This course intends to facilitate student’s exploration in earthquake engineering through hands-on experiments. Students are grouped to design and build scaled building models using wood, glue, strings and rubber bands, which are loaded and tested on a shake table under simulated earthquake ground motion. Through the design, build and test process, students can observe the effect of different design variables and details on the test result. Students are then guided to interpret the observations, identify possible issues, explore relevant knowledge, and propose viable options for improvement. Students need to reflect what they have learned on a revised building model and contest other groups in a final competition.