Verschwörungstheorien

Conspiracy sites like to bring up molten metal found 6 weeks after the buildings fell to suggest a bomb must have created the effect. The explanation doesn't go into the amount of explosive material needed because it would be an absurd amount. There is another explanation which is more plausible.

Before reading the below, it might be a good idea for the novice to read Mark Ferran's explanation on how "Iron Burns!!!"



Oxidation of iron by air is not the only EXOTHERMIC reaction of iron (= structural steel which is about 98 % Fe, 1 % Mn, 0.2 % C, 0.2 % Si.....). There is at least one additional reaction of iron with the capability of keeping the rubble pile hot and cooking!

The reaction between IRON AND STEAM is also very EXOTHERMIC and fast at temperatures above 400 deg C. This reaction produces Fe3O4 AND HYDROGEN. It is the classic example of a REVERSIBLE REACTION studied in Chemistry labs at high school. But believe it or not, back at the turn of the century, the reaction of iron and steam was used as an industrial process for the manufacture of hydrogen.

I think iron and steam could have reacted in this way (at least for a while) and generated a lot of heat. What is more, the hydrogen released would have been converted back to water by reaction with oxygen, thereby generating even more heat. In this case spraying water on the rubble pile was like adding fuel to a fire!

Now add in gypsum reactions with H2 and CO and we have a great source of SO2 and/or H2S to sulfide the steel!

Perhaps the endless spraying of water on the rubble pile was not such a good idea!

In the usual lab experiment on the reversible reaction of iron and "steam", nitrogen (or some inert gas) is bubbled through water to create a gas stream saturated with water vapor at room temperature. This gas is then allowed to flow into a glass tube about 1 meter long containing iron in an inert boat at its center. This assembly is heated in a tube furnace to some desired temperature, say 500 deg C. The hydrogen/ nitrogen gas mixture is collected at the outlet of the tube furnace.

In the industrial process the feed gas might also be "water gas" which is a mixture of CO and water vapor. The outlet gas contains mostly H2 and CO2.

I am sure there was plenty of water vapor AND oxygen in the void spaces in the rubble pile. This is the "steam" I am referring to.

Please remember that the recovered pieces of structural steel were heavily OXIDIZED as well as sulfided. The most important oxidizing agents available in the rubble pile were obviously O2 and H2O.

The rubble pile was not only inhomogeneous with regard to its composition, it was inhomogeneous with regard to its temperature. This was due to localized chemical reactions. Such reactions were capable of generating high temperatures in these localized hot spots.

The demolitionists much beloved thermite is a good example, BUT NOT THE ONLY EXAMPLE. AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF WHATSOEVER THAT THERMITE, THERMATE, SOL-GEL NANO-THERMITE WAS EVER PRESENT AT THE WTC SITE!!!!!!

It is irrelevant whether or not the steam was wet or dry, that is a chemical engineering notion only of interest in a closed and controlled system, usually under high-pressure, such as a steam generator in a power station.

Water vapor was present in the rubble pile and water vapor reacts with iron releasing HYDROGEN.

ITS CALLED A CORROSION REACTION:

METAL + WATER = METAL OXIDE + HYDROGEN

WHEN IT HAPPENED AT THREE MILE ISLAND IT CREATED A HYDROGEN BUBBLE

- NEU-FONZE

More on this iron-H2O reaction:

Modern Commercial Hydrogen generation:

"steam contacts molten iron to form iron oxide and release hydrogen....
The hydrogen production step is the same chemical reaction that occurs in the steam-iron process which was used to produce hydrogen commercially 100 years ago. In that technology steam was passed over iron particles to produce hydrogen and iron oxide. However, the rate of hydrogen production declined as the iron oxidized and was covered with rust and the cost of replenishing iron ultimately rendered this process uneconomical"
http://www.alchemix.net/index.php?module=C...n&mid=10&ceid=2 or http://www.alchemix.us/TechnologyDescriptionweb710.pdf


Hydrogen generation from "steam" and iron Performed as a school-lab experiment without "molten" iron:
cache dpu-...us - Google zoeken

Patent involving the process, without "molten" iron:
"The generation of hydrogen by passing steam at or about 700.degree. C. over a bed of iron is well known in the art."
"a hydrogen-generating process wherein H.sub.2 O is passed over a bed of iron material. The hydrogen generating process uses a catalyst, or freshly-ground iron material, or both, and generates the hydrogen for the fuel cell in situ at lower-than-normal temperatures when the H.sub.2 O reacts with the iron material." Fuel cell using an aqueous hydrogen-generating process - H Power Corporation

In a vehicle application, the hydrogen is generated by passing water or low-temperature steam over desirably freshly-ground iron, which then becomes iron oxide."

"The instantaneous grinding of the iron particles in situ is necessitated because iron becomes rapidly oxidized after grinding."
Fuel cell using an aqueous hydrogen-generating process - H Power Corporation

Also: IEEE Xplore - Sign In

Evidently, iron will oxidize about the same rate in air, or in a steam-atmosphere. The addition of water to the piles from the top or pools of it at the bottom thus may have served as an additional source of oxygen, upon combining with hot steel or aluminum.

The hydrogen generated may have then combined with other materials in the piles, or with oxygen in air, to produce additional heat. (Net thermal result would be same as directly oxidizing iron with oxygen). - Mark Ferran

Abbreviations: gigaJoules (gJ) = 1,000 megaJoules (MJ). To heat steel to the melting point requires about 0.68 gJ of heat to be added for each tonne (metric ton) of steel. Enough more heat has to be added to melt it. Total is about 1 gJ/tonne. All we require is enough heat to obtain yellow hot steel, approximately 0.6 gJ/tonne. However, for simplicity and to allow for losses, assume 1 gJ/tonne of yellow hot steel in the basement(s) of WTC 1 & 2(?).

This could easily be supplied by a pressure pulse down the box columns as each floor is stripped off.
Again, for simplicity of analysis, assume 100 floors each supplied the same sized pulse of energy down the box column. Then each floor supplied 10 MJ. Calculations shows that this amount of energy, distributed over the horizontal area of the box columns, only provides a small fraction of the pressure required to cause structural steel to yield. So ignoring the top 10 floors to allow a further 10% loss in energy transfer, all that is required to obtain yellow hot steel in the basements is the modest contribution of 10 MJ per floor per tonne of yellow hot steel.

Pressure calculations: Above I determined that each floor needed to deliver 10 MJ of energy down the box column to the bottom in order to supply more than sufficient heat to cause a tonne of steel to become yellow hot. Here we need to assure ourselves that this energy delivery does not stress the box column into yielding. Now just yielding is not failure, but might be noticed in a post-collapse inspection of box columns. From wikipedia, structural steel has a yield strength of 400 MPa and an ultimate strength of 650 MPa.

Reminders: Pascal = Newton/m^2, Joule = Newton-meter (N.m). The meters-squared, m^2, will refer to the cross-sectional area of the box column. The meters in the Joule part will refer to the vertical height of the pressure pulse traveling down the box column. The speed of sound in steel is 5100--5960 m/s, depending upon the source one uses. For simplicity in the following I will assume that the speed of the pressure pulse is just the rounded-off 5000 m/s.

Since we are attempting to find the highest possible reasonable figure for the pressure delivered to the box column by the pressure pulse, assume that the pressure pulse lasts only for 0.001 s = 1 millisecond. Then this square wave of pressure extends vertically for 5 meters. Thus the force over these 5 meters is 2 MN, 10 MJ = 2 MN x 5 m. So the force applied to the cross-sectional area of the box column is 2 megaNewtons.

Now assume that this force is applied equally across the cross-sectional area of the box column. (We will return to this assumption. It certainly applies to all parts of the pressure pulse traveling down the box column except at the moment of initiation.) Now assume the box column is a square 1 meter on a side and is 3" = .0762 m thick. Thus the steel cross-sectional area is 4 x 0.0762 = 0.3048 m^2.

We have now determined that the pressure on the box columns due to the pressure pulse traveling down it is 6.56 MPa = 2 MN/0.3048 m^2. This is trivial compared to the 400 MPa yield strength of the structural steel. No yielding will be observed, and indeed, none was in the majority of the structural steel. The exceptions are in the basement, where stresses and temperatures were high. The 400 MPa figure applies to ordinary temperatures, not elevated ones.

At the moment of the initiation of the pressure pulse due to floors stripping off, the initial forces will all be on just the outside edges of the most exterior of the box columns in the core. But as the calculation shows, the pressure required is less than 1/40th of the yield strength. So the box columns would not show signs of yielding, even with highly asymmetric patterns of the initial forces.

"Roaring oven" Ok, it was indeed hot in the rubble piles of WTC 1 & 2. More important, there were definite hot spots which were the hottest. We have seen ample evidence of potential fuels, including ordinary office materials, gasoline in the automobiles in the basement(?) and transformer oil. However, heat always flows from higher temperatures to lower ones. So to obtain yellow hot steel requires not only sufficient energy, but if heated from the exterior, high temperatures. If the energy was supplied by pressure pulses, as suggested, then simply the friction of repeated slamming the bottom of a box column into unyielding concrete or granite suffices.

Further, perhaps the estimated temperature of the hot spots, obtained via infrared scanning, was 1500 F = (810+273)K = 1083K. Assuming approximately black body radiation. 1000K is red hot, maybe 1500K is orange hot. Yellow hot, then is very close to the melting temperature of iron, (1535+273)K = 1808K. It seems to me a higher temperature than can be reached by burning ordinary office materials. That gasoline was in close proximity seems unlikely. I don't know the temperature of burning transformer oil, but I suppose it is less than gasoline(?) The point behind this addendum is that the pressure pulse hypothesis is highly robust under alternative scenarios and is not dependent on an external source of chemical energy. - David B. Benson, edited by Debunking 911

From a physics blogger:

Despite repeated calculations showing that the energy released simply from the kinetic collapse is on the close order of a small nuclear weapon, without even mentioning the energy contents of the millions of [pounds*] of paper, wood, plastic, etc. that were on the floors and a large percentage of which would be in the rubble pile and heated to ignition point by the heat from the kinetic energy dissipated by the collapse.

My best estimate at 13 psf by 35,000 sf/floor by 110 floors by about 30% combustibles, 60% metal and other non-combustible items, by the energy content of common garbage, gives a lot more energy than the energy of the collapse. The insulation provided in that debris pile was apparently pretty good, and that’s not surprising. Rock and concrete really are bad heat conductors, air isn’t much better, and steel while capable isn’t all that good, as you can tell from the fact that the jaws of the shovel aren’t melting. Ever hear of “rock wool?” It’s insulation; look it up. You’ll get the idea pretty quick.

There’s two more factors I’ll throw in: first, a certain amount of the office materials didn’t make it into the debris pile, perhaps as much as 10% of it just got scattered all over lower Manhattan island. Second, a few floors worth had already burned. So when the time comes, I’ll take three floors out, and then another 10%. You’ll be surprised, I think, at how much energy there is involved.

This, by the way, is a place where Jim Hoffman makes a serious mistake; in his paper on the dust cloud, he fails to note that he has to ADD THE HEAT BACK IN when he’s totaling things up at the end. This is a violation of conservation of energy, the First Law of Thermodynamics (and a foundational law of physics). The energy dissipated during the fall is about 250 or 300 GJ, and the leftover energy at impact is about 600 GJ. So it’s about a quarter kiloton of TNT for the North tower and about a fifth of a kiloton for the South tower; that’s still a hell of a lot of energy, more than sufficient to liquefy a pretty healthy chunk of steel, and it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot more energy in the office contents.

You should be aware that anytime you do mechanical work, the energy you do it with doesn’t just “go away” or “get used up.” Energy that does work gets dissipated, and when that happens, it turns to heat. This is a well known fact of physics, specifically thermodynamics, that was proven early (or maybe it was late? no, I’m pretty sure it was EARLY) in the nineteenth century by the gentleman for whom the SI unit of energy is named, James Prescott Joule. Go look him up on Wikipedia, or elsewhere if you’re a newbie and believe what you read in the newspapers about Wikipedia. He did this experiment where he stirred water in buckets and showed it got hotter.

This, by the way, is a place where Jim Hoffman makes a serious mistake; in his paper on the dust cloud, he fails to note that he has to ADD THE HEAT BACK IN when he’s totaling things up at the end. This is a violation of conservation of energy, the First Law of Thermodynamics (and a foundational law of physics).

What distance do you drop the load from? The floor of initial collapse: 79 for the South tower, 97 for the North. It’s a variable in the program, you can change it for yourself and run it yourself, it’s a perl. Interestingly, going from a 39-story to a 13-story falling section doesn’t make a great deal of difference in the energy, and makes even less difference in the energy that’s left over when the building hits the ground.

A falling building is not like a bomb or a laser beam. But it makes heat all the same- just like all work makes heat. Feel the bottom of the bicycle pump after you’ve pumped the tire up. Where does that heat come from? Same place as this does.

While a 600GJ bomb would take out ten blocks in any direction, the WTC collapse obviously did not. While that’s true, you need to know that conservation of energy says that energy NEVER disappears. It ALWAYS winds up SOMEWHERE, and if this is energy capable of knocking buildings over for many blocks in all directions, and it didn’t knock them over, then where did it go and what did it do? Answer: it went into the rubble pile, and it melted and burned stuff in there.

There was energy spent “pancaking” or “snapping supports” if you believe those theories (I do not). Whether it was explosives or whether it was sheer mass and momentum that snapped them (and I have excellent reason to believe it was nothing but mass- you’ll see shortly), it STILL made heat, and that heat STILL went into the debris pile at the bottom. Heat is energy and energy NEVER just “goes away.”

All the collapse theories say that the weight of the top of the building is what caused the collapse… well that is HALF true. It was also pushing UP WITH EQUAL FORCE. This force was largely transmitted into the ground during the collapse, not the rubble afterwards. The STATIC FORCE of the building pushes down and the ground pushes up, when the DYNAMIC FORCE of the collapse occurs, it is local to whatever is moving; this is because it’s the MOTION that causes the DYNAMIC force, and that force is (and must be, to collapse the building) many times the static forces of the building just standing there.

Now, for the program:

**BEGIN PROGRAM**

# Demonstrates the kinetic energy of the WTC collapses, to debunk 9/11 conspiracies # Geocities has shut down
#
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Variables for calculations
$m = 4285500; # mass of one floor (kg)
$mt = 0; # mass of falling section
$v1 = 0; # beginning velocity for the current step
$v2 = 0; # velocity at impact
$v3 = 0; # ending velocity for prior step $p = 0; # current momentum
$ke1 = 0; # kinetic energy at impact
$ke2 = 0; # kinetic energy after impact
$de = 0; # total energy dissipated so far $a = 9.80665; # acceleration of gravity (constant) $t = 0; # cumulative time taken
$t1 = 0; # time taken for this step
$d = 3.8; # distance between floors (418m/110 stories) $mt = $fc*$m; # initialize mass of falling section # # Calculations for WTC Tower One $fc = 13; # floor count of falling section (13 floors for WTC One) $rfc = 110 - $fc; # initialize remaining floor count of uncollapsed floors print("Data for WTC Tower One\n"); print("\n"); while($rfc > 0) { print("Data for story ", $rfc, " -\n");
$v1 = $v3; # starting velocity is ending for last step
$v2 = (($v1*2)+((2*$a)*$d))**0.5; # impact velocity for this step by formula print("Impact velocity: ", $v2, "\n"); $p = $mt*$v2; # momentum at impact print("Impulse delivered: ", $p, "\n");
$ke1 = ($mt*($v2**2))/2; # kinetic energy at impact print("Impact kinetic energy: ", $ke1, "\n"); $fc++; # increment falling floor count $mt = $fc*$m; # update mass of falling section
$v3 = $p/$mt; # new velocity
print("Velocity after impact: ", $v3, "\n");
$ke2 = ($mt*($v3**2))/2; # kinetic energy after impact print("Remaining kinetic energy: ", $ke2, "\n"); $de += $ke1 - $ke2; # add dissipated kinetic energy to total print("Kinetic energy dissipated: ", $ke1 - $ke2, "\n");
$t1 = $d/(($v2 + $v1)/2); # time for this step by formula print("Time spent collapsing: ", $t1, "\n"); $t += $t1; # add step time to running total $rfc--; # decrement remaining floor count print("\n"); } print("Overall WTC Tower One data -\n"); print("Total collapse time: ", $t, "\n"); print("Total energy dissipated during the collapse: ", $de, "\n"); print("Remaining kinetic energy at the end of the collapse: ", $ke2, "\n"); print("\n"); # # Calculations for WTC Tower Two $fc = 39; # floor count of falling section (39 floors for WTC Two) $rfc = 110 - $fc; # initialize remaining floor count of uncollapsed floors print("Data for WTC Tower Two\n"); print("\n"); while($rfc > 0) { print("Data for story ", $rfc, " -\n");
$v1 = $v3; # starting velocity is ending for last step
$v2 = (($v1*2)+((2*$a)*$d))**0.5; # impact velocity for this step by formula print("Impact velocity: ", $v2, "\n"); $p = $mt*$v2; # momentum at impact print("Impulse delivered: ", $p, "\n");
$ke1 = ($mt*($v2**2))/2; # kinetic energy at impact print("Impact kinetic energy: ", $ke1, "\n"); $fc++; # increment falling floor count $mt = $fc*$m; # update mass of falling section
$v3 = $p/$mt; # new velocity
print("Velocity after impact: ", $v3, "\n");
$ke2 = ($mt*($v3**2))/2; # kinetic energy after impact print("Remaining kinetic energy: ", $ke2, "\n"); $de += $ke1 - $ke2; # add dissipated kinetic energy to total print("Kinetic energy dissipated: ", $ke1 - $ke2, "\n");
$t1 = $d/(($v2 + $v1)/2); # time for this step by formula print("Time spent collapsing: ", $t1, "\n"); $t += $t1; # add step time to running total $rfc--; # decrement remaining floor count print("\n"); } print("Overall WTC Tower Two data -\n"); print("Total collapse time: ", $t, "\n"); print("Total energy dissipated during the collapse: ", $de, "\n"); print("Remaining kinetic energy at the end of the collapse: ", $ke2, "\n");

**END PROGRAM**

It’s a perl, you can download perl for just about anything from The Perl Programming Language - www.perl.org or somewhere they point. If you’re going to get involved in CS, somewhere you’re going to encounter perl, and now’s as good a time to learn it as any. I highly recommend the O’Reilly Press perl book which happens to be by the inventors of the language. Just so you can muddle your way through and derive the equations from the code above, * is multiplication, ** is raising to a power (and don’t forget that a fractional power is a root; so **0.5 is the square-root operation). The rest of the symbols are obvious, and the parentheses work the same way as they do in standard math notation. You should be aware that the single = in most languages simply ASSIGNS the value of what’s on the right to the thing on the left; usually, you’re required to put a single variable on the left of an =. The double == TESTS whether one value is equal to another, returning 1 or TRUE if it is, and 0 or FALSE if it is not.

The Perl program was fixed by seandiggity

* Edited the bloggers contribution to remove "tons" and replace it with "pounds". It doesn't change what the blogger point was which is there is more than enough combustibles on hand. He did not use the general figure of "Millions of tons" to calculate anything. Of course any silly error like this will be exaggerated as if it means something. This is what conspiracy theorist do.

At 32,000 sq feet of tenant space per floor and at 4lbs per sq ft of combustible material (at 5 lbs per sq ft NIST found that the fires moved too slowly) for 110 floors (-6 floors for mechanical + 6 for underground) is equal to 14 Million POUNDS of combustible material. Or 7,000 TONS. Clearly a RESPECTABLE amount of burnable material per TOWER. Thus the rubble pile had ~ 28 MILLION POUNDS of combustible material not including what was in the Marriot hotel and its parking garage.

From a contributor.

One of the conspiracy sites published an article called "Popular Mechanics Attack on 9/11 Truth." I was pointed in that direction during a debate on a forum, after citing the Popular Mechanics article.

Since we had been talking about the "melted steel" argument, I scrolled down to that area, which claimed this:

"Here PM's counter claim implies that flame temperatures and steel temperatures are synonymous, ignoring the thermal conductivity and thermal mass of steel, which wicks away heat. In actual tests of uninsulated steel structures subjected to prolonged hydrocarbon-fueled fires conducted by Corus Construction Co. the highest recorded steel temperatures were 680ºF."

That seemed strange to me. They made a point of how steel temperatures are different from the atmospheric temperatures surrounding it, then went on to cite a study and only mentioned the steel temperatures, not the atmospheric. So I went to the website of Corus Construction Co, and found a section in their Research area that said this about the difference in temperatures between steel and atmosphere:

"With regard to steel temperatures, these depend upon the size of the member but for typical unprotected beams and columns these would lag behind the compartment temperatures by around 100°C to 200°C."

So the tests that the conspiracy theorist cited only had atmospheric temperatures ranging around 800-900 degrees, while the Popular Mechanics article (and NIST report) mentions that pockets of the World Trade Center reached 1800 degrees. This would put the steel temperature in those locations at around 1600-1700 degrees, which is far above the 1100 degree mark that steel loses 50% of its structural integrity.

I just thought it was a pretty striking example of dishonesty. The conspiracy theorist site could not have found that Corus study without finding the question on the atmospheric temperature, but left that part out. Some "truth movement"...

-Steve