Reply #101: What are you asking?

[William Seger]

The "detailed explanation should make" WHAT "abundantly clear?" And what is it that you think I need to explain?

What I said was that the tilting top was TRYING to rotate around it's center of mass. This is a fact of physics. What I said was that the center of mass moved laterally by pushing against the building below. This is another fact of physics. What I said was that this lateral force on those columns contributed to the collapse of those columns. This is a fact of structural mechanics; bent columns cannot carry as much load.

ALL of these facts are supported by the video frames in the article you linked to! (The video it refers to is gone, but I've seen it before.) Additionally, although those frames don't show it, what I said was that the angular momentum of the rotation was lost once the entire top started down because the top was plowing through the building below, not rotating freely. That should be easy to see if you look at the collision vectors involved, and I don't see anything in that article or from you to refute that contention.

The article simply tries to figure out where the center of rotation was, which is not at all a simple problem because neither the top nor the bottom were perfectly rigid, and the structural support situation was constantly changing as the structure was destroying itself. With all the factors involved, I don't believe the motion of the top can really be fully analyzed and understood with anything short of a finite element analysis. However, I don't personally see any need to go to that level of detail, since the fundamental actions and reactions of the tilting are easy to understand, and they are not really relevant to whether or not a global collapse of the structure should be expected. The article seems to be trying to imply that the motion of the top somehow violated what the author expected to happen, but I fail to see how what the author expected is of any great significance. Anyone who would like to claim that the motion of the top cannot be explained by a natural collapse would have to do a hell of a lot more work on the problem than that article does, and it's NOT up to me or anyone else to DISPROVE such a vaguely stated and poorly argued hypothesis.

In short, once again, I have no idea WTF you are getting at. If you're trying to make a point, you're going to have to make it clearly enough that I can understand what it IS before I can respond.