Creative Speculation

that it matters over what time span the energy is delivered. It seems we've agreed on that. So now we've move past (by abandoning it) the earlier claim that the kinetic energy of the upper part had to collapse the lower part no matter how it was delivered. That claim was clearly incorrect.

Now the claim (which isn't Bazant's claim) is that we can assume that all the kinetic energy of the upper part was delivered in less time than it would take the lower part columns to rebound. I don't see how anyone can justify such an assumption. If it went against collapse then maybe there's an argument but it doesn't - it goes in favor of collapse. And we know that in the chaotic real life event it obviously wasn't true in at least some cases. In some cases the structures of the upper part would have failed first so that they would have delivered some fractional part of the overall kinetic energy during this new time interval that we're considering. So if in some cases in real life it wasn't the case then what justification can we find for assuming it in the idealized proxy? I'm not seeing it. In any event this isn't what Bazant's idealized model was based on.