Description

By Steven E. Jones, Jeffrey Farrer, Gregory S. Jenkins, Frank Legge, James Gourley, Kevin Ryan, Daniel Farnsworth, and Crockett Grabbe

In an effort to better understand the conditions that led to complete collapses of the World Trade Center Towers and WTC 7, we apply scanning-electron-microsc ope (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (XEDS) methods to analyze the dust generated, with an emphasis on observed micro-spheres in the WTC dust. The formation of molten spheres with high iron contents along with other species in the WTC dust required extremely high temperatures. Our results are compared with those of other laboratories. The temperatures required for the molten sphere-formation and evaporation of materials as observed in the WTC dust are significantly higher than temperatures associated with the burning of jet fuel and office materials in the WTC buildings.