Crates and Cranes (9/11)

Photocredit: commons.wikimedia.org

I am attempting here to demonstrate simply why the Twin Towers and Building 7 could not have fallen in on themselves as they appeared to do without some kind of controlled demolition. The tragedy of that fateful day in September 2001 will never be forgotten and the families of victims should learn the truth so they can deal with their grief. There is a very good paper by Richard Gage which explains in engineering terms why the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) version of events is not just suspect, but totally flawed. Here I try and explain using lay-engineering examples of why the twin towers could not have come down as they did using construction cranes and beer crates as examples.

CRANES

There is a very good reason for making cranes out of steel. It is the same reason that the twin towers were made out of even stronger structural steel. Strength of materials matters in the construction industry. Sometimes cranes, much more often than buildings, fail. It is not usually the steel that fails. High winds can be responsible. So can the fact that they often have no foundations and have to be moved from place to place. I have watched dozens of videos of crane failures. Do you know what? Not one of them has collapsed in the way the twin towers did. This is a recent and fatal crane disaster not far from where the twin towers stood.

All crane failures I have seen have their steel structures very much intact afterwards. There are multiple reasons for failure, for example, lack of equilibrium or trying to hoist too heavy a weight. There are three big differences between the twin towers and a crane. The structural steel was much sturdier in the towers, its integral strength was vertical and its base was built on very strong foundations. There is no way any downward pressure from the floors above would destroy the structural steel beneath. You can understand that by what happens to much flimsier cranes.

CRATES

They build stacking crates, milk and beer, usually out of plastic. They do not build skyscraper towers out of crate plastic though composites are used on some buildings. When you stack crates one on top of another they are quite strong because all the weight is borne in a vertical direction, one crate resting on top of another. I suspect that if the crates were full they could be stacked higher because of this vertical strength and the extra stability from the extra weight.

The vertical strength of buildings is always overdesigned to take much more load than it would ever be likely to experience. The pancake idea is absolute nonsense to an engineer. Take a look at this tower made out of beer crates.

http://entertainment.ie/trending/news/Watch-Stacking-beer-crates-into-towers-and-climbing-them-is-a-thing-now/368680.htm

It will give you some idea of the downward strength of crate on crate. And yet again  Newton’s immutable third law can be seen. My estimate is that the crates at about 18 stacked together would be a similar height proportionally to the twin towers (give or take). What you should imagine is instead of somebody climbing on top of them that a person is hoisted above the tower who then drops a crate a crate’s height above the tower. If it landed square it would not push the other crates into the ground. If it landed awkwardly and the tower collapsed it would collapse lopsidedly like the cranes. You can fill it full of beer bottles if you like, full beer bottles even. You would never get it to collapse like either of the twin towers. Any engineer would tell you that. But if you doubt it try it for yourself.

Of course there is a big difference between beer crates and a solid structure, especially a steel structure, especially a steel structure which is bolted and riveted together, especially a steel structure which is anchored soundly at the base, with even stronger girders and wider support towards the base. The twin towers could not have fallen in the way they did without their structure having been compromised lower down. It is an engineering impossibility.

This video shows the construction of the twin towers. “Five years to construct, 15 seconds to demolish”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwc49cZKunQ

The strength of these constructions is unquestionable. Hope this gets through all the nonsense of the official version of how the towers fell. Thanks for reading.