Reply #128: Sigh...Don't they teach basic physics anymore? [View All]

[hack89]

I saw the clip and what they are basically saying is that explosives were needed to provide the energy to the cloud of dust and debris. They seem have to have missed an obvious source of the energy - the collapse itself.

Remember that the WTC towers were basically steel containers filled with gas - the gas of course being air. Each tower contained over 5 million cubic feet of air The basic question to be answered is: what happens to 5 million cubic feet of air when the towers collapsed in about 12 seconds? It had to go somewhere.

The physics are easy and are the basic principle behind heat pumps and air conditioners:

The most important gas law is the ideal gas law, which states that:

P V = n R T

-where

* P is the pressure in atmospheres (atm) or kilopascals (kPa)
* V is the volume in liters
* n is the number of moles of gas
* R is the ideal gas constant in L atm/mol K or Pa m³/mol K
* T is the temperature in kelvins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_laws

The basic point from this in regards to the WTC is that as the volume is decreased (ie the air is compressed) both the temperature and pressure go up.

So now lets look at the first complete WTC floor beneath the impact zone. It contained 500,000 cubic feet of air. When the ceiling collapsed the volume of that space went from 500,000 cubic feet to zero in a fraction of a second. What happened to that air? It was violently compressed, increasing both its pressure and temperature. It was then explosively ejected laterally from the building. This happened to every floor as it was flattened.

Now it seems to me that 5 million cubic feet of air violently ejected from a collapsing building is more than enough to recreate the dust clouds we saw on 9/11.

Here is an essay from a 9/11 skeptic that points out that the energy provided by explosives would be minuscule compared to the energy from the gravitational potential energy that each tower contained. I always find it interesting that no 9/11 "researcher" has yet provided any calculations whatsoever to back up their theories. Your video link is no different - just another heap of unsubstantiated opinion with no basis in real physics.

http://www.erichufschmid.net/WTC_AnalysisRussell.html