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Re: Why the 3rd skyscraper came freefalling down on 9/11

Subject: Re: Why the 3rd skyscraper came freefalling down on 9/11
From: "Antony Clements" <antony.clements@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:36:09 +1100
Newsgroups: sci.physics, alt.politics, soc.culture.usa, sci.crypt, sci.lang
> What universe do you live in?  This is Road Runner Cartoon physics.

<snip from Paul's post>
With highly irregularly shaped objects one cannot use
the center-of-mass approximation. To get a (more) precise
answer, one would have to calculate the vectors of
gravitational acceleration caused by each molecule of
the irregular object individually and then add them all up.
<end snip from Paul's post>

so yes a massive object will be affect by gravity more

> Clearly, then, a man wearing a parachute falls at the same speed
> jumping out of an airplane regardless of whether the parachute opens
> or not, and the man would fall slower if he didn't use a parachute
> (which obviously weighs something) at all.  So why were parachutes
> invented?

that is not what was said at all, but whatever. a parachute gives an object 
a greater area for resistance to act upon, a steady resistance at that, this 
is why a person with no parachute will hit the ground before a person with a 
parachute, because the area exposed to resistance is much lower. it is also 
why fat people... i mean big boned people... reach terminal velocity before 
slimmer people, there is more area for air resistance to act upon. 
parachutes are designed to give an object more area for resistance to act 
upon, sky diving parachutes for example will give an area to counter balance 
the effect of gravity on almost any object of almost any mass, if the mass 
is not sufficient enough then the mass will get blown around. actually i 
will restate that. parachutes are designed to give an object more resistance 
almost irrespective of mass, which is exactly why there is extreme 
deceleration when a parachute is opened allowing terminal velocity to be 
much much lower than a free fall. if you ever bothered to read everything 
you would have noticed that i have said many times over that the greater the 
area of a mass exposed to a steady resistance, meaning the object is not 
rotating in any fashion, the lower terminal velocity will be. acceleration 
in a free fall remains a constant until terminal velocity is reached. i have 
also said that objects will only fall at 9.8m/s/s in a complete vacuum where 
there is no resistance acting on the mass note the penny and the feather in 
a vacuum tube high school experiment. but in the real world only objects of 
negligable mass AND negligable area for resistance to act on will fall at or 
very close to 9.8m/s/s note the mythbusters penny from the observation floor 
of the empire state building experiment. this is also dependant on the 
viscousity of the medium the mass is falling through. a viscous medium will 
provide a much higher resistance. an experiment you can do yourself is drop 
a penny in a glass of water and a penny from an equal height through air, 
both pennies have identical horizontal orientation, mass, and area, and see 
which hits the ground (or bottom of the glass) first. to make it an even 
more objective experiment, both pennies are heads up. there will be a small 
yet delay between the penny dropped into the glass of water, and the panny 
falling through air. conducting the experiment mentioned above will show you 
that the only thing that affects the rate of free fall is the amount of 
resistance, and how quickly resistance balances out mass. 



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