Anyone who keeps babbling about cutting or melting steel is a complete idiot.
I pointed out at SLC long ago that the kooks often claim that the steel was in convenient 30-foot segments. But if you buy that, you've got to claim that each column was cut over 40 times. Multiply that by the 290 or so columns and you can see that over 10,000 separate cuts were required.
Being the one bringing forth a model - MAX-MIHOP - I feel it is my responsibility to reach out to people of all speeds.
Brainster - heck, everyone with a brainsters - please from this day forward eliminate "cutting" from your cortex.
You are fighting ghosts from the past.
Thermite was used to heat-weaken a simple majority of box columns at impact floors on WTC2 to induce collapse.
As Bazant et. al. have pointed out, once the tower gets moving, total collapse is the strong strange attractor.
Columns were not "cut into convenient 30' lengths".
Core columns were found in their pre-fabricated 3-storey, 36' lengths because the core columns broke apart at the weld planes.
The core columns broke apart at the weld planes from forces from the collapse - not from any supplementary catalysts.
(However, thermite may have been used to heat the connections between core columns and horizontal steel members, to weaken the steel, to - in effect - partially unshore the core columns.)
I have a thread that discusses this topic:
How were WTC core columns separated at the weld planes?
Anyone at JREF who continues to babble about cutting or melting steel is either deliberately generating noise, or is a complete idiot.
(Come to think of it, there is an inordinant number of noisy idiots.)
Max
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