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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug R who wrote (202511)	9/11/2006 3:03:45 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi DougR; The estimates for the concrete in the building are way off. The estimates for the average size of the dust are way off. The estimates for the energy required to grind the original materials into dust are way off. The estimates for the energy in the pyroclastic flow are way off. But where the guy really blew it is in failing to understand that the amount of explosives required to produce as much energy as the estimates for what he thinks was used implies far more explosives in the building than would be required to bring it down. Even buildings that are empty produce huge amounts of dust when they are brought down with explosives, but very little of the dust is caused by the explosives used to bring them down. You can figure that out by seeing how little explosives are used and counting up the energy in the explosives compared to the (bad) calculation for the amounts of dust produced at the WTC. But when a buiding filled with crap falls down, the amount of dust created is much larger. Most of the dust is not going to be powdered concrete, but instead things like wood ash (from furniture &c.), sheet rock, insulation, crushed glass from the windows, crushed computers, tables, chairs, etc.. By the way, samples that the EPA took of the dust were up to 5% asbestos, which certainly isn't a component of concrete: aic.stanford.edu . All that insulating material, filing cabinets, etc., etc., etc., went somewhere. -- Carl