Talk:Infinite Corridor

How bizarre that the actual length of the Infinite Corridor is not stated. Doesn't anyone know? Or is there an intention to defend a religious principle that the corridor is truly "infinite?" Dpbsmith (talk) 12:26, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC) I've added a very rough value, but surely someone has measured this with exquisite precision. In smoots, to microsmoot accuracy, I would hope. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:38, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Actually according to http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Physics/8-01TFall-2004/E3DC7DDB-E3A3-494E-8A6A-10E5E7287600/0/ps01.pdf MIT has published then length of the infinite corridor somewhere, in any case it is known to people in the class of '08 ;). --193.154.194.167 12:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

"longest continuous straight corridor in the world."

I am very skeptical about this

It is often cited as the longest continuous straight corridor in the world.

and plan to remove it if a citation is not provided. After all, if it is "often cited" then it should be possible to find one of those "citations." But frankly I don't believe it. What about the Pentagon, for example? Dpbsmith (talk) 20:10, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Red Rocks Community College in Colorado has a quarter-mile building with an almost perfect hallway: http://www.rrcc.edu/catalogs/20072008.pdf, Page 5. The hallway gets a *little* funky at the very end where the stairs are. It's hard to imagine that there are no airports, etc., with longer ones. "The quarter-mile-long building houses everything from state-of-the-art multimedia graphics computer labs to construction technology worksites, to traditional classrooms and labs, and health-careers practice areas."

"as it would with any straight corridor?"

On two days each year, the sun sets in alignment with the Infinite Corridor (as it would with any straight corridor)

I realize the purpose of this is to make it clear that there is nothing magical about the corridor's alignment, but surely this needs further qualification in order to be true? Unless I'm disoriented (and my wife will tell you I have no sense of direction), the sun would never set in alignment with a long straight north-south corridor.

Surely this is only true of a corridor that is aligned within a few degrees of east-west (where I haven't a clue as to the proper value of "few". In order to sound as if I know something I could mumble something about "analemmas" and "the equation of time" but it would be posing). Dpbsmith (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Smoots as measurement

Seems reasonable in an article about what is basically a piece of MIT trivia anyway.

The manual of style says

use SI units as the main units in science articles, unless there are compelling historical or pragmatic reasons not to do so.... For other articles, either Imperial or metric units may be used as the main units of measurement.

I don't see anything in the manual of style prohibiting the use of "nonstandard" units. It says only the the appropriate standard unit should be present, and it is. I see cubits used in the article on Bethphage, versts in the article on Antonievo-Siysky Monastery, and hogsheads in the article on James River Bateau.

Where does it say that nonstandard units of measurement are never to be used at all? Dpbsmith (talk) 19:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

the thrust of the manual of style is that units should be selected in a way that clarifies the size of the thing for a general audience. who is helped by the use of smoots? such an audience is very small, and are likely to know more about the corridor than is here. in fact, I would say it's pretty unlikely that using smoots adds anything to the sentence; anyone who knows smoots will know the SI or imperial units. all this really does is make the sentence confusing. a trivia section later on saying "the corridor is blah blah smoots in length" would make sense. the fraction of a mile is quite clearly pointless.

if the original plans for the building actually had the measurements in smoots, then we'd have a case for using them as the primary unit here. but they don't, do they? we wouldn't describe an AU in inches, nor an elephant in milligrams. we should select units in a way that describes the size to a general audience. that's meters (feet). —ptk✰fgs 19:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

More MIThenge predictions

I added some text about new, possibly better MIThenge predictions, including moon alignment predictions. I've been working on these for a few years with several people in the Boston area, including Keith Winstein (who made the original MIT webpages on the subject) and Ken Olum (who made the original calculations, and several subsequent observations.) We have reason to believe that the azimuth measurements used to make the original predictions are not quite right, but it doesn't seem that the MIT pages are updated any more. I've made links to more updated information hosted at my site. I know it could be considered bad form to put my own name into the article as a link to my pages, but I didn't want the same "MIThenge site" or "MIThenge page" text for the link as the official MIT link. Please feel free to class up the link however you'd like. --Eliasen 23:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

photos

I noticed the "requested photographs" note on here and added a photo of MIThenge - what sorts of photographs, exactly, are we looking for here? I live on campus so I can take some photos of the Corridor, but I'm not exactly sure of what... the hallway IS long and it IS hard to show the entire thing in a photograph. int3gr4te 02:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)