Last night, I heard a few minutes of Richard Hoagland on Coast to Coast – the guy who thinks there is an ancient civilization on Mars and the “Face on Mars” is the proof, had a real gem last night.
He’s not quite on board with the 9/11 truthers yet, but he says he can’t explain how the World Trade Center hit the ground so fast – faster than “Terminal Velocity”.
I can.
“Terminal Velocity” as most people think of it refers to the approximate maximum speed of a human jumping from a plane or a tall building when they are falling toward the ground. This assumes the person jumped from within the normal atmosphere not outer space.
The reason for a terminal velocity is the relationship between mass and surface area and drag caused by moving through air. As the falling human picks up speed, the friction of the air resistance exerts an opposing force against the fall. The closer to the ground you get, the denser the air becomes, the more drag and the more of a counterforce against gravity. Terminal velocity for a human as a bit over 100 MPH. It matters a lot if you’re diving head first or spread out like a pancake.
The World Trade Center is not a human falling through the atmosphere. A 180 pound round lead ball thrown out of a plane has much higher terminal velocity than a 180 pound human.
Acceleration due to gravity is about 32.2 feet/sec per second at ground level… so in a vacuum, a falling object would have the speed of:
after 1 sec – 32.2 ft/sec – 21.9 mph
2 sec – 64.4 ft/sec – 43.9 mph
3 sec – 96.6 ft/sec – 65.8mph
4 sec – 128.8 ft/sec – 87.8 mph
5 sec – 161.0 ft/sec – 109.7 mph
6 sec – 193.2 ft/sec – 131.7 mph
7 sec – 225.4 ft/sec – 153.6 mph
8 sec – 257.6 ft/sec – 175.6 mph
9 sec – 289.8 ft/sec – 197.5 mph
10 sec – 322. ft/sec – 226 mph
For an object being acted on by a uniform acceleration, the distance traveled in one second will be half of the sum of the initial and ending velocities. So assuming no drag or resistance, the top of the tower would have fallen:
after 1 second: 16.1 feet
after 2 seconds: 16.1 + 48.3 ft = 59.4 feet
after 3 seconds: 59.4 + 80.5 ft = 139.9 feet
after 4 seconds: 139.9 + 112.7 ft = 252.6 feet
after 5 seconds: 252.6 + 144.9 ft = 397.;5 feet
after 6 seconds: 397.5 + 177.1 ft = 574.6 feet
after 7 seconds: 574.6 + 209.3 ft = 783.9 feet
after 8 seconds: 783.9 + 241.5 ft = 1025.4 feet
Top of the building hits the ground. But there IS resistance within the building to falling. Here are some more sophisticated engineering calculations incorporating the building’s weight, kinetic energy and rate of fall: [Debunking 9/11]
Depending on whose interpretation of the video you go with, it was between 10 and 16 seconds for the buildings to complete the fall. There is no need to invoke hyperdimensional physics to explain what happened.
