Question for Non-9/11 Truthers: Did You Know Jet Fuel is Just Kerosene?

[rawo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

Science question: Does everyone know commercial airliner fuel is just kerosene> Called "Jet A." It is not super-duper melting fuel. Try lighting and squirting kerosene on a crowbar all day and see if you can melt it. That's why the official 9/11 story is impossible.

http://www.petroleumhpv.org/petroleum-substances-and-categories/kerosene-jet-fuel

jet fuel burning experiment

best 9/11 documentary yet

 

[[serious]]

yeah, but you are forgetting about the stuff they use to make chemtrails. who knows what temperature that stuff burns at!
https://xkcd.com/966/

 

[rawo]

yeah, but you are forgetting about the stuff they use to make chemtrails. who knows what temperature that stuff burns at!
https://xkcd.com/966/

I'll take that as agreement that jet fuel is only kerosene. So if it's only kerosene, how did the lower 80 stories of the towers get soft and disappear in 14 seconds? Or do you believe in chemtrails and magic dust?

 

[eclipsenow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

Science question: Does everyone know commercial airliner fuel is just kerosene> Called "Jet A." It is not super-duper melting fuel. Try lighting and squirting kerosene on a crowbar all day and see if you can melt it. That's why the official 9/11 story is impossible.

http://www.petroleumhpv.org/petroleum-substances-and-categories/kerosene-jet-fuel

jet fuel burning experiment

best 9/11 documentary yet

Your first mistake is in thinking this is a rational comparison and believing that the average citizen is qualified to think this through. We're not structural engineers. The greatest deceptions are the ones we want to believe. When a sales person or scam artist or conspiracy theorist comes up to you and says (or in this case insinuates), "Now, you're a smart person: do you think XYZ is even possible?" The answer is already designed in the way the question has been framed.

This is NOT about poring a little kero on a backyard crow bar! This is not about melting, but bending. Oh, and one other thing. Was only jet fuel burning, or a few floors of the building?

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength—and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6384/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center/

Steel melts at 2500F, but 1832 seems hot enough to make it twist and bend. It's about the struts bending down and the floor basically sliding away from the struts connecting it to that level.

 

[[serious]]

I'll take that as agreement that jet fuel is only kerosene. So if it's only kerosene, how did the lower 80 stories of the towers get soft and disappear in 14 seconds? Or do you believe in chemtrails and magic dust?

Sure, we can treat jet fuel as having similar properties to kerosene.

heres another thought, coal burns at a similar temperature as kerosene as well. you know what that means? blacksmithing is a lie!

 

[[serious]]

well, blacksmithing is a lie unless the adiabatic burn temperature of coal (and kerosene) is in the 3800 F range. Then that would be bigger than the 2500 F melting point of steel and make it reasonable that an enclosed fire would get hot enough to deform steel.

 

[Kylie]

I'll take that as agreement that jet fuel is only kerosene. So if it's only kerosene, how did the lower 80 stories of the towers get soft and disappear in 14 seconds? Or do you believe in chemtrails and magic dust?

Because they had a huge whopping building collapsing one floor at a time.

Let's assume that the fire weakened only one floor enough to render it incapable of supporting the floors above it. Then the entire mass of the building above that point will fall exactly one floor.

But, the structure of the floor beneath it had been weakened, let's not forget. It's got a fire burning very hot nearby. So the structure of the floor beneath the collapsed floor has been weakened to the point where it can no longer support the mass of the building with the momentum it has gained after falling a floor. There's a huge amount of mass, thus a huge impact. ANd this impact is strong enough to buckle the floor beneath the one that originally gave way.

Now there's even more mass, and the building has fallen further, thus adding to the momentum, which makes it buckled the next floor down. And so on and so on, the falling mass of the building getting heavier and faster as it falls. It's no surprise that the building crumpled the way it did.

 

[rawo]

Your first mistake is in thinking this is a rational comparison and believing that the average citizen is qualified to think this through. We're not structural engineers. The greatest deceptions are the ones we want to believe. When a sales person or scam artist or conspiracy theorist comes up to you and says (or in this case insinuates), "Now, you're a smart person: do you think XYZ is even possible?" The answer is already designed in the way the question has been framed.

This is NOT about poring a little kero on a backyard crow bar! This is not about melting, but bending. Oh, and one other thing. Was only jet fuel burning, or a few floors of the building?


Steel melts at 2500F, but 1832 seems hot enough to make it twist and bend. It's about the struts bending down and the floor basically sliding away from the struts connecting it to that level.

Two things here.

This is not about melting, but bending. Oh, and one other thing. Was only jet fuel burning, or a few floors of the building?

Steel melts at 2500F, but 1832 seems hot enough to make it twist and bend. It's about the struts bending down and the floor basically sliding away from the struts connecting it to that level.

First of all, in order for the towers to fall at the speed a rock drops, which is free-fall through air, it would have to melt to the consistency of fluid. Otherwise the towers wouldn't disappear, they would, just like you say, bend, here and there. There have been many partial collapses of small parts of buildings, like this, which burned for 20 hours (Towers burned about one). STILL DIDN'T COLLAPSE. In fact, the crane on top for demolition shows it still had quite a lot of structural strength.

Windsor fire, Madrid
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/windsor.html
https://flic.kr/p/18530339920
Looked like this on fire:
https://flic.kr/p/18095441254
In fact, the WTC was of a stronger construction than the above fire, the Windsor in Madrid.

Second, there WAS melted steel, lots of if it, found for months afterwards in the basements.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=leslie_robertson

Leslie Robertson, one of the structural engineers responsible for the design of the WTC, describes fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks. [SEAU News, 10/2001 pdf file]

Alison Geyh, who heads a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reports: “Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.” [Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine, 2001]

Ron Burger, a public health advisor who arrives at Ground Zero on September 12, says that “feeling the heat” and “seeing the molten steel” there reminds him of a volcano. [National Environmental Health Association, 9/2003, pp. 40 pdf file]

According to a member of New York Air National Guard’s 109th Air Wing, who is at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6: “One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.” [National Guard Magazine, 12/2001]

New York firefighters recall “heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel.” [New York Post, 3/3/2004]

As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O’Toole sees a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, “was dripping from the molten steel.” [Knight Ridder, 5/29/2002]

A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11. [Source: Frank Silecchia]

Molten steel testimony

Ok so there was molten steel so what? What's the problem? The problem is, again, not a bit of molten steel should have been there, because these kinds of fires don't get that hot. Steel needs 2800 F to melt into liquid state. Office fires burn normally at under 1000F, at the very hottest "blazing inferno" stage, which the towers never became, no hotter than 1800F.

https://www.aisc.org/DynamicTaxonomyFAQs.aspx?id=1996

the maximum temperature of a fully developed building fire will rarely exceed 1800°F. The average gas temperature in a fully developed fire is not likely to reach 1500°F. Temperatures of fires that have not developed to post-flashover stage will not exceed 1000°F.

Big problem for official story.

thermitic compounds.

How thermite works:

Thermite burns at 5000F. Lots of thermite will make LOTS of molten steel.

 

[rawo]

duplicate

 

[The Cadet]

The molten steel claim is baseless. Eyewitness testimony to some sort of molten metal is both few and far between, and I seriously wonder if any of those people can tell the difference between molten steel and molten aluminum. Thermal imaging data also shows nowhere near the temperatures needed to melt steel - not even the 1800F you claim as a maximum. As far as claims go, it simply is not tenable.

Your comparison to the Windsor Madrid is interesting. I particularly find the claim that the WTC was "stronger" funny. The WTC might have been stronger overall, but if you look at how it was built, many concessions were made in favor of floor space. It did not have the same boxy steel structure you see in the Windsor. Comparing a fire in the Windsor to a fire in the WTC towers is something that needs to be taken with some expertise. Even ignoring the effect of the plane severing multiple support columns in WTC1 and WTC2, they are fundamentally different constructions, which will react differently to impact and fire. How exactly they would react: well, we've seen it. The WTC could not withstand the combined impact and sustained fire; the Windsor could and did. In fact, there's been some rather extensive research into why the Windsor didn't collapse. Might be worth a look.

Oh, and one last thing: the world trade center did not collapse at freefall speed. This is trivial to demonstrate - just watch the video of the collapse, and you'll see the building being outplaced by the debris it throws off.

 

[eclipsenow]

I can't believe this conspiracy stuff gets so much attention. Isn't time people just moved on?

 

[bhsmte]

I can't believe this conspiracy stuff gets so much attention. Isn't time people just moved on?

I find it intriguing, that some folks actually have a need to believe this stuff and all the denial and confirmation bias they must have to convince themselves of the same.

 

[rawo]

The molten steel claim is baseless. Eyewitness testimony to some sort of molten metal is both few and far between, and I seriously wonder if any of those people can tell the difference between molten steel and molten aluminum. Thermal imaging data also shows nowhere near the temperatures needed to melt steel - not even the 1800F you claim as a maximum. As far as claims go, it simply is not tenable.

Your comparison to the Windsor Madrid is interesting. I particularly find the claim that the WTC was "stronger" funny. The WTC might have been stronger overall, but if you look at how it was built, many concessions were made in favor of floor space. It did not have the same boxy steel structure you see in the Windsor. Comparing a fire in the Windsor to a fire in the WTC towers is something that needs to be taken with some expertise. Even ignoring the effect of the plane severing multiple support columns in WTC1 and WTC2, they are fundamentally different constructions, which will react differently to impact and fire. How exactly they would react: well, we've seen it. The WTC could not withstand the combined impact and sustained fire; the Windsor could and did. In fact, there's been some rather extensive research into why the Windsor didn't collapse. Might be worth a look.

Oh, and one last thing: the world trade center did not collapse at freefall speed. This is trivial to demonstrate - just watch the video of the collapse, and you'll see the building being outplaced by the debris it throws off.

The thermal imaging data shows surface temperatures only. The basements were seven stories deep. And 1400 F (1000 Kelvin) five days after the event is a pretty healthy heat when, as I have shown, fully oxygenated fires at full open-air burn rarely reach 1500F and normally about 1000F.

https://www.aisc.org/DynamicTaxonomyFAQs.aspx?id=1996

the maximum temperature of a fully developed building fire will rarely exceed 1800°F. The average gas temperature in a fully developed fire is not likely to reach 1500°F. Temperatures of fires that have not developed to post-flashover stage will not exceed 1000°F.

But go ahead and ignore the facts as you see fit, that's not my problem. I am just pointing out that it is irrefutable that there was 2800F molten steel, which is the melting point of steel, according to the witness, visual, and measurements made in real time on the "pile."

Bechtel engineers, responsible for safety at Ground Zero, wrote in the report: at Journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers that:

“The debris pile at Ground Zero was always tremendously hot. Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400ºF to more than 2,800ºF.”

The report is republished here.

Some of the witness testimony I posted above, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani who was being reported to by city technical staff. But you ignored it. Look at it again.

The Windsor. Not only did the 20 hour Windsor fire not collapse. In no other fire of even greater severity did a skyscraper ever collapse, in the history of steel frame skyscrapers, and there have been thousands of fires. But they didn't get hit by a plane and get jet fuel dumped into them, you may say. But remember jet fuel is only kero, as you have not disputed. Nothing special, burns off in 10 minutes on a flat surface. Try it, anyone can buy kerosene. So why should three skyscrapers in a row act differently on one day? It wasn't the plane hits, because the planes got the worst of it, like you can see below. They got shredded like sardine cans by the steel core, like going through a cheese grater.

Finally as for free-fall speed, yes it was free fall speed for the purposes of describing a collapse which shouldn't have happened at all. Free fall speed is the speed an object falls to the ground through thin air. You can track a piece of debris falling and see that the demolition line keeps up with it.

 

[The Cadet]

The thermal imaging data shows surface temperatures only. The basements were seven stories deep. And 1400 F (1000 Kelvin) five days after the event is a pretty healthy heat when, as I have shown, fully oxygenated fires at full open-air burn rarely reach 1500F and normally about 1000F.

Would you care to present your hypothesis for how this data is best explained?

But go ahead and ignore the facts as you see fit, that's not my problem. I am just pointing out that it is irrefutable that there was 2800F molten steel, which is the melting point of steel, according to the witness, visual, and measurements made in real time on the "pile."

See, I don't know where "personal testimony" counts as "irrefutable evidence". There shouldn't be molten steel down there. Much of what is called molten steel could easily be molten aluminium, or an overstatement of what "molten" means (if someone says "molten steel beam", they usually don't mean "it's a puddle"). This, however, is an entirely different thing:

Bechtel engineers, responsible for safety at Ground Zero, wrote in the report: at Journal of the American Society of Safety Engineers that:



The report is republished here.

This is interesting. It's no longer up on the ASSE website, but it is legitimate as the wayback machine testifies. I'd be interested in seeing the helicopter thermal imaging data that pegged it at 2,800F; at the moment, the available data is still incredibly flimsy. And I'd be interested in hearing what hypothesis you're putting forward to explain this evidence, assuming it actually works as evidence.

The Windsor. Not only did the 20 hour Windsor fire not collapse. In no other fire of even greater severity did a skyscraper ever collapse, in the history of steel frame skyscrapers, and there have been thousands of fires. But they didn't get hit by a plane and get jet fuel dumped into them, you may say. But remember jet fuel is only kero, as you have not disputed. Nothing special, burns off in 10 minutes on a flat surface. Try it, anyone can buy kerosene. So why should three skyscrapers in a row act differently on one day? It wasn't the plane hits, because the planes got the worst of it, like you can see below. They got shredded like sardine cans by the steel core, like going through a cheese grater.

Again, you're comparing two very different skyscrapers. Not all skyscrapers are alike. The WTC towers used a fairly novel form of construction which kept the building stable and lightweight while maximizing floor space. It lacked many of the concrete support beams typical to constructions like the Windsor - and you'll notice that the segments without these concrete supports actually did collapse in Madrid. The problem is, you're trying to draw a direct analogy between two completely different buildings. This is actually something that has been studied fairly extensively - why buildings fall down under some conditions and don't under others is kind of interesting.

Find me a building with a similar structure to the WTC - a framed tube building - which caught fire, then we can talk about analogies. Or find me some actual research trying to draw analogies between them. Don't just say "this building caught fire just like this one, but only that one collapsed!" That's a huge oversimplification.

And as for the planes getting shredded, yeah. No surprise there. But they took a non-trivial amount of the protective heat shielding with them.

Finally as for free-fall speed, yes it was free fall speed for the purposes of describing a collapse which shouldn't have happened at all. Free fall speed is the speed an object falls to the ground through thin air. You can track a piece of debris falling and see that the demolition line keeps up with it.

This is just ridiculous. The free-fall myth is one of the easiest to debunk and you just make yourself look like a dogmatist when you support it.

 

[rawo]

Would you care to present your hypothesis for how this data is best explained?



See, I don't know where "personal testimony" counts as "irrefutable evidence". There shouldn't be molten steel down there. Much of what is called molten steel could easily be molten aluminium, or an overstatement of what "molten" means (if someone says "molten steel beam", they usually don't mean "it's a puddle"). This, however, is an entirely different thing:



This is interesting. It's no longer up on the ASSE website, but it is legitimate as the wayback machine testifies. I'd be interested in seeing the helicopter thermal imaging data that pegged it at 2,800F; at the moment, the available data is still incredibly flimsy. And I'd be interested in hearing what hypothesis you're putting forward to explain this evidence, assuming it actually works as evidence.



Again, you're comparing two very different skyscrapers. Not all skyscrapers are alike. The WTC towers used a fairly novel form of construction which kept the building stable and lightweight while maximizing floor space. It lacked many of the concrete support beams typical to constructions like the Windsor - and you'll notice that the segments without these concrete supports actually did collapse in Madrid. The problem is, you're trying to draw a direct analogy between two completely different buildings. This is actually something that has been studied fairly extensively - why buildings fall down under some conditions and don't under others is kind of interesting.

Find me a building with a similar structure to the WTC - a framed tube building - which caught fire, then we can talk about analogies. Or find me some actual research trying to draw analogies between them. Don't just say "this building caught fire just like this one, but only that one collapsed!" That's a huge oversimplification.

And as for the planes getting shredded, yeah. No surprise there. But they took a non-trivial amount of the protective heat shielding with them.

This is just ridiculous. The free-fall myth is one of the easiest to debunk and you just make yourself look like a dogmatist when you support it.

Before I present a hypothesis let's settle a few facts.

Your video acknowledges virtual free fall speed, nothing "just ridiculous" about that claim. 14 seconds vs. 10 seconds and accelerating to the bottom, considering steel is 8,000 times denser than air, is off by a factor of thousands if the upper mass were to be "accelerating" through the steel resistance, which is of course not possible unless the steel is nearly completely mleted. Official story defenders say over and over the "steel didn't have to melt" for failure to occur, which is correct, but that would be small, partial failures as is often observed in steel-frame fires, not sudden total collapse to the ground. Free fall speed OR ANYTHING NEAR IT is only attained through a liquid or a gas, not a solid. And as we know, most of the structure below the 80th floor was solid, because jet fuel is only kerosene and these were standard office fires.

Funny though is your video's exclusion of the audio, in which you can clearly hear the explosions of the demolition. Wouldn't want people to hear that in a debunk tape, would we? Here is the unedited video:

While we're at it debating physics let's look at additional visual evidence, in which you can clearly see cut beam being hurled out laterally at cannonball speeds. These pieces weigh many tons:

Tell you what. Let's get this over with in 4 hours instead of going on for days. If you can watch this well-made video, maybe in installments but I guarantee you'll be glued to your seat, if you can watch this and still tell me you are not a truther, then I will respect that nothing will make you a truther. This one is fully endorsed by 2,000 Architects and Engineers as well as Professor David Ray Griffin. No holograms no BS.

It's Friday night. Get yer popcorn

Best Documentary

 

[The Cadet]

Tell you what. Let's get this over with in 4 hours instead of going on for days. If you can watch this well-made video, maybe in installments but I guarantee you'll be glued to your seat, if you can watch this and still tell me you are not a truther, then I will respect that nothing will make you a truther. This one is fully endorsed by 2,000 Architects and Engineers as well as Professor David Ray Griffin. No holograms no BS.

It's Friday night. Get yer popcorn

Best Documentary

Is it less awful than "Explosive Evidence" by the same group? Because I wasted a whole bunch of time watching and dissecting that, and if you can't tell me that this is considerably stronger in the "evidence" department, then I'm just not going to bother. You see, the combined expertise and endorsement of those 2,000 architects and engineers rings more than a little hollow when you email the organization and ask them if they have any papers on the subject published in peer-reviewed journals, and they say "no, but it shouldn't matter". Yes, actually, it kinda freakin' does! A petition like this is entirely meaningless if it's not strongly supported by the evidence published in the peer-reviewed literature. The anti-climate-change petition has more than ten times the signatories and it doesn't change the facts of the issue. .

Also, I wonder if you've seen the JREF deconstructions of that list of "2,000 architects and engineers" - turns out only like 6 of them have any expertise.

So I'll tell you what; you guarantee me that this documentary is less stupid than "Explosive Evidence", and I'll watch right up until the first blatant lie.

 

[HitchSlap]

Not a conspiracy dude, just odd to me that in modern structural history, the only three high rise buildings that collapsed on themselves while on fire all happened on the same day, in the same town.

Weird.

 

[[serious]]

B
While we're at it debating physics let's look at additional visual evidence, in which you can clearly see cut beam being hurled out laterally at cannonball speeds. These pieces weigh many tons:

I'm not seeing anything at even old timey cannon ball speeds.

That reminds me of the old truther stuff that quoted some random guy describing the plane as sounding like a rocket. Funny thing being that rockets in real life don't sound like movie rockets.

 

[[serious]]

Not a conspiracy dude, just odd to me that in modern structural history, the only three high rise buildings that collapsed on themselves while on fire all happened on the same day, in the same town.

Weird.

That would seem odder if I I could name any other such building fires with massive amounts of accelerant.

 

[JustHisKid]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel

Science question: Does everyone know commercial airliner fuel is just kerosene> Called "Jet A." It is not super-duper melting fuel. Try lighting and squirting kerosene on a crowbar all day and see if you can melt it. That's why the official 9/11 story is impossible.

http://www.petroleumhpv.org/petroleum-substances-and-categories/kerosene-jet-fuel

jet fuel burning experiment

best 9/11 documentary yet

Correct. It cannot burn hot enough to melt steal. Further, Tower 7 is the smoking gun if you hadn't already figured out the other two buildings came down in a controlled demolition.