Due Diligence: The impact of flight 77

I received a forwarded e-mail message this morning which read:

> > Makes you go "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?"
> > Where is the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 ?????
> > Where are the airplane parts???
> > Go to this website and watch this film.........do it quickly as it
> > has already been pulled off several web sites
> > already!........afterwards you'll see why!
> > Click below:
> >
> > <http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm#Main>

To which I replied:

What the (leftist, antagonistic, simpleton) producers of this "documentary" fail to communicate is that this airplane crash was far from the simple crashes with which we are familiar. The difference? The plane came in at around 500mph. The images of crashes the video showed were typically from failed emergency landings and take-offs, wherein the speed was more in the 100mph range. As any introductory physics student can recite, kinetic energy (that is, the energy exerted by a body in motion) is represented by the equation: E(k)=m(v)squared/2. Given a mass of approx 100,000kg (from this site: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/b757.htm ) and a velocity of approx 45 m/s (100mph), E(k) is 101,250,000 joules or 101.25 Megajoules. Given the same mass, but a velocity of approx 225 m/s (500mph), E(k) is 2,531,250,000 joules or 2.5 Gigajoules, 25 times the kinetic energy of the prior example.

That in a nutshell is the difference between a crash and a CRASH.

Look for the wreckage in the Pennsylvania crash. One would expect that to be similar to the Pentagon crash. Also - it occurs to me that, watching the twin towers impacted with planes at nearly 500mph, I did not see (large) plane parts flying out of the building. Oh, but that was different, I'm sure the producers of the video would argue.
;-)

I won't speak to the rest of the assertions. Physics alone is enough to refute their waste of time.