Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20140815002519/@comment-25308133-20140818204703

I just rewatched the episode and I realized the writers, or probably more specifically Monty (since he handles most of action), were even more clever then I'd initially realized. The final destruction of the mech: Yang hits it and it breaks apart. Some people were a little critical of that, considering it was a major piece of military hardware, others just chalked it up to Yang's semblance causing her strike to just hit that hard. But what actually happened was a perfect example of thermal shock. Ruby and Weiss's Ice Flower combo rapidly cooled the mech (in addition to slowing it down which was the primary purpose of the move) and then Yang's fire punch rapidly heated it back up, causing the metal to suffer thermal shock and fracture, thus the mech basically shatters. I'm not sure if Ruby actually knows enough about physics to have actually planned it that way, but that's the likely explanation.