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Bill Owen

Published Letters: 1927
Editor's Choice: 6

Thursday, January 3, 2008 05:14 PM

at or near

How am I "lying" about the bowling ball? I said at or near because the rates of collapse varied by several seconds for each building and the difficulty in measuring the exact time due to the smoke and debris.

This slight variation in the collapse times is meaningless as due to the resistance offered by the remaining undamaged floors, the time to collapse should have been closer to a minute in the case the two towers and roughly 30 seconds for 7 World Trade Center. The actual collapses took 12.74 seconds (North Tower) and that the duration of the south tower collapse was 10.52 seconds. 7 World Trade Center a 47 story specially hardened building of completely different construction than the towers, collapsed in its own footprint in 6.5 seconds. Given these results the US should get rid of all those bombers and buy some matches.

As I said earlier, there is, 6 years later, there is no official explanation for the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. That's a long time to explain the physics and mechanics of a fire initiated collapse of a building in the middle of New York.

Thursday, January 3, 2008 05:33 PM

@tales

It was 757 tales, not a 767, if you want to make a point get your facts straight, there is a big difference between the two planes.

You do care about the facts and not just making points right?

Thursday, January 3, 2008 05:58 PM

@sysprog Sorry, my mistake

Sorry the article does mention "girders" my mistake. I stand by my assertion though that this building barely resembles the WTC.

Thursday, January 3, 2008 06:03 PM

thanks arne

You are correct. I do like to get my facts straight... thanks for the correction.

Thursday, January 3, 2008 06:25 PM

@tales

Wow, I feel like I got hit in the face with a 797!

Thursday, January 3, 2008 08:33 PM

Very odd picture

Is it just me, or does it Obama look a little darker than usual? Has he been OJ'ed?

http://www.fromthepen.com/condi_usatoday_scandal.html

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