Tianjin No. 7 High School has won two championships in the "Structure Competition" portion of the 2016 International Youth Innovation Design Competition held at Columbia University in New York City this July, beating nearly 30 Chinese and American teams in the final round.

The competition required teams to use the materials offered by the organizer—such as sticks, glue, and cards—to build an anti-compression structure able to hold 40 kilograms. Among the teams able to complete the challenge, the one with the lightest structure will win.

Xu Beibei, the lead teacher for Tianjin No. 7 High School's team, said the match pushed the students, testing their knowledge of physics and pushing their ability to craft something themselves.

The Tianjin high school senior team created a 5.5 gram structure and the junior team invented a 5.9 gram one, with a weight-bearing ratio of 1:7,000. Both holders met the competition's requirements.

Liu Lei, the team leader for the senior team, said team members argued extensively about the best structure and no one would compromise, so they used experiments to determine the best one.

To win the final round, the Tianjin teams worked tirelessly to make their holders lighter and lighter.

Wang Haiteng, a technician for the team, said sanding the sticks is very difficult. They had to use abrasive paper to make the five-millimeter sticks become thinner, some as thin as 2.5 millimeters. Sometimes it took them four hours to finish one stick.

Team member Shen Shangwen, said the competition really opened their eyes because some other teams used lasers to shape the sticks and some cut holes through the middle of the material.

Michael Candel, one of the competition's judges, praised the competition, saying, "it is a fabulous program and the kids coming from China to get their first experience in America should be able to promote not only their interests in science, but it also gives them a nice flavor and taste for the US."

The teams participated in the first round of competition last October, entered the quarter-final match this March, and finally were named winners in July at the final competition. Tianjin No. 7 High School was the only Tianjin school to reach the final.