Looking back at the violent destruction of two of the United States’ most prominent buildings in the September 9, 2011 terrorist attacks is helping ASU engineering students learn about ways to prevent future structural failures. Fulton Schools Professor Barzin Mobasher today examines the fall of the World Trade Center towers in New York to teach students about the importance of the technical, engineering and design aspects of skyscraper construction. A forensic analysis of the towers’ fall emphasizes that thoroughly evaluating all potential modes of structural failure is critical to preventing such disasters in the future, he says. Such an analysis, Mobasher points out, has revealed that the fires caused by the attacks and the particularly the intense heat the flames produced were a root cause structural tension and fracturing the led to the towers’ collapse.