3 ms·
How far would an elevator have to fall to entirely take out a building?
by HashBasher 8y ago
How far would an elevator have to fall to entirely take out a building?
- SomeHacker44 8y agoMy intuition is that no elevator could destroy its building even in free fall. Considerations: terminal velocity (air drag, weight, friction on the rails), mass, the surrounding part of the building, etc. Even a very heavy elevator in a half mile tall building would seem to be relatively low energy. 10,000 kg hitting at 400 km/s is equivalent to about the energy of 15 kg of TNT. The first WTC bombing was much more and the building withstood it.