From the derived equations, it can be seen the close similarities between the critical stress for a column and for a plate. As the width b shrinks, the plate acts more like a column as it increases the resistance to buckling along the plate's width. The increase of a allows for an increase of the number of sine waves produced by buckling along the length, but also increases the resistance from the buckling along the width. This creates the preference of the plate to buckle in such a way to equal the number of curvatures both along the width and length. Due to boundary conditions, when a plate is loaded with a critical stress and buckles, the edges perpendicular to the load cannot deform out-of-plane and will therefore continue to carry the stresses. This creates a non-uniform compressive loading along the ends, where the stresses are imposed on half of the effective width on either side of the specimen, given by the following: