During a heavy snowstorm, a new Civil Engineering building at the University of Indiana collected 6 feet of snow on its roof. The Indiana alumni who designed the building forgot to account for snow loads and the storm caused the building to become highly overloaded. As a result, a single column in the middle of the building failed. Luckily no one was hurt, and the failure underwent extensive forensic testing to determine why only a single column failed under the overloading condition. The forensic study concluded that the applied load, the material properties, and all the dimensions for the failed column were exactly the same as the surrounding columns that did not fail. Thus, after millions of dollars spent in research, the University of Indiana Engineers have determined the problem inexplicable. Required:
Explain to the puzzled Hoosiers how a failure of this most likely occurred given the findings of the forensic study.