Question about structural beams, and columns ;) Options

[forester]

the structural beams of the wtc and all buildings are designed to be able to hold up the weight of all the beams above them.

at the wtc towers, after the planes hit, many of the beams were severed. this puts a lot more of the weight of the building on the undamaged beams.

question 1: how many beams MUST stay intact for the buildings to stay up?

question 2: if the section of the towers above the impact does collapse due to the beams in the damaged section nolonger being able to carry the above weight, can the beams below the damaged section literally catch the fall of the collapsing section and keep the building up? i took physics many years ago but im sure their is an equation to figure out the weight or kinetic energy of a mass after it falls several feet.

if the section above the plane damage did indeed collapse, the undamaged section below it would have had to be able to hold up all the weight above it multiplied by its velocity...i assume. considering this, is it logical to expect the undamaged floors to be able to hold this weight? is there any precident for this?

[dMz]

Hello Tony,

Perhaps I should clarify- I merely posted the link for public evaluation. "mmmlink" was the author who did the production and FEA analysis.

Another researcher has questioned the floor load values used in the video(s), but I'm sure you know that is still an open matter of some debate (not adequately addressed in the NIST reports from what I recall). There are about 7-10 FEA videos as I recall on "mmmlink's" page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mmmlink

I found them quite interesting and well put together myself.