Paul.L

Your argument about whether the top of WTC7 fell 5 or 6 floors is typical of the way truth deniers work. You make much of a small error but do not deal with the real issue. The real issue is that the top of WTC7 fell a substantial distance without encountering measurable resistance. Even buckling columns resist. You do not deal with that. Thanks to daggett’s post I have recalculated the drop and find that it was between 7 and 8 storeys, not 6 as I previously stated, nor 5 as you claim.

I said >> “What matters is that NIST’s falsification, in that it has obscured the existence of free fall, has been exposed and we have the correct rate of fall for 2 seconds.” [now known to be about 2.5 seconds]

It is perfectly clear that if NIST had been honestly performing its duty to investigate and inform the public of the facts about WTC7 they would have pointed out that free fall suddenly commenced and existed for some substantial distance and would have discussed how this odd behaviour might have occurred, but they did not. That is not good science. It is something else. Whether the omission was caused by ignorance or deliberate obfuscation does not matter to the essential proposition: that a new investigation is required.

Your only argument against this is to dispute the accuracy of Chandler’s analysis and his honesty. You say of his analysis that: “He calibrates the system using the known width of the building…”

This is false. Chandler explains that he does not use the width of the building because it could introduce errors due to distortion of the vertical/horizontal ratio. He uses information provided by NIST about the distance between the roof and a named floor. He explains this carefully so it appears that you are providing false information in the hope that readers will accept your assertion without checking the actual video.

You then say: “If you are an engineer or scientist, you would know that this experiment is nowhere near the standard required in order to be accepted for peer review. It’s pop science of exactly the type you might expect from a high school physics teacher trying to entertain his class. It is not SCIENCE.”

This is your opinion. Personally I find it interesting that the maths is so simple that a year ten student could do it. You don’t need to be a structural engineer. You ask why structural engineers don’t write these papers. There are two answers to that question:

1. Structural engineers are not like plumbers or carpenters who can get work in myriads of small jobs around the country. They design large structures for a very few large government backed or approved organizations. They want work and do not wish to risk appearing to speak against the government, which has the purse strings. Their employers wouldn’t like it. As you are now a trained engineer I see a motive here for your opposition to further investigation.

2. Last time I looked, http://www.ae911truth.org/ had 547 architects and engineers who had signed their petition requesting a new investigation.

You suggest that the video may have been shot at 60, 50 or 30 frames per second and, as we don’t know which, we cannot rely on the video. This is absurd. Videos are normally shot at 30 and if this one had been done at 50 or 60 it would have been so far out as to be immediately detectable. The two studies presented used different videos and came to the virtually the same conclusion

The two studies presented used different videos and came to the virtually the same conclusion.

You reject the second study on the grounds that the calculated acceleration was 9.1m/s/s, not 9.8m/s/s. If these accelerations were maintained the difference it would make to the total collapse time of this 47 storey building is 0.2 seconds (6.2 - 6.0 = 0.2). Do you really think that is significant, especially as the author of the second paper probably missed part of the brief hesitation at the beginning of the fall which the first paper noted?

You also comment that the video used by Chandler was grainy. This is true and would be expected to cause some scatter of the readings. However Chandler took a great many readings of the position of the corner of the roof as it fell and we see that the scatter is quite narrow about the straight line that he draws. If you look at the points you cannot make a case that a curve or a line at a different angle would be a better fit. It is a pity one cannot copy images to this forum – I hope readers will look at the linked site and see this for themselves.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gC44L0-2zL8

Your case rests on disputing the honesty of the authors or on a 0.2 second total collapse time difference between them. Not much to go on.

Surely you would have to agree that the consequences of accepting the official story, which appears to be wrong, have been so grave, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers and millions people, largely innocent women and children, that there is ample justification for a new enquiry

Just because Paul.L proclaim's that "(I have) been pushed into a corner", that "(I am not) I even close to being qualified to comment" and that "(I) don't know what (I am) talking about most of the time", that doesn't make it so.

As far as I am concerned anyone who uses his knowledgein an honest attempt to help others understand the issues is far more 'qualified' to comment than a formally qualified person who abuses his authority and knowledge to mislead others.

Paul.L, even though I am not a formally qualified engineer, I know enough to be able to see that either you cheated to pass your year 10 high school exams or that you are intentionally misleading others and I think that should be abundanlty clear by now to any honest critical-minded person viewing this discussion, thanks to amoeba's clear and helpful contributions

---

Paul.L wrote, "If you even read my last posts you will see that I do not accept Chandlers video as conclusive evidence."

Why did you think I did not realise that?

Paul.L wrote, "How about you stop presuming what I think, ..."

Stop presuming that you think that NIST is the unchallenged authority on this question?

Well why don't you go to page 40 of http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1A_for_public_comment.pdf (the same one cited on http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gC44L0-2zL8) and then tell us whether or not you think that the NIST's analytical methods are more sound than David Chandler's?

Amoeba,

You say >> Your argument ... is typical of the way truth deniers work. You make much of a small error but do not deal with the real issue.

I made much of a small error? How is one short sentence MUCH? Seriously?

You say >> “The real issue is that the top of WTC7 fell a substantial distance without encountering measurable resistance. Even buckling columns resist. You do not deal with that.”

That’s not something we agree on. Furthermore, you avoided the fact that Chandlers “evidence” would not hold up in court. The scientific rigor involved in Chandlers experiment is NOT of a level that would allow it to be put forward for peer review.

What is your estimate for the likely error for this analysis? Or do you assert that through this whole process he has introduced no error anywhere?

The buckling of the exterior, together with the damage from the south tower meant that there was very little resistance to the collapse for at least 7 stories. If you have a look at NIST’s modeling of the collapse you will see this.

So, although the rate of fall for that period would not have been freefall, it could have been quite close. This makes your case reliant upon the absolute accuracy of the measurements.

You say >> “This is your opinion. Personally I find it interesting that the maths is so simple that a year ten student could do it.

This is rubbish. IF the time frame and the distances were correctly calculated, then it becomes a 10th grade maths problem. But that is the problem, you can’t rely on the accuracy of these measurements.

So you can say that he’s PROVED all these things but that’s just not the case. You know that this is merely a thumbnail sketch in terms of accuracy.

The NIST report of the building collapse clearly shows that during the period in question (ie the period Chandler has identified as being freefall) the resistance offered by the building to the collapse was almost insignificant. http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf page40

TBC

CONT,

Therefore the collapse as detailed by NIST, would have been close to freefall for a short period (as much as 7 or 8 stories)

Where is the peer review which disputes Gilsanz’s article in structure magazine? http://www.structuremag.org/Archives/2007-11/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov07.pdf

You say >> Structural engineers are not like plumbers or carpenters ..."

This is complete BULLSH!T. Academics with tenure are fully entitled to dispute articles published in journals or by NIST etc. Disputing the science isn’t the same thing as accusing the US Gov’t of mass murder of its own people.

Do you think the FDNY doesn’t have structural engineers and other specialists who would be jumping up and down if they thought the gov’t was trying to shove under the carpet the fact that it killed hundreds of their brothers? In any case, as you say AE911 have a bunch of inhouse nutters, can none of them get articles published in a real scientific journal using solid analysis? WHY?

By the way, I wonder how many of the 547 architects and engineers, are actually people who would know the difference, how many are just plain mad about the war. How many of them are people who just think things need to be explained more clearly. Finally how many of them are people like you who jump to the conclusion that the US gov’t is hiding the fact that they committed the worst massacre of its own citizens since the civil war.

You say >> “This is absurd. Videos are normally shot at 30 and if this one had been done at 50 or 60 it would have been so far out as to be immediately detectable.

NO. 60i is the standard for NTSC, which is “as used” in the states, that’s 29.97 frames per second. Nevertheless, the distortion introduced through the compression algorithms is undeniable, which makes accurate positioning and time frame calculation very difficult.

We are not talking about a big difference between the NIST models of the collapse and Chandlers assertions. Therefore accuracy is PARAMOUNT, and I don’t believe that this simple experiment has the accuracy required

TBC