The Voice From The Whirlwind

Compressed Air and the WTC collapse
Charles' Law states that as a gas is compressed, it's temperature rises.

Simply stated the law is P1/P2 = T1/T2 where pressure is in any useful unit and temperature is in degrees Kelvin.

As the top of the towers fell into the lower sections, and especially as floors pancaked within the tube formed by the lower floors, the air within was compressed just as if you were pushing on a piston into a closed volume.

If the temperature of air in the lower floors was 70 degrees Fahrenheit and if the (inefficient) piston achieved a 50% volume reduction;

P1 = 1
P2 = 2
T1 = 294 K

Solving for T2 yields 588 K which is 598 degrees Fahrenheit!

What effect would this have had upon the people and contents? Quite simply anything that could combust would have burst into flames, humans would have had their lungs seared and their clothes burned or melted upon their bodies. All paper would have been incinerated (it burns at the famous 451 F) and almost no material would have been unchanged.

You can clearly see the power of compressed air as the towers fall in the several windows that get blown out of the building along with whatever contents were behind them.

What a horrible experience this must have been.

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