Why were there no shock waves when the planes hit the Twin Towers?

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A 9/11 documentary showed up in my YouTube recommendations so I decided to watch it. As I was doing so, I realized that there were no shock waves when the planes hit the towers. You can hear the sound of the explosion travelling, but no massive window smashing/shattering like in the Oklahoma bombing or the Beirut explosion or even the [Black Tom explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Tom_explosion#Explosion).

Why weren’t windows in New York blown out en masse that day? Was it due to the nature of the explosion? Thank you in advance!

In: Physics

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You only get shockwaves from high explosives. The shockwaves is caused by the combustion front going faster then the speed of sound. But neither the force of the airplanes hitting the buildings or the burning of their fuels took place at speeds even close to the speed of sound. So there would not be any shockwave.

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