Infinite Corridor

The Infinite Corridor is the hallway, 251 meters (825 feet, 0.16 miles, 147 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. The corridor was designed as the central spine of the original set of MIT buildings designed by William W. Bosworth in 1913. The Infinite Corridor is slightly longer than that of the University Hall building at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, which measures 800 feet (240 m) long. It is, however, significantly shorter than the so called "K-Strasse" (K-street) in the Rost-/Silberlaube building of the Free University of Berlin which measures about 320 metres (1,050 ft).

Twice per year, in mid-November and in late January, the corridor lines up with the plane of the ecliptic, causing sunlight to fill the entire corridor, events that are celebrated by students and staff.

On occasion, students in the Transport Lab of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) have studied foot traffic in the Infinite Corridor, as a safer, more accessible model of highway traffic. In 1997, one student report made the following observations about the informal rules that seem to apply to Infinite Corridor traffic:

The rules of the road for the Infinite Corridor include: stay to the right, limit group size, pass on the left, form a line at bottlenecks, don't stop/slow down, no tailgating, traffic within corridor has right of way, no physical contact and no eye contact.

Officially, bicycles are allowed in the Infinite Corridor only if they are being pushed by a person walking and not ridden. Some alumni recall bicycling from the Mass Ave entrance to the Math Department in Building 2. Both bicycling and skateboarding are prohibited because of concerns about elastic collisions.

Because the heavy pedestrian traffic in the Infinite Corridor guarantees a large audience, it is a setting for some "hacks" (practical jokes), especially those of a serial nature such as a series of "Burma Shave" style signs. The "Mass Toolpike" hack in 1985 involved placing traffic signals, lane markings, and highway-like signs along the length of the Infinite Corridor. An April Fools' Day post from the Alumni Association blog Slice of MIT suggested that the corridor floor would be replaced with a self-powering moving walkway made of piezoelectric tiles.

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