Richard the G
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2012
- Messages
- 253
a probable translation:
In 15 seconds or so the /area of wind/ volume of air within the tower was pushed out the tower and then an equal or greater volume of air came back in to replace the void left by the now missing structure.
I think Richard is trying to say that the inrushing air would be a force on the top of the falling mass.
In fact we can see the effect of the later as the smoke from the fires gets drawn down as the collapse continues. Not a particularily strong force is evident in this and I cannot envision it having much effect in driving the collapse.
Remember that the windows were 18in wide so the glass had enormous strength. If you do some calcs in how much air had to escape from the floor you get wind speeds of several hundred miles an hour.
So the wind had two main effects. the first is obvious, the walls of the tower were blown out with enough initiating force so that the tower appeared to unpeel like a banana.
The second was that the elevator shafts became big air ducts. So that why you got some explosive failures at elevator transfer floors and the upward wind will have blasted the upper floor levels causing severe damage in the upper section.
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