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4 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Diversionary Tactic Fails--Hopefully Future Presidents Won't be FooledMar 04, 2010
My hope is a future president would send this fellow packing. Judging only from the first chapter, Nine Eleven, the reader should be aware that "slight of hand" methods are being employed. Muller is drawing attention away from the horrible realities of the building destructions, the 10 to 14 seconds for each of the Twins, or the 6.5 seconds when WTC 7 crashed down into its own footprint. Muller instead spends all his time and attention on the preliminaries. The more time he spends on the planes, the less time remains for the main events. His final section is on the impacts of planes, the waving of hands to distract away from that which he doesn't want the reader to see.
The first part of this chapter lacks a title, but could have been titled, the awesome power of jet fuel. No doubt, Muller is correct when comparing jet fuel to TNT, but a much more substantial power was embedded at the World Trade Center--super-thermite (a.k.a, nano-thermite.) This presence of large quantities of nano-thermite at ground zero did not become publicly known until five years after the 9/11 Commission closed its doors. Nano-thermite is a high-tech military grade explosive found in the dust collected immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers, and studied carefully by an international team of scientists. Their report on their investigation and findings was peer reviewed and published in the open literature.
The four primary sections; Inspecting passengers, Taking control. Flying and Navigating the Airplane, and Impact, should be viewed as an effort to consume time and monopolize space in the written material. Time on my part taken to dispute these sections is time taken away from addressing real physics-based problems. The best way I know to quickly show these matters contributed nothing to the destruction of the buildings is to cite the words of Battalion Chief Orio Palmer from the 78th floor of WTC 2, "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines..." This was at 9:53 a.m. WTC 2 exploded six minutes later. Other firefighters were on floor 77, so that floor contained no inferno, and it is documented that there were no infernos above floor 78.
Bottom line, the planes and subsequent fires did not cause WTC 2 to come down. There is no reason to think the situation was any different with WTC 1. Time is better spent on a couple of real physics problems that any future president with a high school physics education should readily grasp:
Lateral acceleration of massive structural members: Multi-ton perimeter structural members from the Twin Towers were hurled laterally at 60 MPH, landing as far as 600 feet away. High school physics is sufficient to show a massive lateral force component would be necessary to produce such trajectories. The official government report did not go beyond the initiation of collapse, thus, did not attempt to provide an explanation for this "after-initiation" evidence.
Freefall Acceleration of WTC 7: Freefall acceleration of the visible upper section (outer shell) of the 47-story high-rise extended over 100 feet downward, or eight stories. This is not a matter of dispute, as NIST admitted to this in their final report (Nov 2008). However, once NIST made the decision to admit to freefall, the NIST investigators did not change any of their findings, or any of their analysis involving a complex simulation model. The simulation model was developed at the time NIST maintained the building fell 40 percent slower than freefall. To this day, NIST is refusing to release detailed information on its simulation model.
5 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Unbelivably NaiveMar 04, 2010
When this book arrived, I quickly scanned through it looking for errors of fact. After all, if a book is supposed to be teaching basic physics to a future president, the physics should be correct, right? I was finding only a few minor errors when I read a section that stopped me cold. I almost fell off my chair with incredulity. Here is the passage: "If you are standing over an oil field, you will feel slightly less gravity that the gravity you feel standing over solid rock. That's because oil is less dense than rock...Geologists commonly use gravity meters to search for likely oil locations." In fact, oil does not displace solid rock in an oil field. It displaces formation water, which is only slightly more dense than oil. The thickness of even the largest oil column is not sufficient to generate a measurable difference in gravity. Gravity can only be used to identify sedimentary basins, the approximate depth to basement, and, under favorable circumstances, the existence of large, basement involved structural features.
There are other errors I could point out, but why bother? Given such an egregious error, one that any experienced geophysicist would find laughable, the entire book is called into question. Needless to say, this book quickly found its way into the recycle bin.
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 First two thirds of book is simple but great, last third is speculative garbageFeb 17, 2010
The first two thirds of the book deals with nuclear power, bombs, and even gravity. While most of it is pretty basic as far as those subjects go, I found the book HIGHLY entertaining and informative even when reading about subjects I didn't feel I needed a refresher on. I thought for sure this book would be a 5-star must-read. I wish it had more on biological warfare since the author believes it to be a larger threat than nuclear weapons, but the author does not go into biological warfare since it isn't physics-based.
Yet the author has no problem deviating from science for global warming, where he even makes a point to say that a president can't trust all the facts out there on the subject. So far, so good, but the author then goes on to promote the falsified (yet famous) "hockey stick" temperature data graph and all its implications. For someone advocating truth, he should have known better than to trust data with such huge political ramifications. The implications proposed from said data are admittedly speculative, while the rest of the book is grounded in what is and is not physically possible.
That makes the first 2/3rds of the book great (5 stars) and the last third of the book pure rubbish. The author great talking about his field of study, nuclear power, but then he basically tells you to go watch An Inconvenient Truth, a movie made by perhaps the greatest evil genius of our time.
Although the book may be written for presidents, the book tries hard not to delve into politics. I couldn't help but think that some of the things discussed aren't among the enumerated powers of the federal government as listed in the Constitution, ergo the book should probably be titled, "Physics for state governors," or in other cases, "Physics for Congressmen."
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Physics for Future PresidentsFeb 11, 2010
This book should be required reading for every American. It's current and timely in its content. Written by a Physicist, its succinct and readable. It separates the facts from the hype/politics on a very large array of current issues. Subjects range from terrorism, 911, nuclear terrorism, global warming, clean and sustainable energy, just to name a few. If you are interested in these subjects or want to converse in them, this book is the place to start.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Physics for LaymanFeb 10, 2010
Excellent review of current thinking on subjects everyone should know about to counter "bad science" that is everywhere.
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based on 69 reviews
