Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567

well no the fire did not get the temperatures that hot, but you forget about the collapse, we are talking about a 500,000 ton structure falling 400 meters my calculus is rusty, so if some one can check it for me great, potential energy is weight * height * gravity

I get the integral between 0 and 400 of (400-x)*(500000 tons) * (400-x)/400*9.8m/s^2

this gives me 2.37 x10^14 joules of potential energy, this has to go somewhere, some went into sound, and moving air out of the way, but most of it went into deformation and heat (both cause each other) this is why it was so hot inside. Besides that the pile of rubble would also insolate the heat as well keeping it hot weeks after. Further more, great heat can be generated with deformational forces, take a coat hanger and bend it in the same place allot and feel how it heats up. It does not take much to bend a coat hanger, but for objects that do take allot to bend, much more heat is generated; this is the source of the extreme heat in the rubble, besides the fire.