A group of Romanian students from the Technical University in Cluj (UTC) won first place in the 2014 Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition held by Earthquake Engineering Research Institute in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 25.

They went into the contest with the model of a 29-floor building which proved it can withstand earthquakes of up to 10 degrees on the Richter scale, according to Digi 24 news station.

The structure of the model was made out of balsa wood, a very light and elastic tropical tree and the design of the structure gave it rigidity and seismic performances making it practically indestructible.

Even an extreme test that forced the testing devices to their limit didn’t manage to break the model.

Teams from 36 universities all around the world participated in the competition, among which prestigious names such as Stanford and Caltech.

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