Put your building designs to the test! Construct a structure, then trigger earthquakes to see how seismic waves propagate and how different designs resist — or fail to resist — collapse.
Buildings collapse when seismic vibrations match their natural resonant frequency. Rigid buildings shatter; flexible ones sway but survive. Modern seismic design uses base isolators and dampers to absorb earthquake energy.
Choose building materials and structure. Click earthquake to trigger shaking. Change magnitude and frequency to find the resonance point that destroys your structure.
The 1985 Mexico City earthquake collapsed buildings of 8–18 storeys while shorter and taller buildings survived. Soft lake-bed soil amplified seismic waves at exactly the resonant frequency of those specific buildings.