Hi stockman scott; Re the WTC collapse.
My understanding is that the component that failed was not the steel structure, but instead the stuff that tied the floors to the vertical members. When that failed, a floor fell, and that caused the chain reaction.
I don't have the video and I have no desire to watch it, but try running it in slow motion and look to see if this is realistic.
That is, look for a floor falling, and then the floor below that falling, and so on.
Note that when one side of a floor fails, so that the floor starts tilting, it puts a LOT more stress on the side that it's still attached. That will cause the other side to fall as well soon after.
The only surprising thing about the collapses were that they were pretty much vertical. You expect a tall tower to fall over. But the first collapse started very high up. That would naturally create the vertical collapse as the floors gave way.
The second tower, if I recall, was hit lower down, but still far up the building. That one would be the one that you should look at.
Just because one steel framed building doesn't collapse in a fire doesn't mean jack about other steel framed buildings in other fires. They're built differently just like any other specialty engineered object, and no two fires are the same.
From what I understand, the other problem was that the insulating material that was supposed to protect the steel frame from fire was probably too fragile and came off in the collision.
-- Carl
P.S. As long as the Democrats keep working on stuff like this, rather than why working class Americans don't vote for them, they are not going to become the majority party in this country. I'm all for that. |
