On 3/14/07, Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
John Berry wrote: >You say they are experts of pancaking buildings and yet you don't >cite a single case where they have pulled a single floor (in an >otherwise unweakened building) and had it pancake at freefall speeds. This has happened hundreds of times. NIST and others have detailed records of such events.
Ahuh, and yet no details are ever availible. I'm not questioning if when a floor is pulled if further floors worth of destruction will occur, obviously it will. The question is in a building such as the twin towers or other tall conventional buildings if a floor near the top is pulled if the entire thing will collapse at near freefall speeds. I would expect in the case of the WTC that a lot of it would collapse, but I would think it might stop 2/3rds of the way down, and at the very least to occur far more slowly than freefall speeds which means that the building offered 0 resistance which is at odds with the conservation of energy. Just saying 'pancaking has happened' without any details is meaningless, I don't doubt that pancaking will cause significant damage. I once saw the remains of a parking garage
that collapsed straight down onto $100,000 worth of minicomputer equipment, because one floor gave way. It was MY company's computer equipment! (The insurance paid for it.) When a single floor of a building falls down, it strikes with many times more force than any building is designed to withstand. - Jed
