Infinite Corridor
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The Infinite Corridor is the hallway, 251 meters (825 feet, 0.15625 miles, or just under 148 smoots) long, that runs through the main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8 (from west to east). The corridor is important not only because it links those buildings, but also because it serves as the most direct indoor route between the east and west ends of the campus. "Traffic" in the corridor can be therefore quite heavy at times, and in fact several "hacks" (pranks) have involved placing traffic signals, lane markings, and highway-like signs along its length.
The steps to Lobby 7 from Massachusetts Avenue are the main entrance from the dorms, buses and fraternities on west campus and the back bay. Food vendors often park by the entrance. Lobby 7 is often used for concerts. During the 1970s, the pillars were used by the liberal Alternative Advertising and somewhat less liberal Pillar Productions where students would scrawl responses to issues of the day such as nuclear power or whether disco sucked. A display of Air Force art was once withdrawn after vandalism in the lobby. Banners are also often hung from Lobby 7, including the occasional hack such as "don't let the Grinch steal your Christmas" in reference to the common complaints about the campus Christmas tree.
The corridor is decorated with many bulletin boards and display cases which have been remarkably unchanged over the years, though some such as the GAMIT board have been periodically vandalized over the years. The cashier office wall was painted as giant dollar bill. The center of the corridor, known as "Lobby 10" (underneath the Great Dome, in building 10), features walls on which are engraved the names of MIT alumni who died in each of several wars. In Lobby 10, it is quite common to find several booths with students advertising upcoming events and activities, selling used books or Chinese pastries.
The Infinite Corridor has five floors. The first floor is the most travelled level, and is often the only one referred to as the Infinite Corridor. It is half a floor above ground level at Massachusetts Avenue (the west end), and in areas is a full floor up, with a parking lot entrance passing underneath (this entrance crosses the basement-level corridor at grade). At its east end it is also about half a floor up, with nearby stairs going up to the second floor and down to the first floor of adjacent, newer buildings, which were built with lower ceilings.
On several days each year, the sun sets in alignment with the Infinite Corridor (as it would with any straight corridor with an approximately east-west orientation) and shines along its entire length. This is known as "MIThenge", a reference to Stonehenge's alignment with the sun. These occur on several days around January 31 and November 11. The MIThenge site has more information about this phenomenon, as well as about the Infinite Corridor in general. It should be cautioned that the calculations on the official MIThenge pages may use a slightly incorrect value for the azimuth of the corridor, making the predictions somewhat incorrect, with errors on the magnitude of 1 or 2 days in predicted observable dates. Moon alignments, though likely much harder to see and less regular than sun alignments, also occur.
During the 1960s, a common Technology Day demonstration used the unobstructed length of the corridor to demonstrate the speed of light in a simple, direct way. A strobe light, photocell, and oscilloscope were positioned at one end of the corridor, and a mirror at the other. The round-trip time was about two microseconds. The photocell picked up both the direct and reflected flashes. The flash duration being well under a microsecond, the result was two nicely separated pulses on the oscilloscope screen.
[edit] External links
- MIThenge and photo
- Alan Eliasen has lots of information about MITHenge solar and lunar events and predictions for future dates.
