Hi, Steve. Welcome to the forum.
...I look at that video and it is quite clear that the top portion turns nearly completely to dust before the bottom section begins to falls.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm guessing that you haven't thought through the implications of this truly extraordinary statement. I'm guessing that you don't believe that the whole top section – concrete, glass, furnishings, fixtures, plumbing, wiring, elevator machinery, air conditioning units, computers, paper, carpeting, humans, and especially structural
steel – actually turned to dust. (There are a few people who take this idea a step further and claim that the towers were vaporized by high energy "Star Wars" beams.)
One thing I do think is clear about the collapse of the north tower is that the top section doesn't stay essentially intact as it "crushes down" the bottom, as in Bazant's simplified model.
However,
there is much that truthers miss in their analysis of these north tower collapse videos and images. While focusing on what they believe to be anomalies, they conveniently ignore the forest
and the trees. I'm not claiming that you hold any of the views below, but just in case, a few points:
1) There are, of course, no detonations preceding the collapse. That doesn't preclude the involvement of some hidden and extraordinarily robust system of incendiaries invisibly planted by fiendish invisible technological geniuses and working in concert with the building fires for a reason that no one can explain while leaving no trace of their effects that ordinary fires wouldn't leave, but it does preclude the use of explosives. Proponents of the explosive demolition hypothesis cannot rationally confront the absence of detonations and their unmistakable secondary effects. Richard Gage's brain broke when I challenged him to do that during our Hardfire debate.
2) The clearest views of the north tower collapse are from the north. I'm not aware of any video or photo sequences that document the collapse sequence in detail from the south. The reason for the lack of such visual evidence should be obvious. The views from the north may be a bit deceptive, for these reasons:
A) The collapse started on the south side.
B) The top of the tower, including the antenna, leaned to the south as the collapse began. We don't know what damage to the south wall is being done.
C) The photo below shows the north tower after the top has fallen about one story. The lowest line of fire is at the 92nd floor. However, it is believed that the collapse began where the severe inward bowing of the south wall was, from about the 95th to the 98th floors, particularly around 97-98. Therefore, destructive events may be happening above, opposite, and slightly before the downward movement we first see on the north side.
3) It is clear that large structural sections are not shed (pushed away/rebounded/peeled away, or even blasted away by gigantic yet undetectable detonations as some truthers would have it) from the north tower as the top descends several floors, at least from the sides that are visible, as they
are shed shortly after. To learn more about the effect of mass "shedding" on the collapse progression, please see page 13 of
this paper by Bazant, Le,
et. al. You may be surprised by what the calculations reveal.
4) It is necessary that the first things to be pushed from the tower as the top falls will be the lightest and most friable materials: smoke, dust and pulverized debris from the aircraft impacts, fires, and internal collapses; gypsum wallboard, fireproofing insulation, ceiling tiles, etc.
5) In light of (3 and 4), and accepting that we cannot invoke magic to make several thousand tons of descending steel, concrete, furnishings, etc.
disappear, a question:
What happens to the first intact floor – let's say it's 93 or 92 – when that several thousand tons of descending mass hits it? If you have trouble answering this, please review NIST's
FAQ of December, 2007, in particular the answers to questions 1, 2, and 10.
6) Whenever truthers make a structural claim about one – and only one – tower, it's always a good idea to ask, "Why are they not mentioning the other tower?" After all, the towers were of nearly identical construction and sustained broadly similar damage and fires on 9/11.
In fact, when we look at the collapse sequence of the south tower, we
clearly see that the collapse front propagates well into the lower section while significant intact structure remains in the descending mass above:
I drew the red lines as reference marks. The top line is extended to approximately where the south tower collapse began, at the 81st floor (actually, I see that it's off by about half a floor between the left and right: no biggie). In both images the bottom mark is aligned with the 75th floor mechanical level of the north tower (not the south: keep in mind that the south tower is closer to the camera than the north. The lines aren't meant to denote the same floor numbers for both towers).
In the left image, the collapse has just begun at about the top red line. In the right image, the collapse front has proceeded from the top line to well below the bottom line. A significant portion of the top has fallen many stories, is accelerating, and clearly has not "turned to dust." If you want a laugh, ask Heiwa to explain how the remaining bottom portion of the building is going to arrest the collapse of the top from this point forward.
The photo below, taken from the southeast later in the collapse, may show that although most of the upper section is shrouded in smoke and dust, at least part of it (circled) is still intact. With its increasing momentum, the collapse front has become extraordinarily violent.
It is amazing that 16 people inside the north tower survived its collapse. FDNY Captain Jay Jonas:
The entire collapse of this 110-story building took 13 seconds. So it sounded like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, like that. And every time that happened, it shook the entire building. It shook the whole floor. So every time a floor would hit another floor, we’d be literally bouncing off the floor. We were being thrown around the stairway.
There was also this very loud sound of twisting steel all around our heads. These massive steel beams and girders were just being twisted around our heads just like they were twist ties on a loaf of bread. And a very loud, like a steel screeching sound, almost like a lot of trains coming into a subway station at the same time and all of them hitting their brakes at the same time.
There was tremendous air movement with the building coming down. The air movement was so strong that one of my fireman was standing on the fourth floor. You’ve got to figure with his gear and everything on, he’s well over 200 pounds. He’s about 180 pounds and with his gear, you gotta figure he’s about 250 pounds. This wind kind of picked him up and threw him down two fights of stairs.
We were getting hit with all kinds of debris. Thank God it was nothing that was going to really hurt us, but after it was all over, it was almost like we kind of got mugged. We were all bruised up and small cuts and things like that.
Source
Truthers should take a lesson from those stairwell survivors, who do not invoke explosives, thermite, nukes, space beams, or other absurdities to explain what happened to them.