Ted Olsen and flight 77 the phone calls that never were.

a reply to: waypastvne

The energy required to divert the falling mass elsewhere would be greater than the energy required to shear off the truss seats supporting the floors.

When the south tower was in full tilt mode, how could it be exerting a uniform, symmetrical pressure on the floors below?

How could it exert any force at all? And how could the tower fail uniformly given that the destruction wasn’t symmetrical when it started.

Why did the fulcrum stop acting on the top tilting section?

a reply to: kyleplatinum

The columns buckeled. The tilting of the tower was caused by the load of the structure shifting above the buckling off the vertical columns below. Once the columns buckeled, the load of the upper structure was no longer transmitted to the ventricle columns below to the foundation. Gravity pulls on items stright down towards the center of the earth. Once the structure became offset from the vertical columns below, the resistance working against the falling upper portion became negligible. Once the shift of a few feet occurred, the portion of the building above the buckeled columns was free to fall down into the weak floor system. The floors could only withstand a dynamic load equivalent to the weight of six stories falling. One tower had 12 floors fall in, the other tower had 29 floors fall into the floor system below. I think the towers were something like 95 percent empty space.