Here's another perhaps less accurate model. It has it's points though.lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHN1gBkx0M
If you click on my picture it gets bigger. Thus an m (with (k-1)m above it) contacts another m in the tower, and BIG dynamic forces are applied on the adjacent columns ABOVE and below. As columns ABOVE are weaker (they carried less load before) they break first (if they break). So now (k-1)m drop and another m make contact and same thing happens again. The adjacent columns ABOVE break, &c, and this happens k times.
Result is k m stacked on top of each other. The columns below this stack are loaded exactly as before (evidently). Only result is that (k-1) assemblies of weak columns ABOVE are broken. NIST suggests that the columns below the m that was impacted first can only carry n floors, where n<k, but as the columns actually carried k m before, NIST is wrong.
This is not rocket science. This is called structural damage analysis as the gentleman in your linked video explains clearly in a popular way.
There are two tricks in the Mackey Hardfire presentation. One is that M = km contacts m while it is only another m, the other is that the columns below m are damaged, when it should be the weaker columns ABOVE.
Scale has nothing to do with it.
I wonder when Hardfire will send a real Physics of 9/11 show?
