Halliday, Resnick & Walker — Equilibrium and Elasticity: Problem Problem_81

Brick wall height. Many houses and short buildings have brick walls, but tall buildings never have load-bearing brick walls. One reason might be that the load of a tall wall on the bottom bricks exceeds the yield strength \( S_y \) of brick. Consider a column of bricks with height \( H \). Take the density of brick to be \( \rho = 1.8 \times 10^3 \text{ kg/m}^3 \) and neglect the mortar between the bricks. What value of \( H \) puts the bottom brick at the yield strength of \( S_y = 3.3 \times 10^7 \text{ N/m}^2 \)?