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
ELI5 answer would be there wasn’t a shockwave similar to Beirut or Oklahoma City because the town tower hits were plane crashes not explosions.
An explosion and its shockwave come from a chemical reaction creating a rapidly INCREASING release of energy. 9/11 had plane crashes that would DECREASE their release of energy as the planes decelerated and broke apart dispersing that energy into the building.
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