There is a problem with the reasoning in the above post. The fires that resulted from the plane impact on 9/11 were all but out; radio messages from FDNY members on the floors that suffered the impacts: Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones." This infers that the fires had almost burned themselves out; the jet fuel which started the fires burned off within minutes (most of it was consumed in fireball on impact, the greater part of that being outside the building itself).. see the numerous video recordings of the impacts.
If the steel was in any way compromised, it would have been when the fires were burning at their most intense stage, and by the time the structure failed, the steel would have been cooling down rapidly, since there were few, and small fires still burning. Another thing to remember is that steel is an excellent conductor of heat, and hotspots in the girders would need to be continually fed with a very high temperature source of combustion, far hotter than the temperature of burning jet fuel or office furniture, in order to compromise the integrity of the steel in the affected area. Furthermore, the steel structure of the WTC towers would have acted as a huge heat sink, taking heat energy *away* from the source and distributing it throughout the structure. This point of basic thermodynamics was universally overlooked in the need to arrive at a quick and digestible explanation as to why both WTC towers failed so spectacularly and unexpectedly.
There is a problem with the reasoning in the above post. The fires that resulted from the plane impact on 9/11 were all but out; radio messages from FDNY members on the floors that suffered the impacts: Battalion Seven Chief: "Battalion Seven ... Ladder 15, we’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones." This infers that the fires had almost burned themselves out; the jet fuel which started the fires burned off within minutes (most of it was consumed in fireball on impact, the greater part of that being outside the building itself).. see the numerous video recordings of the impacts.
If the steel was in any way compromised, it would have been when the fires were burning at their most intense stage, and by the time the structure failed, the steel would have been cooling down rapidly, since there were few, and small fires still burning. Another thing to remember is that steel is an excellent conductor of heat, and hotspots in the girders would need to be continually fed with a very high temperature source of combustion, far hotter than the temperature of burning jet fuel or office furniture, in order to compromise the integrity of the steel in the affected area. Furthermore, the steel structure of the WTC towers would have acted as a huge heat sink, taking heat energy *away* from the source and distributing it throughout the structure. This point of basic thermodynamics was universally overlooked in the need to arrive at a quick and digestible explanation as to why both WTC towers failed so spectacularly and unexpectedly.