Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I've heard conspiracists question about the third building, and I'm not sure about that, and for that matter whether a plane actually hit the pentagon or not.
The other two building were more simple to explain. The explosion damages the fire retardant that covers the steel, which heats up and buckles under the weight. Fire protection systems were all destroyed. I'd like to study it more, because structural steel should not be bearing the compressive loads, concrete should be.
I watched both buildings go down. The collapse of each building was shocking, though predictable to me, and did not seem out of the ordinary. We would have to compare the momentum of the airplane (mass times velocity) to the building mass to determine its expected lateral movement. The explosion is a different phenomena, as was the heat produced by burning fuel. So each of the three events should be examined individually (crash, explosion, fire.)
The rising temperature within the structural posts determined the diminishing yield strength of the steel (concrete would not be so vulnerable to heat) to uphold the weight above the damaged area. The 2nd tower was hit on a lower floor, hence more weight to uphold, and that building failed in a shorter time.
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And it could have been studied at the FBI's lab which has a structure designed to recreate a 3 floor building fire. They could have reconstructed the floors hit by the plane and determined if the jet fuel fire got hot enough to melt steel. Generally this could only take place in a very well controlled fire (blue flame) with little or no smoke. But the video of the fire shows it was billowing black smoke which means it was oxygen starved and therefore not hot enough to melt steel. But for some reason the US government decided it was not a priority to them to study this fire. One wonders why we built the lab if we weren't going to use it for 9/11.
Also, if you think the jet fuel is the reason the steel collapsed, then how do you explain the fire burning at 2,000 degrees F for over a month? Do you really think jet fuel would take that long to burn?