Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Wheel In the Sky

Ningen, a budding no-planer, thinks he's got proof that one of Flight 11's wheels and the columns from WTC 1 could not have ended up where they supposedly ended up, which is on Cedar Street, approximately 500 feet from the tower.

He (I assume) goes into great detail but essentially the argument boils down to "I don't believe it." So I thought I'd do a little rough calculation.

We'll assume that the wheel hit on the lowest level impacted by Flight 11, which according to Wikipedia is floor 93, which we'll estimate at approximately 1,189 feet above the ground. Therefore, we know that the freefall time to the ground would be about 8.6 seconds. How fast would the wheel and the steel columns have to be going to end up 500 feet away?

Well, about 58 (500/8.6) feet per second, which works out to 40 miles per hour. This seems to be a pretty trivial calculation. Yeah, maybe with air resistance it might have to be a little faster, but nothing that seems impossible on its face.

In an update Ningen gives credit to Spooked for showing that 40 mph is all that is required. Of course, I did it a day before at JREF.

8 Comments:

At 24 January, 2007 00:17, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pat, the question is not whether the wheel could have exited at 40 mph. The question is whether the huge steel module that the wheel was embedded in, which is said to weigh 6 tonnes, could have been dislodged from the building and accelerated to 40 mph.

I do see I made a mistake, though. NIST NCSTAR 1-2, p. 273 said that in all their simulations, all the landing gear was stopped "inside, or just outside, the core." I interpreted that to mean the landing gear either did not enter the core on the north side of the North Tower, or made it part way into the core. I think instead it means that in the simulations the wheel either did not exit the core or barely exited the core.

Dislodging the panel and accelerating it to 40 mph? I still don't believe it.

 
At 24 January, 2007 06:28, Blogger The Artistic Macrophage said...

so the rest of the NIST Scientists and engineers...do they find it hard to believe?

TAM

 
At 24 January, 2007 11:09, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, TAM, I think they do, since their findings do not match the conclusions drawn from those findings. The conclusions come from unauthenticated videos and debris; the findings do not support those conclusions. If you are going to rely on experts, which is your constant refrain, you need to read what they are actually saying.

 
At 24 January, 2007 14:02, Blogger shawn said...

It makes perfect sense that it could be sent out of the building, the landing gear is the part of the plane that dug the farthest into the Pentagon.

 
At 24 January, 2007 16:34, Blogger Alex said...

Yes, TAM, I think they do, since their findings do not match the conclusions drawn from those findings.

That is the most nonsensical statement I've read in a while. You do realize that "findings" and "conclusions" are essentially the same thing, don't you?

 
At 26 January, 2007 03:31, Anonymous Anonymous said...

No Alex, I don't, or I would not have said what I said. Why don't you quit talking out of your ass and explain yourself?

 
At 26 January, 2007 03:33, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawn, we are not talking about the Pentagon.

 
At 26 January, 2007 10:34, Blogger Alex said...

find·ing (fīn'dĭng) Pronunciation Key
n.

1. Something that has been found.
2.
1. A conclusion reached after examination or investigation: the finding of a grand jury; a coroner's findings.
2. A statement or document containing an authoritative decision or conclusion: a presidential finding that authorized the covert operation.


con·clu·sion /kənˈkluʒən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuhn-kloo-zhuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the end or close; final part.
2. the last main division of a discourse, usually containing a summing up of the points and a statement of opinion or decisions reached.
3. a result, issue, or outcome; settlement or arrangement: The restitution payment was one of the conclusions of the negotiations.
4. final decision: The judge has reached his conclusion.
5. a reasoned deduction or inference.



Why don't you learn to use the dictionary (yes, it's called a "dictionary", not an "ass"), so that I don't have to cut and paste things for you in the future.

 

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