapers was a simple steel grid skeleton, which spread the weight of the building throughout the structure. As shown by the image above, the World Trade Center's support structure did NOT follow this mode of construction. Instead, the main support structures which carried the vertical load (weight of the building) are the 47 larger red tubes located in the center. On each face of the building are 59 steel columns that countered horizontal forces on the building (wind) in addition to shouldering some of the vertical load. This effectively made the WTC towers a box within a box. Now, imagine a plane crashes into the building. It will cut through some of the 59 columns on the outside, but since they don't carry the weight of the building, this loss is minimal. The real damage would have been caused by the impact to the central structures. Every tube compromised by the impact of the airplane would have increased the load carried by the remainder of the support structures. After surviving the physical impact of the plane and the explosive fireball that immediately ensued, you have that fire. Even if it was not hot enough to melt the steel, the heat would have made the steel much less able to bear loads. Think of a blacksmith sticking a steel tool in the fire-- the hotter it gets, the easier it is to bend the metal, even though it doesn't melt. With the increased pressure caused by the destruction of support structures due to the physical impact of the plane, the remaining support columns would have carrying an extra heavy load and been even more susceptible to failure. One of Dr. Jones' big points is that the collapse of the towers was too cleanly done to have been an accident. If the collapse was due to failure of support structures located in the center of the building, the outer support structure would have acted as a wall containing the rest of the falling building. The outer wall was a support structure in and of itself, and while it would not have survived the collapse, it would have channelled the falling building into an implosion. Dr. Jones' astute observation shows only that we don't know everything there is to know about what happens when we fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers. The buildings acted as one designed as they were would have under those circumstances. The inconsistancies are relatively minor compared to the ones suggested by Dr. Jones in order to make his theories work out.