Natural Geographic CONSPIRACY VS. SCIENCE 8/31/09
• natural Geographic
Conspiracy theories are put to the
test. How well do they stand up against the visual simulations of professional
engineers? See how science supports official stories and debunks the
conspiracies below.
THE COLLAPSE OF THE BUILDINGS
Official Story: The collapse was caused by fire initially fed by
the jet fuel from the planes.
Testing the Official Story: Using original construction blueprints,
photographs, and construction data, Purdue University, along with the American
Society of Civil Engineers, created a model structure of the north World Trade
Center tower and a scaled 767 jetliner. To model the fuel load, Purdue launched
aluminum cans filled with liquid to represent an airline wing colliding with a
steel column. The final simulation showed the internal destruction of
supporting columns, the disintegration of the jetliner, the atomizing of the
fuel, and the resulting fires that softened the steel framework of the building
and brought it down.
C
