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Originally Posted by willravel
Concrete and steel > glass. Consider also that he glass is falling through the air with only the resistence of the air. The building collapsed into it's footprint, meaning that there should have been a great deal of massive, steel reinforced resistence the whole way down. Despite that, the building came down all at once, and in a time that's comparable to free fall speeds. It's a bit of a noddle scratcher.
I'll try to address eveyone's points and such as soon as I can, but this thread is surprisingly draining on me.
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Speaking strictly in terms of the "powderized" concrete, that same massive steel reinfocement that you mentioned would also add to the energy being released as the structure collapsed. The upper floors would have been relatively entact (as seen by the upper levels of the debris pile that had to be lifted out by crane), but the lower floors were basically crushed by the falling concrete (as seen by the fact that the bottom of the debris pile was moved with shovels). If you drop one 5 story concrete building onto an identical 5 story concrete building from a 10 story height (total of 20 stories), there would be no debate that portions of the lower building would be crushed to powder. That's the kind of energy release that went on in the collapse.