[OT] Another heated discussion about the Iraq siutation, war and politics.

[Krsqk]

Hmmm. I tested at 4.25/1.85, almost dead on with Tony Blair. Somehow I think the late hour had some effect on that.

[Kamog]

Economic Left/Right: 1.00
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.67

[Taera]

same answer twice, -0.75, -0.82
almost neutral. the key word is almost tho

EDIT: im almost same as Jean Chretien

[ May 22, 2003, 06:32: Message edited by: Taera ]

[Some1]

Economic Left/Right: -7.25
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -4.26

Hmmm, on par with Mandela & Gandhi...
ANyway, i think this test also depends a lot on where you come from. In my country im on the left side of the spectrum... ON a world view im almost extreme left
Questions like :"Marijuana should be legalised" is already a fact here...
I think that people who are right-winged in my country (the Netherlands) are considered left winged on this scale.

R.

[ May 22, 2003, 11:50: Message edited by: Some1 ]

[Erax]

Sepultura, etc. should be called 'expatriate Brazilian rock', there is NO space for their kind of music here (studios and radios want to sell other stuff). That being said, it's not my favorite kind of music but my wife likes them a lot.

[Aloofi]

Do you mean that the Brazilian radio stations don't play Speed or Death Metal?

That's commun everywhere. Most radio stations only play the more "radio-friendly" alternative rock.
The Heaviest we get is usually Metallica and the sort, with bands like Puddle of Mud, Paparoach or Green Day getting most of the air time.

[Aloofi]

Please, somebody tell me that these calculations are wrong or that the numbers in which these calculations are based are wrong.

The time t required for an object to fall from a height h (in a vacuum) is given by the formula t = sqrt(2h/g), where g is the acceleration due to gravity. Thus an object falling from the top of one of the towers (taking h = 1306 feet and g = 32.174 ft/sec2) would take 9.01 seconds to hit the ground if we ignore the resistance of the air and a few seconds longer if we take air resistance into account. The Twin Towers collapsed in 10 - 15 seconds, close to free fall. Following the start of the collapse the upper floors would have had to shatter the steel joints in all 85 or so floors at the lower levels. If this required only a second per floor then the collapse would have required more than a minute. But the material from the upper floors ploughed through the lower floors at a speed of at least six floors per second. This is possible only if all structural support in the lower 85 or so floors had been completely eliminated prior to the initiation of the collapse. Since the lower floors were undamaged by the plane impacts and the fires, the removal of all structural support in these floors must have been due to some other cause — and the most obvious possibility is explosives. Thus the speed of the collapse (not much more than the time of free fall) is strong evidence that the Twin Towers were brought down in a controlled demolition involving the use of explosives (or some other destructive technology) at all levels.

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[ May 22, 2003, 16:12: Message edited by: Aloofi ]

[Erax]

You would have to ask a civil engineer, but I get the feeling that the time required for the weight of the collapsing upper stories to crush the supports of each floor beneath them (which is pretty much a simultaneous process, not sequential as the text implies) would be very short.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Aloofi:
Please, somebody tell me that these calculations are wrong or that the numbers in which these calculations are based are wrong.

quote:

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The time t required for an object to fall from a height h (in a vacuum) is given by the formula t = sqrt(2h/g), where g is the acceleration due to gravity. Thus an object falling from the top of one of the towers (taking h = 1306 feet and g = 32.174 ft/sec2) would take 9.01 seconds to hit the ground if we ignore the resistance of the air and a few seconds longer if we take air resistance into account. The Twin Towers collapsed in 10 - 15 seconds, close to free fall. Following the start of the collapse the upper floors would have had to shatter the steel joints in all 85 or so floors at the lower levels. If this required only a second per floor then the collapse would have required more than a minute. But the material from the upper floors ploughed through the lower floors at a speed of at least six floors per second. This is possible only if all structural support in the lower 85 or so floors had been completely eliminated prior to the initiation of the collapse. Since the lower floors were undamaged by the plane impacts and the fires, the removal of all structural support in these floors must have been due to some other cause — and the most obvious possibility is explosives. Thus the speed of the collapse (not much more than the time of free fall) is strong evidence that the Twin Towers were brought down in a controlled demolition involving the use of explosives (or some other destructive technology) at all levels.

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It is his assumptions about each floor taking a full second to shatter that is tripping him up, not the rest of the math. The Twin Towers were designed to be structurally effecient, which means there was very little structural redunancy, and no extra support. The floors were supported basically just at the outer edge, with a small amount in the center around the elavator shafts. Each floor consisted of lots of steel, several inches of concrete, and numerous other things.

The kenetic energy of an object falling from a height h and starting from rest (again, in a vacum, like the guy assumed) is m * g * h (mass times gravity times height). Those floors were all very, very heavy. Once they had fallen the height of a single floor they had sufficint kinetic energy to break every remaining floor of the building, even had gravity been cut off at that point. As gravity didn't go away, after two or three floors get crashed the delay due to the rest is negligable.

Edit: Oh, and the upper end of his estimate for the collapse of the towers (15 seconds) is about 1.67 times his calculation for gravity in a vacum, hardly close.

[ May 22, 2003, 16:45: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[geoschmo]

The guy is wrong. He doesn't understand how the building was designed and what sort of stresses were involved.

Modern structures can't be efficently built to withstand stress in every possible direction. Skyscrapers are designed to withstand downward stress from the weight of the building and occupants, and lateral stress from wind and earthquakes. The structure is carefully designed so that each component does it's share and all the pieces support each other.

Basically all the weight of the floors on those buildings was supported by the steel tubing that ran vertically up the outside. All those individual tubes were tied together in effect forming one giant square cylinder. All the floors were mounted to the inside of that cylinder.

As the floors fell there was a force downard of kinetic energy and gravity, but there is also a force outward against those tubes from debris and the explosive outrush of air. The hardware mounting the floors to the tubes wasn't designed to resist that kind of stress pushing outwards. In effect the mass of debris falling down inside this tube was pushing the walls outward and breaking loose several floors at a time.

So, basically he is right that the floors weren't coming loose one at a time, but he is wrong when he says explosives would have been needed to cause that.

Geoschmo