Natural Science Forum / Physics / Particle Physics / May 2006

9/11 Collapse Theory Fails Physics Reality Check

http://www.911blimp.net/prf_FreeFallPhysics.shtml
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/
On September 11, 2001, most of the world watched in horror as the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) collapsed. People did not have
to be tuned in at the time in order to have seen it; it was repeated ad

nauseum on television for days.
In June 2005, in an apparent response to an article by Morgan Reynolds,

Robert Gates, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) stated, "The American people know what they saw with their own
eyes on September 11, 2001. To suggest any kind of government
conspiracy in the events of that day goes beyond the pale."

Well, first of all, the American people saw things not with their own
eyes but on television, which is comprised nowadays of digital
information, which can be manipulated by computers. So Gates' premise
is flawed. On the other hand, the towers are gone. So let's just
examine his other premise: whether or not it is true that people know
what they saw.

(The following must be said before we can get to the physics.)

The government and the media told us what we saw. The government told
us that we had witnessed a "gravitational" collapse; what is now
referred to as a "pancake collapse". According to the government's, and

PBS's, and Popular Mechanics', and Scientific American's theory,
airplane crashes and subsequent kerosene (like lamp oil; jet fuel is
NOT exotic) fires heated steel to the point where it was weakened,
which is already very difficult to believe, nevermind repeat in an
experiment. According to their "pancake theory", this imagined
purported (all the evidence was subsequently illegally destroyed)
weakening supposedly caused part of the tower to collapse downward onto

the rest of the tower, which, we've been repeatedly told, somehow
resulted in a chain reaction of lower floors, sequentially, one at a
time, yielding to the floors falling from above.

There are at least 2 problems with that theory; it does not fit the
observed facts: It cannot account for either the total failure of the
immense core columns, nor the too-rapid-to-blame-it-all-on-gravity
collapse times. This article focuses on the latter of these two
mentioned discrepancies.

The scientists who've concocted this "pancake theory" made a fatal
error: they forgot to check their work! Which is an easy thing to do,
even without any physical evidence to forensically examine. Anyone, at
any time, can check the work of the scientists -- that incredible
pancake theory of theirs -- using simple, high-school physics!

And that's what we're about to do here. We're going to check the work
-- something every grade-schooler is taught to do -- of those
"scientists".

We will use a simple, unassailable, incontrovertable
conservation-of-energy analysis to perform a simple, basic reality
check that establishes, once and for all, that the U.S. government,
PBS, Popular Mechanics, and Scientific American have misrepresented the

true nature of the events of 9/11.

How Gravity Acts

Sir Isaac Newton noticed, centuries ago, that apples fell (down! never
up...) from trees. Lots of others, before him, had also noticed this,
but none had ever devised a theory of gravity from the observation.
Over the years, mankind has learned that the force of gravity comes
from an acceleration of known constant magnitude, depending only upon
mass and separation. (That doesn't mean we know HOW it works, or WHY,
but we have managed to be able to predict its effects with a high
degree of precision and an even higher degree of certainty -- gravity
has always had the same, predictable, effect.)

Of course, people didn't figure this stuff out immediately. According
to legend, Galileo Galilei used the leaning tower of Pisa to
demonstrate that a large ball and a small one (of lesser mass) fell
(accelerated) at the same rate. Prior to Galileo, people had just
assumed that heavier objects fell faster (much the way mankind had long

assumed that the Earth was flat!).

So while an object of greater mass will exert more force upon anything
which is supporting it against gravity's pull (ie, it's heavier), it
does not experience any greater acceleration when gravity's pull is not

opposed (ie, when it's falling). Gravity can only accelerate objects at

one known, constant rate. Heavier objects are not accelerated
(downward) any quicker than are lighter objects, as Galileo
demonstrated centuries ago.

The Simplest Case

the Earth, Earth's gravity will produce a downward acceleration of 32
feet per second per second.
What that means is that an object, after falling one second, will be
falling at 32 ft/sec.

After the 2nd second, it will be falling at 64 ft/sec.

After the 3rd second, it will be falling at 96 ft/sec.

And so on.

Similarly, since gravity's acceleration is constant, and it's falling
at 32 ft/sec after one second has elapsed, we know that it has averaged

16 ft/sec for the entire distance, which, after one second, is 16 feet.

As you might imagine, after quite a few such thought experiments, some
simple free-fall equations have been derived which can be used to
harness this knowledge via numbers and arithmetic:

Velocity = Gravity x Time

and

Distance = 1/2 x Gravity x Time(squared)

So if we want to know how far the object has free-fallen after 3
seconds:

Distance = 1/2 x 32 x 9 = 144 feet

So after 3 seconds, in Earth's gravity, an object will have fallen 144
feet and will be falling at 96 ft/sec.

Checking Our Work

OK, we've just solved a simple physics problem! Now let's check our
work, using conservation of energy.

We know that energy is neither created nor destroyed. It merely changes

forms. If we take the potential (chemical) energy in a barrel of oil
and burn it, we get heat energy. When we take refined oil and burn it
in our car's engine, we get kinetic (ie, motion) energy (plus some
heat; an engine's not 100% efficient). When we use our car's brakes to
bleed off some of that kinetic energy (ie, slow down), the energy is
converted into heat (the brakes get HOT).

In the case of the free-falling body, the two kinds of energy we are
concerned with are kinetic energy and potential energy. Examples of
potential (gravitational) energy are the water stored way up high in a
water tower, or a boulder perched atop a hill. If whatever's holding
them up there is removed, they will come down, under the influence of
gravity's pull.

So, as an object falls, it gives up potential energy for kinetic
energy.

It turns out that the equation for potential energy is as follows:

Potential Energy = Mass x Gravity x Height

It turns out that the equation for kinetic energy is as follows:

Kinetic Energy = 1/2 x Mass x Velocity(squared)

So let's just say, for the sake of simplicity, that our falling object
has a mass of 1. (Remember, the object's mass will affect its energy,
and its momentum, but not its rate of free-fall.)

The potential energy given up by falling 3 seconds (144 ft) is 1 x 32 x

144 = 4608

The kinetic energy gained after falling 3 secs is 1/2 x 1 x 96(squared)

= 1/2 x 9216 = 4608

So, all of the available potential energy was converted to kinetic
energy. Seeing that energy was, in fact, conserved is how we know that
the answer in The Simplest Case, above, was correct. We've checked our
work, using an independent analysis, based upon the sound principle of
conservation of energy. Now, and only now, we can be certain that our
answer was correct.

One Little Complication

Air resistance.

The free-fall equations reflect a perfect, frictionless world. They
perfectly predict the behavior of falling bodies in a vacuum. In fact,
some of you may have seen a science class demonstration in which the
air is pumped out of a tube and then a feather will fall, in that
vacuum, as fast as will a solid metal ball.

That's how parachutes work: much of the falling object's potential
energy gets expended doing the work of pushing a lot of air out of the
way in order for the object to fall. As a result, not all of the
potential gravitational energy can go towards accelerating the object
downward at at gravity's maximal rate of 32 ft/sec/sec.

In other words, only when there is zero resistance can any falling
object's potenial energy be completely converted into kinetic energy.
Anything which interferes with any falling object's downward
acceleration will cause its acceleration to be reduced from the maximum

gravitational acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, as some of

gravity's potential energy is consumed doing work overcoming
resistance.

That's why you may have heard the term "terminal velocity". The
free-fall equations predict that a falling object's velocity will
continue to increase, without limit. But in air, once a falling object
reaches a certain speed, it's propensity to fall will be matched by
air's resistance to the fall. At that point the object will continue to

fall, but its speed will no longer increase over time.

A Quick Recap

Earth's gravity causes objects to fall. They fall according to precise,

well-known equations. The equations assume no (air) resistance. Any
resistance at all will cause the object to fall less rapidly than it
would have without that resistance.

It is that last sentence which bears repeating.

There is a maximum possible rate at which objects fall, and if any of
gravity's potential energy is consumed doing anything other than
accelerate the object downward -- even just having to push air out of
the way -- there will be less energy available to accelerate the object

downward, and so that object's downward acceleration will be
diminished.

And if an object's downward acceleration is diminshed, it will be going

slower along the way, and thus it will take longer to fall a given
distance.

Free-falling from WTC heights

The towers were 1350 and 1360 feet tall. So let's start by using our
trusty free-fall equation to see how long it should take an object to
free-fall from the towers' former height.

Distance = 1/2 x Gravity x Time(squared)

or

Time(squared) = (2 x Distance) / Gravity

Time(squared) = 2710 / 32 = 84.7

Time = 9.2

So our equation tells us that it will take 9.2 seconds to free-fall to
the ground from the towers' former height.

Using our simpler equation, V = GT, we can see that at 9.2 seconds, in
order to reach the ground in 9.2 seconds, the free-falling object's
velocity must be about 295 ft/sec, which is just over 200 mph.

But that can only occur in a vacuum.

Since the WTC was at sea level, in Earth's atmosphere, you might be
able to imagine how much air resistance that represents. (Think about
putting your arm out the window of a car moving half that fast!) Most
free-falling objects would reach their terminal velocity long before
they reached 200 mph. For example, the commonly-accepted terminal
velocity of a free-falling human is around 120 mph. The terminal
velocity of a free-falling cat is around 60 mph. (source)

Therefore, air resistance alone will make it take longer than 10
seconds for gravity to pull an object to the ground from the towers'
former height.

Observations from 9/11

On page 305 of the 9/11 Commission Report, we are told, in the
government's "complete and final report" of 9/11, that the South Tower
collapsed in 10 seconds. (That's the government's official number.
Videos confirm that it fell unnaturally, if not precisely that, fast.
See for yourself: QT Real)

But as we've just determined, that's free-fall time. That's close to
the free-fall time in a vacuum, and an exceptionally rapid free-fall
time through air.

But the "collapse" proceeded "through" the lower floors of the tower.
Those undamaged floors below the impact zone would have offered
resistance that is thousands of times greater than air. Recall that
those lower floors had successfully suported the mass of the tower for
30 years.

Air can't do that.

Can anyone possibly imagine the undamaged lower floors getting out of
the way of the upper floors as gracefully and relatively frictionlessly

as air would? Can anyone possibly imagine the undamaged lower floors
slowing the fall of the upper floors less than would, say, a parachute?

It is beyond the scope of the simple, but uncontested, physics in this
presentation to tell you how long the collapse should have taken. Would

it have taken minutes? Hours? Days? Forever?

Perhaps. But what is certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is that the

towers could not have collapsed gravitationally, through intact lower
floors, as rapidly as was observed on 9/11.

Not even close!

Because, as you may recall, not only was much energy expended in
causing the observed massive high-speed sideways ejections, but
virtually all the glass and concrete was "pulverized" -- actually
"dissociated" is a better word. (Nevermind what happened to all the
supporting steel core columns...!!!) And the energy requirements to do
anything even remotely like that rival the total amount of potential
energy that the entire tower had to give. (source) So while gravity is
nearly strong enough to cause some things to fall that far, through
air, in the observed interval, and while gravity is probably not strong

enough to have so thoroughly disintegrated the towers under their own
weight, gravity is certainly not strong enough to have done both at
once.

Conclusions

In order for the tower to have collapsed "gravitationally", as we've
been told over and over again, in the observed duration, one or more of

the following zany-sounding conditions must have been met:

The undamaged floors below the impact zone offered zero resistance to
the collapse
The glass and concrete spontaneously disintegrated without any
expenditure of energy
On 9/11, gravity was much stronger than gravity
On 9/11, energy was not conserved
However, none of these physics-violating conditions can be accounted
for by the official government conspiracy theory of 9/11, nor by any of

the subsequent analyses designed to prop up the official theory of
9/11.

Bottom line: the government/PBS/PM/SA explanation for the WTC collapses

fails the most basic conservation-of-energy reality check. Therefore
the government/PBS/PM/SA theory does not fit the observed facts; the
notion of a "pancake collapse" cannot account for what happened. The
"pancake collapse theory" explanation is impossible, and thus absurd.

It is utterly impossible for a "gravitational collapse" to proceed so
destructively through a path of such great resistance in anywhere near
free-fall times. This fact debunks the preposterous contention that the

observed WTC collapses can be blamed solely upon damages resulting from

aerial assaults.

So, to the extent that people accept the ridiculous "pancake collapse"
explanation, Gates' other premise, that people know what they saw, is
also incorrect. It is left to the reader to decide if his conclusion,
which was based upon two incorrect presumptions, is also flawed.

The purported "gravitational" collapse (video) of World Trade Center
building 7, which was hit by zero aircraft, and which also vertically
collapsed in within 1 second of free-fall-time-in-a-vacuum later that
same day, similarly fails this same conservation-of-energy analysis.

The explanation for how and why so many highly-accredited and
credentialed people all so miserably failed to check the "pancake
collapse" theory, by giving it this basic reality check, is beyond the
scope of this simple physics discussion.