Reply #78: Physics 101 [View All]

After the initial impact has occurred, there is only one force acting on a building: gravity. That force is DOWN--period end of story. The only way anything would collapse in any direction but down is if another force acted on it to move it in another direction. You can witness this in video of the WTC buildings collapsing. At the first moments of the collapse you see the top floors of the building pitch outward because support has failed on one or two sides of the building (which, BTW, is not how a building delibrately taken down by explosives behaves). That outward lean lasts only a few moments, because once those top floors start pitching out and there is nothing below them to support them, gravity takes over and they fall where gravity takes them: down.

You claim that buildings tend to collapse outwardly. While it may appear that way with small two or three story buildings, it is definitely not true of larger buildings. If it did, you'd be able to easily produce some video showing a collapse acting in the manner you describe. I challenge you to provide such video.