The Kanakas analogy doesn't hold. In the kanakas, when one ball hits the
other, the other ball transfers it's energy to the next ball
and so on until it reaches the end ball which is free to move. So the
energy put in is mostly used to drive the ball up on the far end.
What you really need to do is put the device with the end ball up against
a wall. Now you are saying that it's reasonable to expect the
first ball to crush it's way through all the other balls without slowing
down. You already gave the correct analogy. The energy absorbing
crush zones on cars. These zones serve to decelerate the car over a
longer period of time than a solid frame vehicle. No matter what
you want to think, the energy required to crush, break, and pulverize the
entire building into small pieces is certainly some non-zero amount.
And every bit of energy used to crush the building is kinetic energy
removed from the fall of the mass of the building. This HAS to cause
a reduction in that acceleration. To say that the towers were a fragile
house of cards, waiting to fall as implied in your statements flies
in the face of all stated facts about modern steel building construction.
In fact the massive amount of energy required to demolish one
shows this. Literally tons of explosives are required to make these
buildings come down as completely as the towers did. And by what
miracle of chance did two buildings, hit in different places, and at
different heights, manage to both collapse straight down into tiny pieces
with not even the top sections toppling over onto the surrounding
buildings? Especially given that the  towers were built in three vertical
sections with massive reinforcements at each section. Surely those
reinforced sections should have shown differentreactions to the
collapse forces than the other floors. And yes, what about WTC-7 that had
only minimal damage, and in a different location,
and in a different shape and construction of building. And this is a
building size and style that there IS plenty
of comparison buildings. These are the first three steel core buildings
to ever collapse from fire, despite other buildings that burned
bigger, and for a longer time.

Again, I don't know the answers. Just that the right questions aren't
being asked or answered. And in my opinion, the only nuts are the
ones willing to accept all of the official story and all of the
inconsistencies without question.



  ----- Original Message -----
  From: "William ChopsWestfield"
  To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public."
  Subject: Re: [OT] Physics denies official 9/11 report.
  Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 00:27:54 -0800



  On Dec 4, 2006, at 11:50 PM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

  >> Others have said that the weight of the top floor would accelerate
  the
  >> lower floors and account for the rapid fall. That is an
  interesting
  >> point, which may very well be correct. I don't know. I would love
  to
  >> hear from someone who does.
  >
  > If it falls from the top, the weight of the top ceiling crashes on
  the
  > floor below. There it "shares" its energy and momentum, and both
  continue
  > to fall, however slower as if there were no floor below. And so on.
  To
  > fall nearly like free fall, I'm pretty sure the whole steel frame
  has
  > to crash at nearly the same time (between all floors).
  >
  You know, I don't think I trust people with advanced physics degrees
  to do what is essentially advanced mechanical engineering. There's
  just too much ... distance between theoretical mechanics and real
  world situations, and for that matter, too few physicists that have
  any focus on mechanics (THAT'S just for Freshman!) Just
  what IS the mechanism by which floors underneath "slow down" the fall
  of the upper floors. I seem to recall collisions of two sorts;
  elastic
  and inelastic; I don't recall that either results in dramatic slowing
  of the objects. For that, you'd need something that absorbed massive
  amounts of kinetic energy into internal deformation and heating, like
  the crushable bumpers in cars. I don't think normal building
  materials
  do that very much, including steel frames. Subject them to loads
  beyond
  their yield strength, and they just break without absorbing
  significant
  energy; why should that slow anything down?

  There was an article on the physics of karate in Sci American back in
  the later 70s or early 80s. One of the interesting results/claims was
  WRT that stack of concrete blocks that experts were breaking through
  with bare hands; it seems that if things are set up properly, you
  only
  have to hit the stack about hard enough to break the first slab; the
  pieces of that slab do most of the work of breaking the second slab,
  and so on.

  (Another scenario: what's to say that a major impact like the
  collapse
  of an entire floor isn't sufficient to significantly buckle the steel
  frame of the entire building so that it no longer has any role to
  play
  in the collapse of the building.)

  I'm not claiming that I can match any of these explanations up to the
  behavior people see on the tapes, but they don't seem that far off.
  There's lots of stuff that operates well within the realm of physics
  that is not very intuitive...
  http://www.physlink.com/estore/cart/item_images/63_xl.jpg

  BillW
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