- one of the obvious questions people seem to be missing is - if you want the upper block to fall onto 'one floor' of the lower block - how is that it's not only one floor of the upper block impacting one floor of the lower block, and thus one floor of the lower disentigrates, and one floor of the upper?? Exactly the same 'physics' would apply, wouldn't they? (I'll understand if you avoid this, as there's no actual 'physics' readily discernible anywhere in this whole redqueen "I make whatever rules I want!!!' discussion ... )
There are two reasons.
One is that the rubble between th eupper block and lower block would have cushioned the impact between the upper block and lower block.
The second is more complicated, and deals with the velocity of the crushing fronts going up and going down. Bazant shows how the velocity of the wave going up into the upper block decelerated very swiftly.
The mathematical evidence for an essentially rigid upper block of storeys begins at the bottom of page 15/29, and ends on the subsequent page. The figure 9 that Bazant mentions during the mathematical discussion is on page 29/29.
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/Bazant_WTC_Collapse_What_Did__Did_No.pdf
What is also missing, besides the fact that the fictional upper block did not "fall" through the 85% remaining structural steel core adn perimeter columns which can support load increases of up to 2000% before failing, is that in order for the fictional upper block to have any crushing or hammering effect on the lower storeys, it must absorb some of this energy itself. According to Ross, Bazant does not account for this energy loss, in addition to not accounting for the load absorption that the lower storeys would obviously be providing.
I'm not sure how or why Bazant is able to remain employed at Northwestern University. This subject alone deserves a thread of its own.
Pants, that link seems to be referring to WTC7.