On the "melted steel"

nicepants

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nicepants
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I keep seeing CTers use the "fire can't melt steel" strawman, and I'm getting a little sick of it.

1 - If this supposed "molten steel" existed beneath the WTC, this actually does NOT support the thermite theory, since the molten metal by-product of a thermite/thermate reaction is IRON, not steel.

2 - Was any of this molten metal tested to determine whether it was steel, iron, copper, aluminum, tin, or some combination thereof?
 
In a follow up to this, could someone remind me who actually said they were an eyewitness to this "molten metal"? I seem to think that one of these people was a rescue dog handler.

Thanks.
 
nicepants said:
I keep seeing CTers use the "fire can't melt steel" strawman, and I'm getting a little sick of it.

1 - If this supposed "molten steel" existed beneath the WTC, this actually does NOT support the thermite theory, since the molten metal by-product of a thermite/thermate reaction is IRON, not steel.

2 - Was any of this molten metal tested to determine whether it was steel, iron, copper, aluminum, tin, or some combination thereof?
Click to expand...

[twoo-woo]Iron, steel, aluminum, titanium, lead--they're all the same thing, aren't they?[/two-woo]
 
nicepants said:
I keep seeing CTers use the "fire can't melt steel" strawman, and I'm getting a little sick of it.

1 - If this supposed "molten steel" existed beneath the WTC, this actually does NOT support the thermite theory, since the molten metal by-product of a thermite/thermate reaction is IRON, not steel.

2 - Was any of this molten metal tested to determine whether it was steel, iron, copper, aluminum, tin, or some combination thereof?
Click to expand...

One more thought to consider:

Some people use the terms metal & steel synonymously. I would wonder if anyone actually clarified if the person simply meant molten metal, and assumed steel due to the large amount of steel present in the structure.
 
There is no "molten steel." I'd settle for molten iron -- the two are pretty close, and iron melts at a slightly higher temperature.

Thermite creates at least 60 kg of molten iron for every ton of steel heated to melting temperature (this figure assumes 100% efficiency). Therefore if thermite contributed to a collapse, there would be large amounts of molten steel, and thus huge puddles and blobs afterward. There are none.
 
The fatal flaw in the "molten steel" argument is that is alleges that molten steel was at GZ for weeks after 9/11.

Thermite cools off far too quickly.
 
R.Mackey said:
There is no "molten steel." I'd settle for molten iron -- the two are pretty close, and iron melts at a slightly higher temperature.

Thermite creates at least 60 kg of molten iron for every ton of steel heated to melting temperature (this figure assumes 100% efficiency). Therefore if thermite contributed to a collapse, there would be large amounts of molten steel, and thus huge puddles and blobs afterward. There are none.
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And that 60 kg of molten iron require 120 kg of thermite. That my friends is an awfully large volume of thermite when you consider the flow Steven jones calls molten iron. If that flow was, based on the density and the volume we saw we are looking at about 16,000 lbs. of molten iron. That requires 32,000 lbs. of thermite. Anybody care to tell me what flowerpot that was hidden in...
 
CHF said:
The fatal flaw in the "molten steel" argument is that is alleges that molten steel was at GZ for weeks after 9/11.

Thermite cools off far too quickly.
Click to expand...

Yeah, has there ever been a real CD that resulted in the debris burning for weeks afterwards, despite a significant amount of rain?
 
Alt+F4 said:
Yeah, has there ever been a real CD that resulted in the debris burning for weeks afterwards, despite a significant amount of rain?
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The truther answer to that simply would be has there ever been a CD of 2 110 story towers that you compare with?

If your going to disprove their stupidity, it can't be with anything open ended.
 
Anytime, anyone seriously quotes Rosie O'Donnell, they can be written off as an imbecile.

That and what everyone else said about molten steel/iron/etc.

I was talking to my civil engineer father one day about bridge collapses and damage that he's seen over the years. Some from stress, some from tanker trucks crashing and causing fire. He would use the term "Melted" steel in the sense of it was heated, lost it's form, and bent, causing all sorts of structural weakness.
 
~enigma~ said:
The truther answer to that simply would be has there ever been a CD of 2 110 story towers that you compare with?

If your going to disprove their stupidity, it can't be with anything open ended.
Click to expand...

It must be nice to believe in something so strongly that any proof otherwise can be easily dismissed without even thinking about it.

Such as those no planers who, when shown evidence of planes, say that the parts were planted there afterwards.

It's like discussing evolution with a closed minded creationist.
 
Mackey's muddled meme.

R.Mackey said:
There is no "molten steel." I'd settle for molten iron -- the two are pretty close, and iron melts at a slightly higher temperature.

Thermite creates at least 60 kg of molten iron for every ton of steel heated to melting temperature (this figure assumes 100% efficiency). Therefore if thermite contributed to a collapse, there would be large amounts of molten steel, and thus huge puddles and blobs afterward. There are none.
Click to expand...



What's with the Mackey Mouse thinking?


Why do you insist that if thermite was used, it was used to melt steel? It's like a disease.

Couldn't thermite have been used to heat-weaken steel? Hello!

NIST FAQ #12 says NIST researchers estimated that 0.13 lbs of thermite would have been required to heat 1 lb of WTC steel to 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially).

If demolition planners set about to minimize energy requirements, and heat-weakening worked, why would they waste energy melting steel?


One would almost think that you and STJ/Jones were working together to propagate the "thermite = cutting/melting" meme or emotionally-potent oversimplification.


THERMITE WAS NOT USED TO MELT OR CUT STEEL.

THERMITE WAS USED TO HEAT-WEAKEN STEEL.


Boy it hard to get a person to see that which they are paid not to see.


Mad Max

---
 
Anyone just happen to have a link to the supposed testimony (or some other reference I can directly consult) from firefighters that's supposed to reveal that they directly witnessed molten steel in the basements of the towers? Part of me is thinking "misrepresentation", "misinterpretation", "word cherry picking", or some other divorcing from context that conspiracy fantasists normally do, but I want to view the same material they're taking that claim from before I draw my own conclusion. I know I can search 9/11 Transcripts for that info, but that's a lot of stuff to go through! And I have a real life to live. :eek: ;) :D

I keep seeing the claim, but it's always unreferenced. My own memories are about the reports of molten metal pools found weeks to months after the collapse, which contraindicates thermite. Aside from the 9/11 Mysteries (and other) videos that showed the molten metal, assumably aluminum, flowing down the sides of the towers, I don't directly recall any actual testimony stating that it was directly witnessed in the buildings before the collapse.

If no one has any sources, I guess I can wade through the witness testimony myself [/grudging attitude :) ], but I admit, I'm hoping for a friendly assist from the gang here.
 
Mr. Photon, what is the use of heat weakening steel when there was already a raging fire going?
 
SpaceMonkeyZero said:
It must be nice to believe in something so strongly that any proof otherwise can be easily dismissed without even thinking about it.

Such as those no planers who, when shown evidence of planes, say that the parts were planted there afterwards.

It's like discussing evolution with a closed minded creationist.
Click to expand...
You do know I am not a truther don't you Space Monkey?
 
Max Photon said:
NIST FAQ #12 says NIST researchers estimated that 0.13 lbs of thermite would have been required to heat 1 lb of WTC steel to 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially).
Click to expand...

Don't you see a major problem with this fact? Each tower weighs 250,000 tons. I'll be generous and say that only 100,000 tons of the building were the structural steel (and that's probably extremely generous). So if you heated all of that, you'd need 13,000 tons of thermite, or 26 million pounds of thermite. A tenth of that is still 2.6 million pounds. A hundredth, 260,000 pounds. How on earth can you smuggle all of that into a building, or plant all of that secretly in a weekend or even a few weeks?
 
R.Mackey said:
There is no "molten steel." I'd settle for molten iron -- the two are pretty close, and iron melts at a slightly higher temperature.

Thermite creates at least 60 kg of molten iron for every ton of steel heated to melting temperature (this figure assumes 100% efficiency). Therefore if thermite contributed to a collapse, there would be large amounts of molten steel, and thus huge puddles and blobs afterward. There are none.
Click to expand...

A question I've asked many a troofer, to no avail:

Got Slag?


Max Photon said:
What's with the Mackey Mouse thinking?


Why do you insist that if thermite was used, it was used to melt steel? It's like a disease.

Couldn't thermite have been used to heat-weaken steel? Hello!

NIST FAQ #12 says NIST researchers estimated that 0.13 lbs of thermite would have been required to heat 1 lb of WTC steel to 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially).

If demolition planners set about to minimize energy requirements, and heat-weakening worked, why would they waste energy melting steel?


One would almost think that you and STJ/Jones were working together to propagate the "thermite = cutting/melting" meme or emotionally-potent oversimplification.


THERMITE WAS NOT USED TO MELT OR CUT STEEL.

THERMITE WAS USED TO HEAT-WEAKEN STEEL.


Boy it hard to get a person to see that which they are paid not to see.


Mad Max

---
Click to expand...

Max Photon, can you tell us exactly who planted said thermite, when was said thermite planted, and exactly where was said thermite planted?

No speculation, please. Present your evidence.
 
chippy said:
Originally Posted by Max Photon
NIST FAQ #12 says NIST researchers estimated that 0.13 lbs of thermite would have been required to heat 1 lb of WTC steel to 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially).

Don't you see a major problem with this fact? Each tower weighs 250,000 tons. I'll be generous and say that only 100,000 tons of the building were the structural steel (and that's probably extremely generous). So if you heated all of that, you'd need 13,000 tons of thermite, or 26 million pounds of thermite. A tenth of that is still 2.6 million pounds. A hundredth, 260,000 pounds. How on earth can you smuggle all of that into a building, or plant all of that secretly in a weekend or even a few weeks?
__________________
http://911debunker.livejournal.com
Click to expand...

Why do these fools keep saying things like "the temperature at which steel weakens substantially" as though it is a magic number, involving a step-function (or [don't hurt me] Quantum[/don't hurt me] change)--that it is perfectly Ok at 699 degrees C, but goes to 50% at 700C?
Look, loonies--It is a fairly linear decrease! It is continuous, not piecewise At 350C, we are down to 70-75%. At 500, 60% or so.
So, all the time things are heating up, load paths are changing due to increased flexibility in the heated areas. It ain't no sudden change...
 
Max:

I am not really sure that Thermite/Thermate could JUST weaken steel? I am no chemist, but from every video of Thermite I have seen, it is pretty much an all or nothing event, where very quickly, the steel is MELTED, not just weakened.

TAM:)
 
Max, was the thermite used only at the exact area if collapse initiation?

I mean if thermite was used to generate heat to weaken the steel then why did it the heat only pull in on the exterior columns where the collapse began?
 
I would LOVE TO SEE, the device that not only allows you to administer the chemical so that the reaction is horiziontal, but a device that is also able to limit the administration of said chemicals to the point of only "weakening" the steel, rather than cutting through completely.

TAM:)
 
ElMondoHummus said:
Anyone just happen to have a link to the supposed testimony (or some other reference I can directly consult) from firefighters that's supposed to reveal that they directly witnessed molten steel in the basements of the towers? Part of me is thinking "misrepresentation", "misinterpretation", "word cherry picking", or some other divorcing from context that conspiracy fantasists normally do, but I want to view the same material they're taking that claim from before I draw my own conclusion. I know I can search 9/11 Transcripts for that info, but that's a lot of stuff to go through! And I have a real life to live. :eek: ;) :D

I keep seeing the claim, but it's always unreferenced. My own memories are about the reports of molten metal pools found weeks to months after the collapse, which contraindicates thermite. Aside from the 9/11 Mysteries (and other) videos that showed the molten metal, assumably aluminum, flowing down the sides of the towers, I don't directly recall any actual testimony stating that it was directly witnessed in the buildings before the collapse.

If no one has any sources, I guess I can wade through the witness testimony myself [/grudging attitude :) ], but I admit, I'm hoping for a friendly assist from the gang here.
Click to expand...


I do remember seeing a group of 3 or 4 firefighters together talking about it and describing large pools of molten metal under the debris. Unfortunately I don't remember which video it was on. Will be on Youtube somewhere.
 
This firefighter describes pulling out "red hot" debris six weeks after 9/11:



This firefighter describes "molten steel" but you don't know if he's referring to 9/11:



Let's assume for arguments sake that everyone in NYC saw molten metal in the pile for weeks after 9/11, how is that a connection to a CD?
 
Is this grounds for a stundie? I just read this claim on Myspace in reference to the collapse itself preventing there from being any molten metal:

"Okay, I will do this very slow for you as I know you are not very smart.

Thousands of tons of debris would be at a much lower temp than any molten metal. Since that is the case it would cause the molten metal to cool, thus causing it to harden. Are you following me so far?

There should not have been any heat signatures visible from space weeks after the collapses as there were not any real fires burning in the first place that could possibly melt metal or keep the metal molten. "
 
Max Photon said:
Why do you insist that if thermite was used, it was used to melt steel? It's like a disease.

Couldn't thermite have been used to heat-weaken steel? Hello!
Click to expand...

Oh, for pity's sake.

The title of this thread is "On the 'Melted Steel.'" I don't, as a matter of practice, insist that the only application of thermite is to "melt steel." However, this thread presupposes that as a condition.

Additionally, if you propose that thermite was not used to melt steel, but only to heat it, you have quite an interesting engineering challenge ahead of you. Thermite can really only heat other objects through direct contact. Thermite creates, by necessity, molten iron. That's what it does. You set up a metallic redox reaction, and you get molten iron. That molten iron, in contact with whatever it is you're messing with, is what does the work.

So somehow, this "thermite" of yours, has to transfer enough heat to steel to weaken large quantities of it -- but not to melt any.

How is that supposed to work?

You don't have weeks and months to slowly build up an equilibrium temperature, you know.

There's no way to avoid melting steel, if you use enough thermite to make any difference at all.

Everything I've just said holds equally true for any variant as well.

Max Photon said:
NIST FAQ #12 says NIST researchers estimated that 0.13 lbs of thermite would have been required to heat 1 lb of WTC steel to 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially).

If demolition planners set about to minimize energy requirements, and heat-weakening worked, why would they waste energy melting steel?
Click to expand...

If you somehow figure out the heat distribution problem, then yes, it takes less thermite to heat steel than it did to melt that same steel. But you are still left with an enormous volume of melted iron. Oops, there wasn't any found. Guess there wasn't any thermite. QED.

Max Photon said:
One would almost think that you and STJ/Jones were working together to propagate the "thermite = cutting/melting" meme or emotionally-potent oversimplification.
Click to expand...

Sherlock Holmes you ain't.

Max Photon said:
THERMITE WAS NOT USED TO MELT OR CUT STEEL.

THERMITE WAS USED TO HEAT-WEAKEN STEEL.


Boy it hard to get a person to see that which they are paid not to see.
Click to expand...

Paid, huh. Wow.

I wouldn't have bothered replying to your insanity at all, except for one thing -- it's not every day that some nut who calls himself Max Photon, by choice, resorts to such an absurd cartoon epithet:

Max Photon said:
What's with the Mackey Mouse thinking?
Click to expand...

That just might win you the gold in the Unintentional Humor Olympics. :D
 
Alt+F4 said:
Let's assume for arguments sake that everyone in NYC saw molten metal in the pile for weeks after 9/11, how is that a connection to a CD?
Click to expand...


That's my whole point: If the molten metal was witnessed days to weeks after the collapse, rather than on the day itself, it couldn't be connected to CD, not in any reasonable way. Thermite would've burned out on the order of seconds to minutes. Explosives wouldn't have caused the metal to melt to begin with. The more likely explanation would be that the metal became molten from the heat of fires continuing to burn under rubble. Recall, that rubble created a crude yet effective oven-like environment, which was really the point the firefighter was making in the first video: "Hey, look how hot it is under all that stuff!"

I guess a conspiracy fantasist could make the argument that the metal was already molten when it arrived there under the rubble, but then the whole sighting of molten metal doesn't become proof of CD, it merely becomes an observation that must be explained. Making that argument concedes the rubble fires were sufficient to melt metal, so therefore use of thermite would still have to be established, and proof provided that the metal was already molten before it settled under the burning debris. Minus that proof, thermite is simply an unsupported claim arrived at by inductive reasoning, not evidence. And that goes back to the stories of firefighters supposedly sighting molten metal in the basements before the towers collapsed, the video you post being one example of this. But the problem, as you note, is that the video is not sufficient: It does not state whether the firefighter was referring to 9/11. Heck, it's not clear that he's talking about the Twin Towers complex at all, whether on September 11th or some other day (although I concede that the mens' demeanor suggested they were discussing some sort of terrible tragedy, of which 9/11 is a leading candidate). Anyway, was that firefighter indeed referring to a sighting of molten metal made in the basement, as the truthers claim? It's simply not established in that video - there's zero reference to where they sighted the metal supposedly flowing like lava. Yet that's the exact claim conspiracy fantasist sites make when posting it, that the firemen spotted it in the towers.

I was hoping there were better "primary" sources for that claim, but if that's, then I'm even more disappointed in conspiracy fantasists than before. That's a lousy primary source, primarily because it doesn't establish location or time. Anyone have any other original sources for this claim?

Ps. Thanks for the vid links.
 
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