Reply #221: it's important to get your assumptions out into the open

[OnTheOtherHand]

Are you familiar with "breaking," as in breaking boards or blocks? Do you think that Newton's third law dictates that it is impossible to break a board without simultaneously breaking your hand?

I do think that the upper floors sustained some (further) damage on the way down, but I see no reason to conclude that it alters the basic analysis very much. There's an ever larger mass falling under gravitational acceleration. I agree in principle that if enough debris had gone overboard, the downward momentum could have been halted -- but that is a long way from showing that it should have been.

No, I'm not going to summarize Bazant and Verdure for you. It's virtually impossible to get you to state your own 'arguments' clearly, without dragging them into the muck.