teaching physics today

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jmach

Joined Jan 8, 2013
2
what do physics teachers tell their classes in order to get around the fact that the official 9-11 story violates Newton's laws??
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,720
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is physics.
A damaged building does not collapse straight downwards on to its footprint.
On 9/11 three buildings did exactly the same thing.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is physics.
A damaged building does not collapse straight downwards on to its footprint.
On 9/11 three buildings did exactly the same thing.
It's pretty common that they do, actually, particularly the type of construction used in those kinds of high-rise buildings. In fact, the building is designed to preferntially fail this way specifcially because you want it to drop in its footprint if at all possible. Demolition teams love bringing down these types of buildings because there is an amazing amount of room for error in planning the charges in order to bring the building down within its footprint. In the WTC towers this was made much easier by the fact that the structural integrity across the entire floors that were engulfed was being compromised and so once the first portion gave way it was all but inevitable that the sections nearby would give and so on creating a cascading failure across the floor that dropped everything above it almost straight downward with the design of the towers themselves acting to stabilize the progression.
 

tshuck

Joined Oct 18, 2012
3,534
If we forbid discussions of overunity and HHO we should sanction tis topic as well.
Perhaps all conspiracy theories...

On second though, perhaps not, as this is a technical site. Maybe just forbidding non-technical discussions of conspiracy theories(i.e. "I saw Bigfoot" or "Wake up sheeple! The moon landing was a hoax!") would suffice. As discussions of the physics behind the moon landing (waving flag) might be a decent conversation(stream of particles emitted from the sun).
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
If this were a definite conspiracy theory I would be temped to close it, but there is some wiggle room left, since the OP has not responded. This event has been analyzed pretty well to death, and has been stated, you can not violate the laws of physics (this is pretty much an oxymoron).
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
My problem with the thread is that it strikes me as a "bait and switch". The thread title is benign but the post itself doesn't have anything to do with how physics is taught and is nothing but a thinly veiled and disingenuous way to claim that 9/11 was something other than what it was.

I don't have an objection to discussions that truly focus on technical considerations of conspiratorial claims, though I think they should be relegated to the Off-Topics foum.

Just my $0.02 qorth.
 
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