Reply #138: Columns

[freedom fighter jh]

What's your basis for saying the columns were disconnected?

If the idea is that the falling floors sheared away the connections, that is a process that would require energy -- and thus would slow the fall.

Are you saying the columns were disconnected because that seems like the only possibility? But is it really a possibility? You say the columns "yielded" once the falling of the floors had removed their lateral support. That's a lot of assuming. As can be seen from construction photos, the columns were braced against one another. They did not depend on the floors for lateral support. And how did they yield? You say they "fail at the splices." Wherever they failed, they would need a mechanism and a cause. Was it in buckling that they failed at the splices, for lack of lateral support? Remember that these are columns that were designed to support lots of floors. Now that the floors are gone along with, you say, their lateral support, their load is lightened vastly -- they have only themselves to support. So what would cause them to buckle? Further, if they did simply buckle, long pieces of them would remain visible in videos of the collapses. None did.

It looks like the only possibility left is that the columns failed first and it was the columns' failure that brought the buildings down. After all, it was the columns that had been holding the buildings up.

The big question remaining is what caused the columns to fail. I have not heard anyone propose a plausible mechanism for how airplane crashes high up in the buildings could do that.