I believe 9/11 was an inside job now

[Tiberius]

It's quite laughable to think that the failure of one "critical" column triggered the building into a perfect free-fall collapse. As a civil engineering student, I can guarantee you NO building is desgined with a self destruct button in the form of a "critical beam". That's just ridiculous. You make it so that the building has no way of collapsing even if a few members have failed. Over-compensating is key in civil engineering.

Perhaps you should learn about how WTC7 was actually built then, because it wasn't a standard construction, owing to the fact they had to build it over an electricity substation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYzLu7gDbJs

Additionally, one of the theories for the collapse of WTC7 involved exactly what you think is laughable...the failure of a single column: http://www.structuremag.org/Archives/200...-Nov07.pdf

The building should have collapsed unevenly - towards the debris-struck side - if that's what caused it to collapse.

It wasn't the debris that caused it to collapse. It was the uncontrolled fires that spread through the building. The debris started the fires, yes, but I don't think you'll find anyone claiming they were the direct cause of the collapse.

Except the bottom gave way and fell evenly at basically a free-falling acceleration. It's quite the miracle for random debris, fire and just the overall uneven damage to do that.

Have you ever watched a video of the collapse? Go watch it again. You'll see part of the penthouse collapse into itself before the outside starts to fall down. This wasn't a free falling building by any calculation.

Then not only explain the mechanics to me, but the physics of how uneven damage to one side causes the building to free-fall.

Fires spreading throughout the building...plus I never said it free-falled (nor does any evidence suggest it did).

Engineering/physics 101: columns provide vertical resistance. Half a building giving way means that the structure above the failed columns now begin to accelerate. This however doesn't translate as a horizontal force. The other half of the columns are still supporting the weight above them. The end result is that half the building gives way, and given the benefit of the doubt, the side that is falling might actually pull the other side *horizontally*, hence why I say it should've fallen towards the weakened side.

Again, look at the actual structure of the building. It wasn't built to a standard frame. If the fires had been put out, it's likely the building would not have collapsed at all. The building fell not due to the damage one side of it took, but due to the fires which raged for hours throughout the building.