One of several burning questions surrounding the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 was: “Where did the sulfur come from that melted some of the structural steel members from the building so much that they looked more like “Swiss cheese”? Sulfur reduces the melting point of iron by producing a eutectic mixture. The New York Times called these pieces of melted steel “perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.” FEMA documented the “intergranular melting, rapid oxidation, and sulfidation” of the steel members in Appendix C of their May 2002 Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT) Report, yet offered no explanation for this phenomena which required temperatures far in excess of that which office fires or jet fuel could have provided.

Some government officials have attempted to explain the issue away by alleging that the sulfur came from normal building materials like gypsum wallboard. But gypsum wallboard has been used for a hundred years to protect steel structural members and has never “attacked” it before.  Independent scientists have found evidence that the sulfur most likely came from thermate.  Sulfur is added to thermite (an incendiary used by the military to cut through steel like a hot knife through butter) to make thermate. Scientists and engineers have urged the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to perform experiments to determine the source of the sulfur. But despite spending over $20,000,000 NIST failed to do any experiments or provide a working theory.

Enter Jonathan Cole, P.E., Civil Engineer, who has three keys to success: a desire to know the truth, a lot of determination, and a big back yard.  He wanted to know if normal building materials, including wallboard, diesel fuel, and aluminum, could release the sulfur needed to attack the steel. View the dramatic video of this creative no-holds-barred backyard experiment that proves, for free, what NIST could not, or would not, for $20 million.