Winstonm, on Aug 18 2006, 03:59 AM, said:
I have very little experience with structural engineering (I used to spend some time on the math behind crack propagation, but that's far and removed from this type of discussion). However, I have a fair amount of experience with blacksmithing and heating/melting iron...
I'd like to point out one simple fact: The heat at which a fuel burns can be affected by the amount of oxygen available. The first thing that you learn about smithing is how to set up your forge to get good air-flow and proper combustion. I ruined a fair number of projects when a piece of iron caught on fire because I had too much air going through the coke.
From what I understand, the WTC had a fair number of tall open tubes. If any of those started working as a chimney and starting drawing large amounts of air through the fire, this could have impacted the temperature at which the fire was burning. In theory, you might have even gotten something similar to a thermite reaction even in the absence of large amounts of Iron Oxide... (Wikipedia discussed so-called "thermal lances" which burn using this same principle),. i doubt that random chance would give anywhere near the efficiency of the safecracking version, but there is something to be said for sheer volume.