This is really stupid stuff to post, but I’m amazed that a majority of Americans are attracted to the Truther movement about the 9/11 jet crashes into the World Trade Center. For those of you who don’t know, Truthers have a wide variety of beliefs, ranging from the unfounded belief that Bush knew that an attack was coming and did nothing to the doofus notion that planes crashing into the towers could not have brought them down to the raging lunatic belief that Bush (Chimpy McBushHitler to the Truthers) planned the attacks himself in a conspiracy to enrich Halliburton / enrich oil companies / start a war with peace-loving Iraq / name your own wacky reason.
Here is a post I made to a couple of questions posed by a Truther. The names have been redacted to protect the stupid.
What about the fact that explosions can be seen coming from the sides of the twin towers before the collapse cycle reached that particular point.
Um, maybe it’s because the frame of the building is tied together by girders. Put a pencil on your desk and then push the eraser. Notice that the pencil point moves before your hand reaches the original location of the pencil point. It’s called Physics for 3-Year Olds.
What about the fact that the heat from jet fuel cannot melt steele.
Steel generally begins to weaken and de-temper at 540 F. Typical construction steel loses half its strength at approximately 1,090 F and virtually all of its strength at 1,300 F. In a completely open area, aviation fuel burns at anywhere from 500 to 599 degrees. In an enclosed space that has enough oxygen, the burn temperature is close to 1,800 F. The plane that hit the North Tower cut through the utility shafts, allowing fuel to spill to floor below and also causing an updraft through the shaft and windows that drew fresh air into the burn area, thus increasing the burn temperature.
Not only that, but the crashes themselves broke or twisted the columns and girders on a number of floors. WTC 1 sustained structural damage on 8 levels while WTC 2 sustained structural damage on 6 levels. The remaining structure was simply not strong enough to support the weight of the floors above.
By the way, my degrees are in chemistry and chemical engineering and I worked at an aviation firm for 4 years and have extensive experience with Jet-A, JP-5, and JP-8 fuels.
Before that, I was the lead chemical engineer for a large plating firm that specialized in aircraft components. After plating, most steels need to be heated for a period of time at 380 F to prevent hydrogen embrittlement. If the records from the oven showed that the temperature was somewhat higher, the parts had to be scrapped because the heat had weakened them.
In other words, I know what I’m talking about and you Truthers don’t.
And if you’re going to attack Bush politically, please explain why Sandy Berger found it necessary to steal and destroy on multiple occasions highly-secret documents in his socks and pants from the National Archives that dealt with Clinton’s record on terrorism. Somebody’s hiding something and it ain’t the Bushes. It was also the Clinton administration that erected a wall between the FBI and CIA as well as walls within those organizations.
An excellent investigation and analysis of the conspiracy claims was conducted by Popular Mechanics magazine, which came to the conclusion that, yes, the planes brought down the World Trade Center towers.
