No tension — where it appears
Named by 3 essays across 3 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.
Where the structure meets the ground, and when the bolts start working
Push a base plate off its middle third and it lifts off the foundation. The holding-down bolts then carry exactly nothing, and go on carrying nothing until the plate has crushed the concrete underneath it.
The weight that makes it safer
Every load in this collection makes a structure worse. A pinnacle does not. A masonry pier fails when the line of compression leaves the stonework, and adding weight at the top rotates that line back towards the vertical without adding anything the pier cannot carry — so the stone is not being strengthened, it is being aimed.
It does not buckle, it runs out of width
Every stability failure in this collection is a member that could have carried tension deciding to go sideways instead. Masonry cannot carry tension, and its failure under an eccentric load is not a bifurcation at all — the bearing area simply shrinks until it runs out. The capacity is exactly linear in the eccentricity, Euler's load is ten times anything allowed, and no material property appears until the very end.
Named alongside it
The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.
EccentricityBearing stressEquilibriumKernMasonrySelf weightStabilityArchBase plateBearingBucklingButtress