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To: Alberta's Child

Even if it falls over from leaning?


44 posted on 10/24/2016 2:40:45 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Before it topples over sideways it will become unstable enough to cause a collapse not much different than what you saw on 9/11.

A 58-story building looks like a massive, monolithic structure, but it's generally built of steel beams and concrete columns and floor slabs (and maybe concrete beams, too). If you were to measure the volume of the building materials used to construct it, you'd find that this volume is dwarfed by the amount of open space inside the building.

A smaller building might topple sideways, especially if it is made of homogenous materials (like poured concrete or concrete blocks) instead of a composite steel/concrete construction. But tall buildings can't be constructed that way because the weight of the upper floors would require huge slabs and columns in the lower floors that would eliminate most of the usable space. When a tall building collapses, you have to keep in mind that every single element of the building is under a vertical force (gravity) that is enormous compared to: (1) any force that would move it sideways very far, and (2) the strength of the joints and structural elements that hold the pieces of the building together.

If you look at the 9/11 clips and see how those buildings collapsed, you'll notice that the first one to fall actually leaned in one direction at the top because the structure failed unevenly. But the downward force of gravity quickly took over, and propelled even the leaning section of the building straight down.

59 posted on 10/24/2016 4:19:56 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("Go ahead, bite the Big Apple ... don't mind the maggots.")
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