Reply #73: Clarification regarding more massive lower floors

[dlaliberte]

I will respond to some of your other points and observations in another response, because I think they are legitimate concerns, and especially since you say they are your own ideas.

One correction to what I wrote, regarding the energy transfer to increasingly massive lower floors:
"When the less massive upper floors collapsed down into the increasingly
massive lower floors, would that reduce the kinetic energy of
falling, and thus reduce the acceleration? How much would the
acceleration be decreased?"

Conservation of momentum means that the total energy remains the same before and after the collision. So the increasingly massive lower floors would have more inertia which means they would be less inclined to move. So the acceleration of the falling floors is less than it would be if all the floors had the same mass, but not because of loss of kinetic energy. Rather it is because of the increase in mass.