The 9/11 Attacks

Diego Ruiz
English 195
Dr. Long
      9/11 Mysteries
Since the 9/11 attacks, mysteries concerning the collapse of the World Trade Center have caused global conspiracies. The official story, published by PBS and Discovery Channel was based on the combination of the impact load doing great damage to the building followed by the intense heat that caused collapse. However, a great engineer named Minoru Yamasaki designed the World Trade Center using a steel tube-frame structure that surrounded the exterior for maximum resistence. In fact, the building was designed to resist multiple airplane impacts. The structure of the towers was like a mosquitoe netting, and the plane was like a pencil puncturing through the netting affecting only the area of the impact not the rest of the structure.
Why are massive buildings made of steel? Steel frames offer many advantages over concrete and wood, and they are more effective against weather and fire. Steel is composed of iron and carbon and is better known for being strong, light, durable, and   flexible. Majority of skycrapers are built of steel or concrete frames. However, the World Trade Center was different. In addtion to the steel tube structure, inside there was the unsdestructable core, a regtangle of forty seven columns made of 4 inch thick steel at the base. Also, solid pre-fabricated floor assembly's and welded metal floor pans were both welded and bolted to the vertical frames. How did the 110 floor building collapse at the amazing rate of 10 seconds? Absolutely impossible.
Most importantly, since heat weakening steel was the major issue, at what temperature is steel guranteed to resist and not weaken? Steel can resist a temperature of up to 2,500 degrees and after that it will start weakening causing to bend or melt steadily. However, this amount of heat is not produced with a normal fire, and the jet fuel that the airplanes released was limited since it was consumed at the moment of impact... [continues]

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