A wave almost eight inches tall rolled through a pool at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory. Seconds later, the breaker surged over a dozen hastily constructed model buildings. All but one of them took the hit. But the next wave, double the size of the first, smacked into the wooden structures. Nearly all were swept away.

OSU's wave lab had a busy day Tuesday, as about 80 students in hydraulic engineering courses and 20 Sweet Home High School math students learned about construction and the devastating power of tsunamis.

On Saturday, about six OSU students and faculty will set up a similar exercise in Washington, D.C., for visitors at the National Building Museum. The National Science Foundation asked OSU to represent it during the museum's annual Discover Engineering Day.

"It's a pretty big deal," said Alicia Lyman-Holt, education and outreach coordinator for the wave lab.

Museum visitors and their children will be able to use building blocks to set up structures and test them in a 15-foot-long portable wave flume.

OSU's Tsunami Wave Basin at the lab is the largest facility of its type in the world, at 50 meters by 25 meters.

"I want to study structures, primarily bridges," said Nik Gordon, a junior in civil engineering from Vancouver, Wash. He showed off his group's three-story-high building, which was about seven inches tall.

"It's supposed to be a 'run-to-safety' structure," he said.

A ping-pong ball contained at the top of the model represented the people who had been able to "evacuate vertically" - in other words, run to the top of the building. If the ball washed away, that meant everybody died.

The students built their structures that day using small wood pieces and double-sided tape. Gordon said the small amount of material and limited time resulted in some creative solutions.

Sweet Home junior Brock Cota and two of his classmates put a triangular wedge at the front of their building to deflect the wave's impact. The strategy worked. Six of the eight high school buildings collapsed under the 7.8-inch wave, which is the equivalent of a 30-foot tsunami in real life. But Cota's structure held firm.

Skyler Warner, an OSU civil engineering student from Grants Pass, was as impressed with the facility as the lesson. "It's nice seeing where our grant money is going here," he said.

Kyle Odegard covers Oregon State University. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.