Infinite Corridor
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The Infinite Corridor is the hallway, 251 meters (825 feet) long, that runs through the main building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the parts it passes through are designated as parts of buildings 7, 3, 10, 4 and 8 (from west to east). The corridor is important because of the layout of the campus which makes the corridor the most direct indoor route between the west campus residence halls and the classrooms, as well as the main route between east campus and west campus. The corridor is decorated by many bulletin boards and display boxes which have been remarkably unchanged over the years. The center of the corridor (under the Great Dome) contains a wall on which are listed the names of MIT alumni who died in each of several wars.
The Infinite Corridor has five floors. The ground 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 under (this entrance crosses the basement of the 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 newer buildings, which were built with lower ceilings.
On two days each year, the sun sets in alignment with the Infinite Corridor. These days occur in late January and mid-November. The MIThenge site (http://web.mit.edu/planning/www/mithenge.html) has more information about this phenomenon, as well as about the Infinite Corridor in general.
During the 1960s, a common Technology Day demonstration used the unobstructed length of the corridor to demonstrate the finite 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.