PapaGeoff

So at the end of The Lost Metal, with a duralumin spike, wax pushes off the top of a skyscraper and makes it to the ship miles away. It specifically says that the steel beams are bent backwards. This got the engineer in me thinking. How large are steel lines. Stress is equal to force over area and the size of the steel lines affects this greatly. A second question with this is: can a coinshot push off of multiple steel sources right next to each other in order to get a stronger push?