Denialism

Quote Mining from the 9/11 Loons – NIST needs to learn to anticipate this crap

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by

MarkH
in

Pat at Screw loose change brings us the latest dishonesty (or carefully reinforced self-delusion) from the 9/11 troofers.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released this letter (PDF) in response to the troofers, but failed to realize that the troofers will stoop to pretty pathetic lows to misrepresent what they say.

I’ll present this as a quiz. Here’s the full section from letter, guess which sentence the troofers quoted out of context to suggest that NIST failed to explain the collapse of the buildings.

The final section of your request asserts that the WTC Report’s stated goal and overal analysis violates the Data Quality Act and OMB/NIST Information Quality Standards. The basis given for this assertion is that NIST did not fulfill its responsibilities under the NCST Act because the focus of the investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. The NCST Act, as you note in your letter, requires NIST to “establish the likely technical cause or causes of the building failure.” In the case of the WTC Towers, NIST has established that the failures initiated in the floors affected by the aircraft impact damage and the ensuing fires resulted in the collapse of the towers. This conclusion is supported by a large body of visual evidence collected by NIST. Your letter suggests that NIST should have used computer models to analyze the collapse of the towers. NIST carried its analysis to the point where the buildings reached global instability. At this point, because of the magnitude of the deflections and the number of failures occuring, the computer models are not able to converge on a solution.

Your letter contends that NIST’s report violates the Information Quality Standard of “utility.” NIST believes that the report has utility. In fact, the codes and standards bodies are already taking actions to improve building and fire codes and standards based on the findings of the WTC Investigation. As we mentioned previously, we are unable to provide a full explanation- of the total collapse.

See for yourself their read of the letter.

It’s amazing that they can read a letter that is essentially a laundry-list of reasons why their crank nonsense is being summarily dismissed as the product of diseased minds, and they read it as a victory because they were able to select a single sentence that out of context that suggests NIST doesn’t have an explanation for the collapse. Further, this non-admission then logically (ha ha) points to controlled demolition. I think their tinfoil hats are too tight.
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Comments

  1. Troika21

    Ow. The stupid, it burns!

    Notice that YouTube video of the ‘growing earth’ nuttery, just below the quote post?

    Reply
  2. Ray M

    Speechless… I can’t even begin to imagine what goes on inside their heads in order to do this. For them, life must be a total fantasy.

    Reply
  3. simuvac

    Dr. Glenn Corbett, Assistant Professor of Fire Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY. Mr. Corbett is a member of NIST’s National Construction Safety Team
    Advisory Board, October 26, 2005:

    “During the course of the WTC investigation, I have had serious concerns about some of the findings and conclusions that NIST has drawn. Other individuals, including some people on the federal advisory committee, have also had concerns. While this hearing is not the appropriate place to debate technical issues, I would suggest that a more formal
    mechanism be developed to officially address comments from the public. Such a protocol should include the technical basis for which NIST rejects or accepts the content
    a public comment.

    Overall, I have been disappointed by the lack of aggressiveness that has characterized not only the World Trade Center investigation but the Rhode Island Station
    Nightclub investigation as well. Instead of a “gumshoe” inquiry that left no stone unturned, I believe the investigations were treated more like research projects in which they waited for information to flow to them. In both investigations, they were reluctant to use the subpoena power given to them under the NCST Act….

    Reply
  4. simuvac

    Former Chief of NIST’s Fire Science Division Calls for Independent Review of World Trade Center Investigation

    http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070820_former_chief_of_nist.htm

    James Quintiere, Ph.D., former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has called for an independent review of NIST’s investigation into the collapses of the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11.

    Dr. Quintiere made his plea during his presentation, “Questions on the WTC Investigations” at the 2007 World Fire Safety Conference. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view.”

    “I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable,” explained Dr. Quintiere. “Let’s look at real alternatives that might have been the cause of the collapse of the World Trade Towers and how that relates to the official cause and what’s the significance of one cause versus another.”

    Dr. Quintiere, one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, also encouraged his audience of fellow researchers and engineers to scientifically re-examine the WTC collapses. “I hope to convince you to perhaps become ‘Conspiracy Theorists’, but in a proper way,” he said.

    In his hour-long presentation, Dr. Quintiere discussed many elements of NIST’s investigation that he found problematic. He emphasized, “In every investigation I’ve taken part in, the key has been to establish a timeline. And the timeline is established by witness accounts, by information from alarm systems, by any video that you might have of the event, and then by calculations. And you try to put all of this together. And if your calculations are consistent with some of these hard facts, then perhaps you can have some comfort in the results of your calculations. I have not seen a timeline placed in the NIST report.”

    Dr. Quintiere also expressed his frustration at NIST’s failure to provide a report on the third skyscraper that collapsed on 9/11, World Trade Center Building 7. “And that building was not hit by anything,” noted Dr. Quintiere. “It’s more important to take a look at that. Maybe there was damage by the debris falling down that played a significant role. But other than that you had fires burning a long time without fire department intervention. And firefighters were in that building. I have yet to see any kind of story about what they saw. What was burning? Were photographs taken? Nothing!”

    Reply
  5. simuvac

    “The focus of the investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the ‘probably collapse sequence,’ although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable.” – NIST, p. 82

    “With the information and time available, the sequence of events leading to the collapse each tower could not be definitively determined.” – FEMA BEPAT, Executive Summary, p.2

    “None of the recovered steel samples showed evidence of exposure to temperatures above 600 degrees C for as long as 15 minutes.” – NIST, p. 180

    “Only three of the recovered samples of exterior panels reached temperatures in excess of 250 degrees C during the fires or after the collapse. This was based on a method developed by NIST to characterize maximum temperatures experienced by steel members through observations of paint cracking.” – NIST, p. 181

    “All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing…” – NIST, p. 143

    “The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11.” – NIST, p. 143

    “The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. The rate of corrosion is also unknown. It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure. A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed to determine what risk, if any, is presented to existing steel structures exposed to severe and long-burning fires.” – FEMA, C-13, Appendix C.6

    Reply
  6. simuvac

    March 20, 2006: Head of US Investigation on WTC Building 7 Does Not Know Why It Collapsed

    Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology government investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center building, is asked about the collapse of WTC Building 7. Sunder says that he hopes to release something about that by the end of 2006. He adds, NIST did have some “preliminary hypotheses… We are studying the horizontal movement east to west, internal to the structure, on the fifth to seventh floors.… But truthfully, I don’t really know. We’ve had trouble getting a handle on building No. 7.”

    Reply
  7. MarkH

    Stop trolling simuvac, this is off-topic nonsense and boring. None of this has anything to do with the fact that this was an egregious quote mine. And further, it’s all an appeal to ignorance. I disemvowel from here as I’ve stated, we don’t waste our time arguing with cranks here.

    Reply
  8. simuvac

    I didn’t realize the opinions of the head of the NIST investigation, the former head of the fire sciences division of NIST, a professor of fire science who was part of the NIST investigation, and passages from the NIST document itself were “off topic,” especially since your post was ridiculing skeptics of the NIST investigation. My apologies.

    Reply
  9. Evinfuilt

    I just went through their comments, they’re afraid that they’re being sabotaged from within for trying to get this info out – Via their moderation tools.

    I don’t know how insane you have to be to believe this stuff, but its scary to me. They don’t even trust each other with their own insanity.

    Reply
  10. Tyler DiPietro

    So if I understand simuvac’s logic here: A handful of technical professionals involved with NIST say they dispute some aspects of the initial report. Ergo, HOLY SHIT CONTROLLED DEMOLITION THE GOVERNMENT DID IT LOLOLOL!11eleven

    Get real. The collapse of the towers has probably been the most studied engineering failure of the past century. NIST is among the organizations that have examined it. There is a reason none of these people have endorsed the crackpot notions of the troofers (read: the evidence doesn’t support it).

    And leaving hanging, out of context quotes is a form of charlatanry. Provide them in context with technical analysis, and you’ll be doing science.

    Reply
  11. Der Bruno Stroszek

    And that concludes today’s edition of “Fun With Cut And Paste”. Join us again next week, when the Twoofers will be telling us that unless you can debunk every single theory put forward by a Twoofer within the space of one blog post, you’re ducking the issues.

    Reply
  12. Man Called True

    So tell me, Simuvac, do you Troofers swim through the Internet looking for anything that dares suggest your beliefs are piles of unsupported crockery? Because one of you shows up every time a blog mentions 9/11 for any reason…

    Reply
  13. Ted

    Because one of you shows up every time a blog mentions 9/11 for any reason…

    A business model more like private intelligence cells trolling for Osama or Zawahiri videos on the web. If by “private intelligence cells”, you mean a bunch of fat, paranoid, unemployed guys, living in mom’s basement that troll scienceblogs…

    Reply
  14. JS

    I’ll present this as a quiz. Here’s the full section from letter, guess which sentence the troofers quoted out of context to suggest that NIST failed to explain the collapse of the buildings.

    Here goes:

    NIST did not fulfill its responsibilities under the NCST Act because the focus of the investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower.

    Your letter suggests that NIST should have used computer models to analyze the collapse of the towers. NIST carried its analysis to the point where the buildings reached global instability. […] [T]he computer models are not able to converge on a solution.

    There, do I get a cookie?

    – JS

    Reply
  15. Gingerbaker

    Yes, we allow no 9/11 trolls here.

    We believe that officials of the Bush administration tell us the unvarnished truth, and anyone who disagrees with that is, well, a crank.

    Hey, it works for RedState and Little Green Footballs, why not here?

    Reply
  16. Bronze Dog

    Gee, Gingerbaker, try reading once in a while. But, no, you won’t acknowledge that people here are capable of having a liberal or anti-Bush view (A fair number of us cheered when Al Gore got that Nobel prize, followed by a ‘take that, Bush!’). Then you’ll proceed to ignore all the science talk and change the subject to politics because it sets up convenient straw men you can take down on your favorite information-controlling 9/11 twoofer site that bans skeptics upon or even before their first post.

    You’ll also ignore the vast tolerance of twoofer comments here in order to cover up the cognitive dissonance that comes from being everything you hate: Someone who spins everything politically without regard to science (just like Bush in regards to anything not-right-wing), controls information with an iron fist whenever possible (like on the typical twoofer forum), and abhors openness.

    There isn’t much separating Bush from the twoofer crowd. About the only thing that separates the two is that once in a while someone in the Bush administration gets some science right. Not often, though.

    Reply
  17. Ted

    There is a serious answer to all this paranoia and how the people in need can be helped.

    Reply
  18. Pat Curley

    Oh, Simuvac forgot one little thing from the Quintiere article:

    ‘Although Dr. Quintiere was strongly critical of NIST’s conclusions and its investigatory process, he made it clear he was not a supporter of theories that the Twin Towers were brought down by pre-planted explosives. “If you go to World Trade Center One, nine minutes before its collapse, there was a line of smoke that puffed out. This is one of the basis of the ‘conspiracy theories’ that says the smoke puffing out all around the building is due to somebody setting off an explosive charge. Well, I think, more likely, it’s one of the floors falling down.”’

    In fact, Quintiere proposes another, non-conspiracy theory for the collapse:

    ‘Dr. Quintiere then presented his and his students’ research that contradicts the NIST report and points to a different cause for the collapses; the application of insufficient fire-proofing insulation on the truss rods in the Twin Towers. “I suggest that there’s an equally justifiable theory and that’s the trusses fail as they are heated by the fire with the insulation intact. These are two different conclusions and the accountability for each is dramatically different,” he said.’

    By which he appears to mean the original contractors on the WTC Towers. Not the Bush Administration.

    Reply
  19. Gingerbaker

    Bronze Dog:

    “Gee, Gingerbaker, try reading once in a while. But, no, you won’t acknowledge that people here are capable of having a liberal or anti-Bush view (A fair number of us cheered when Al Gore got that Nobel prize, followed by a ‘take that, Bush!’).

    What on Earth makes you say that, B.D.? You have no idea of my political convictions, let alone my reading habits. 😀

    Your response to my post seems, how can I say this, …’kneejerk’. 😀

    Bronze Dog:

    “Then you’ll proceed to ignore all the science talk and change the subject to politics because it sets up convenient straw men you can take down on your favorite information-controlling 9/11 twoofer site that bans skeptics upon or even before their first post.”

    Oh I get it now. You think I am a ‘twoofer’, and enjoy an ‘information-controlling site’ that – this is great – bans skeptics. Yes – read my post again – I am all about banning dissent. You are making perfect sense now.

    Bronze Dog:

    “You’ll also ignore the vast tolerance of twoofer comments here in order to cover up the cognitive dissonance that comes from being everything you hate: Someone who spins everything politically without regard to science (just like Bush in regards to anything not-right-wing), controls information with an iron fist whenever possible (like on the typical twoofer forum), and abhors openness.”

    OK. Remember the part I just wrote about you making sense – I take it back. 😀 What in Zeus’ Heaven are you talking about?

    Bronze Dog:

    “There isn’t much separating Bush from the twoofer crowd. About the only thing that separates the two is that once in a while someone in the Bush administration gets some science right.”

    If you say that someone in the Bush administration is actually telling the truth, then you must be open-minded enough to contemplate that at least some of the people who criticize the official version of what happened on ( and before) 9/11 may have something of importance to bring to the table?

    That not all ‘conspiracies’ are irrational, or even untrue.

    Hillary Clinton spoke of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ and was derided for it. Turns out – she was right.

    There is a lot more to 9/11 critics than those who speak of exploding buildings and nonexistent missiles.

    Take a deep breath, perhaps, before posting when you are angry.

    Reply
  20. PeterJohn

    Political agendas, emotional and ad hominem arguments aside, the collapse of the three WTC buildings was very strange. Stuntmen fall into stacks of cardboard boxes and survive, b/c as the structure of the boxes deform, they absorb the energy, and decelerate the stuntman to a full stop before he hits the ground. The buildings did the reverse of this, and accelerated as they fell. They fell in freefall, without resistance. 10 floors per second. So another source of energy had to take out the steel structure, and pulverise the concrete, according to the laws of thermodynamics. Buildings do not pulverise and fall into their footprint because a couple of floors collaps. Perhaps there is an explanation that doesn’t require explosives. But you won’t find it in a battle of the quotes.

    The case some have made for an inside job revolves around the paralysis of NORAD, following a series of unusual decisions, by a small group of people who in 1997 wrote “we need another Pearl Harbour”, in a public document about the energy crises and the oil reserves in the middle east. On any other day, NORAD would have intercepted the aircrafts, the loons claim. Means, motive and opportunity have been established, now all they need is a day in court. The collapse of the buildings is strange, but does not indicate an inside job. The physical evidence was destroyed in the weeks after 9/11. Hence, it’s not the focus of 9/11 investigators. Any debate linking the collapse to a conspiracy is a false debate. The evidence was destroyed. Noone on any side of the argument can claim to have any proof. If you care to look beyond the first page of google, you’ll find that these 9/11 loons include families of 9/11 victims (who have been fruitlessly fighting for a serious investigation since 9/12), scientists, political experts, generals,… But I guess they don’t do search engine optimization, since you seem completely unaware of them.

    Loose Change and the likes are obvious hoaxes. The fact that they are funded by a neoconservative media outlet, the supposed enemy, and featured on official government websites, should’ve been enough a sign. They are intentionally rediculous. Each of their documentairies contradicts the other, and has a fresh batch of easily disproven fraudulent evidence. What a waste of time to pay them any mind. They’re not the loons, you are for playing their game.

    My personal interest is disinformation, and mass manipulation. I find it entertaining. Thanks to 9/11, my car is running great, so I have no problem with whomever let it happen. The fact that you guys spend time arguing with the Loose Change Herrings, even getting all emotional about it, is a great laugh. The gag is always funnier if the target isn’t aware of it. Seriously, these guys said flight 93 was, at the same time, blown out of the air by an F16, AND diverted to an airfield where the passengers got off and supposedly went to live on an island or something. And you guys are getting into a debate with them. Come on.

    Reply
  21. Bronze Dog

    Buildings do not pulverise and fall into their footprint because a couple of floors collaps. Perhaps there is an explanation that doesn’t require explosives. But you won’t find it in a battle of the quotes.

    Where do you get this whole “fall into their footprint” thing? Citation, please.

    The buildings did the reverse of this, and accelerated as they fell. They fell in freefall, without resistance. 10 floors per second.

    Show me a citation. I’ve seen lots of different counts of the time.

    So another source of energy had to take out the steel structure, and pulverise the concrete, according to the laws of thermodynamics.

    Assuming you show the premise of this to be true (which I doubt you’ll do), what do you propose as this magical source of energy?

    The physical evidence was destroyed in the weeks after 9/11. Hence, it’s not the focus of 9/11 investigators. Any debate linking the collapse to a conspiracy is a false debate. The evidence was destroyed.

    All of it? I find that hard to swallow.

    Loose Change and the likes are obvious hoaxes. The fact that they are funded by a neoconservative media outlet, the supposed enemy, and featured on official government websites, should’ve been enough a sign. They are intentionally rediculous. Each of their documentairies contradicts the other, and has a fresh batch of easily disproven fraudulent evidence. What a waste of time to pay them any mind. They’re not the loons, you are for playing their game.

    I haven’t seen much to separate you from them. They all say all the others are disinformation hoaxes paid for by the Illuminati or whoever. But the politics take a back seat to science. Try taking on the freefall claim, for example, without throwing up a massive smokescreen. Whenever we try to pin down any twoofer on one claim, they shuffle to another and hope that they’re forgotten.

    Reply
  22. Mark Fournier

    Twoofers appear to suffer from a cognitive flaw similar to creationists–the inability to see that minor causes can lead to large effects. Instead, they have to believe that something huge and apparently supernaturally competent brought this about, that the government was able to plan and organize all this, suppress all the evidence, eliminate the witnesses, and not have a single participant in this vast conspiracy step forward and admit what they had done. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” And they believe this of the Bush administration, no less–one of the most profoundly incompetent administrations in American history.

    Twoofers not only do not understand science, engineering, or how to read a scientific report, they do not understand human beings. They are completely and profoundly ignorant of how the world works. Their fantasies concerning the WTC are the least of their problems.

    Reply
  23. Colugo

    Pushing back against disruptive Truthers and other conspiracy theorists:

    Bill Clinton tells off some Truthers in Minneapolis on Teusday
    http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c68_1193347304&p=1

    “Don’t tase me, bro!” jerk doesn’t comply with security personnel and rants about Skull and Bones at John Kerry. Update: Campus police cleared of any wrongdoing.

    Bill Maher personally shoves Truthers out of his audience.

    Reply
  24. PeterJohn

    @Bronze Dog

    I just came across this blog via another blog, was amused by the politics (broad definition), and decided to exercise my typing muscles. I have no specific interest in 9/11. I just wrote something about the new Viper engine in another blog, about torque versus rpm to gain power, and did it with as much passion as I write this. I’m not an investigator, and I do not keep a pile of files about 9/11, to give you your citations. I just like to ask myself questions, and share my thoughts with anonymous screennames on random blogs.

    My thoughts in no particular order:

    If you want to examine the rate of collapse, all you need is the footage of the collapses (take an average of all the sources), the height of the buildings, and a device to measure time in 0,01 seconds. The average “g” of earth 9,81m/s², in a vacuum. To speculate on the resistance outside a vacuum I would tell you to look at similar gravity driven complete collapses around the world, unfortunatly there aren’t any. You can, however, compare it to explosive demolitions. I haven’t done this, and I can’t be bothered. I used my naked eyeballs. The same ones I use to navigate my motor vehicle, and I haven’t been in any crashes yet.

    I’m not a structural engineer, but I think I see a big flaw in the calcultation of the pancake collapse, in the link you provided. They estimate 30% of the gravitational force goes into the pulverisation, allowing the building to fall in the space of 15s. (debateable time, ignoring the acceleration, ignoring the steel structure). But logically, that 30% will keep adding, decelerating the collapse, while the gravetional force stays the same. Meaning the collapse will come to a full stop after 3,33 floors of concrete have been pulverised. But now I’m assuming there is no space between the floor. Which there is. So the calculation assumed that in between each floor, the debris has a completely renewed momentum. In the space in between the floors, the pulverised debris from above, a cloud of concrete dust and metal fragments, can gain enough momentum to pulverise the next floor. Footage also shows a mushroom effect, meaning some debris had a horizontal momentum, and wasn’t involved in the destruction of the next floor. It is difficult to imagine that this concrete dust can have enough momentum to go through +100 floors of concrete, not leaving one slab intact. Meanwhile, ignoring the presence of a steel frame, as if the slabs of concrete are suspended in mid air.
    But perhaps I’m just stupid. I don’t have a fancy title in front of my name.

    Indeed, where did that “magical” energy come from? Are you suggesting I believe in a supernatural collapse, by rephrasing my question. Clever Monkey. Well, the most likely source of energy would be air pressure, triggered by an explosive chemical reaction. My second guess is a formidable army of neo-conservative lepricons with little lepricon hammers. I wasn’t there to observe the scene, so how the F should I know.

    Images of “ground zero” after the collapses will tell you what I mean by fall into its footprint. Do you see one intact piece of metal or concrete slab in those images? It takes a huge amount of energy to cause that kind of deformation. Imagine if you build a tower out of lego. What would it take to make all the pieces seperate, and fall into a pile? Certainly more that the momentum of a couple of pieces falling. And no, I am not suggesting scale WTC models made from lego are a scientific way of reconstructing the collapses.

    I had to look up “twoofer” and “illuminati”, and I’m still not sure what they are. Do they make buildings fall faster? If not, they are irrelevant to the collapse discussion. Which was my point in the original post. Why are politics being mixed up with an engineering question?

    interesting reads:
    http://911research.wtc7.net/
    http://www.911review.com/
    http://www.oilempire.us/demolition.html (Perhaps the writer of this blog should review this page next.)

    Reply
  25. Bronze Dog

    But logically, that 30% will keep adding, decelerating the collapse, while the gravetional force stays the same.

    That doesn’t make sense. With each collapsing floor, you’re adding on more and more weight, which adds to the amount of force being applied.

    Images of “ground zero” after the collapses will tell you what I mean by fall into its footprint. Do you see one intact piece of metal or concrete slab in those images? It takes a huge amount of energy to cause that kind of deformation.

    Yes, whenever I see the tower debris, I see some chunks of walls that managed to stay together. I also see a lot of pieces far out from the footprints.

    Lego towers tend to be made of fewer, proportionately larger pieces than the WTC. They’re also made of significantly lighter material. Lego can get away with it because the mechanics don’t scale up because of the square-cube law. It’s the same reason you don’t see giant insects in the real world, and why elephants can’t jump.

    I consider the controlled demolition to be one of the most absurd of the theories, not because it requires a lot of sci-fi, but because it involves far too much work. It’d take a lot of man-hours to stealthfully sneak in all those explosives, wires, etcetera. And then you’d have to get into Rocky & Bullwinkle technology: Hushaboom: Demolition explosives that don’t sound like demolition explosives.

    Reply
  26. Bronze Dog

    Additionally, I don’t think a collapse could stop: The ‘last’ floor would be incapable of supporting the weight of all the other supports: The individual floors are attached to the walls and the support pillars and do not rely on the strength of the floor below them: It’s the attachment point to the support pillars that’s doing most of the catastrophic failure, IIRC.

    Reply
  27. Escuerd

    “Lego towers tend to be made of fewer, proportionately larger pieces than the WTC. They’re also made of significantly lighter material. Lego can get away with it because the mechanics don’t scale up because of the square-cube law. It’s the same reason you don’t see giant insects in the real world, and why elephants can’t jump.”

    Thank you. This is an important point that a disturbing number of people seem to have trouble with. They don’t realize that not all systems are scale-invariant. You’d think that with mass this would be obvious (not to mention that the yield-stress of a material doesn’t increase with scale, so a re-scaling argument is doubly silly).

    “Duuuude…what if the solar system is like….just a big atom…..whoaaaa….deep.”

    Reply
  28. Bronze Dog

    Glad you appreciate my comment, Escuerd. It irritates me when Hollywood drive-in theater logic is applied in real life.

    Minor self-nitpick while I’m reminded of my comment: There are other reasons you don’t see giant insects beyond the square-cube law, like oxygen delivery: Some prehistoric insects were able to get away with being a fair bit larger due to higher oxygen content during their era.

    But yeah, the point remains: Lots of things don’t scale up.

    Reply

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