Interesting Links for 17-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• Debunking Claims that Lettuce is 3 Times Worse Than Bacon
  • food bacon vegetables globalwarming sad viaElfy
• Move Fast and Fix Things - How GitHub replaced their merge functionality without breaking anything
  • engineering software development git
• Poverty dampens genetic influence on IQ - but only in the USA...
  • usa genetics iq
• A Learning Advance in

Comments

[gonzo21]

That blacksmith is my new hero.

[cybik]

Mine too!

[gonzo21]

I'm quite tempted to post it on a big conspiracy theory website, and see how the nutjobs respond.

[andrewducker]

Let me know how it goes.

[steer]

Alas for the debunking/steel such things are rarely so clear cut. The 9/11 truthers don't claim that the temperatures can't soften steel, they claim they can't melt it -- and then claim that molten steel was observed in videos and found pooled in the basement. I've no idea whether molten steel is observed in the videos or found pooled in the basement and I've no truck whatsoever with 9/11 truthers. Bottom line though is that the claim isn't "jet fuel can't bend steel" it's that "jet fuel can't melt steel" and that video doesn't challenge this it proves that jet fuel can bend steel.

[nojay]

The buildings were full of furniture, paper, carpets, curtains, plastic, wood panelling and other combustibles as well as jet fuel. The structure formed a chimney producing a forced draught just like a furnace once the vertical firebreaks were breached. I'd be amazed if some exposed steel didn't melt in such conditions.

However the claims of melted steel in puddles at the bottom of the rubble just don't hold water. It's difficult to melt steel and keep it sufficiently molten so that it would puddle after falling one or two hundred metres through open air. I could see that happening with aluminium, maybe but it's more likely any aluminium would end up oxidising at those sorts of temperatures rather than simply melting.

Somewhere I've got pictures of some of what was left in the centre of Tokyo after the firebombing raids on March 1945. There's a museum park with preserved vehicles, twisted metal wreckage collapsed on itself but not actually melted even though they were exposed to furnace-like conditions for hours.

[steer]

Sure, there are things present that might raise the temperature of the flame (some of the ones you mention I think would actually lower it) as might a chimney effect. It could be possible that some combination of them would melt steel. It could be possible that there is no melted steel. I think the latter is probably the most likely (and as you say, a lot of devastating large fires have no melted steel). A lot of the stuff about molten steel seems to be just hyperbole (e.g. that it was present weeks later when people were going through the wreckage).

Bottom line though is that video really doesn't tell us anything either way. (And to be clear, again, I believe that the whole 9/11 truther thing is so ridiculous as to not be worth debunking -- but if someone does try to debunk it then it's important to debunk their claims not some different set of claims.)

[cybik]

I was still studying architecture for the term after the September the 11th attacks. The lecturer for the Structures of Architecture course, who was an expert in structural architecture, spent an hour long lecture explaining exactly how the two towers were built and why that meant that they collapsed in the way they did. I've had no time for anyone with the "jet fuel doesn't melt steel" argument because frankly, who am I going to trust? Someone who is an expert in the field or some idiot conspiracy theorists?

Every year I help kids of 13 and 14 twist bars of steel that have been heated only to 850-900C (it should ideally be more, but time constraints mean I haven't had time to heat the metal enough). Even at those temperatures it's easy enough to bend and twist with a lever and the strength of a child.

[momentsmusicaux]

Why the fuck is that article measuring LETTUCE in units of VOLUME???

[andrewducker]

Because calories per decibel is the future, man.

[momentsmusicaux]

Not only do they have batshit units, they can't even use the ones for the right physical quantity!

[a_pawson]

Because they are american. American recipes mystify me as they tend to avoid weighing things in preference to measuring things in cups. These include things like sugar, flour and in this case shredded lettuce, where there can be a massive variation in volume.