A Youtube video that shows an MIT acceptance letter tube orbiting Earth in near space, dangling from a high-altitude balloon, has gone viral. That’s Erin King’s response to the Admissions Office challenge:
“2012 is the anniversary of an old MIT balloon hack, so we put a letter in all of the Early Action admit tubes telling them we wanted them to hack the tubes somehow, and set up http://hackthetubes.mitadmissions.org to collect responses,” says Chris Peterson, Admissions office counselor, as reported on BoingBoing. “Lots of them are great, but this one, from Erin King (MIT ’16) in Georgia, is the best.”
Erin King after a successful tube recovery.
Thanks to some help from her father and the Columbus, GA, amateur radio club, she sent her tube on a two-hour adventure that reach 91,000 feet and landed in a nearby pine tree. King used GPS-equipped ham radio transmitters with two call signs (hers and her dad’s) to track the position from the ground and captured the whole thing on HD video. Watch the video and get the technical details.
Enjoy the other creative takes on tube hacking:
Embalming the Tube—one of two hacks submitted by Miranda from Indiana involves ancient rituals with an Egyptian flavor. [video]
Sabrina turned it into a musical instrument. [video]
Xavier in Texas offered a photo of what came in his tube, a play on Harry Potter-esque interior spaces.
Stilt shoes from Catherine in Chicago, made she says, from “90 percent tape and 10 percent hope.” [video]
In what could be described as the tiniest–and cutest–attempted military coup of all time, thousands of armed soldiers stormed the Infinite Corridor on Wednesday, December 14, 2011. Fortunately for MIT, these soldiers were of the miniature, plastic, and stationary variety and their corridor-long presence was more hack than attack.
The green and white soldiers formed a variety of shapes, ranging from messages and greetings to equations and design.
What’s your take? Is there an underlining meaning behind the hack? Is it connected to the announcement of the Iraq War’s formal shutdown? Let us know in the comments below, or leave us a note on Facebook.
Image: Jay London
Image: Jay London
Image: Jay London
Image: Jay London
Image: Jay London
Image: Jay London
For previous hacks, view the MIT Gallery of Hacks. To view a hack from another perspective and see what it’s like to clean up after a hack, view our previous Slice post on the hack removal specialists–the facilities department–from 2009.
Hackers were on the loose this week at MIT, facing each other on either side of Mass. Ave.
Image: Katie Maloney
Perhaps in consideration of the recent cold weather, or maybe in conjunction with the burgeoning “Movember” movement, the Alchemist—the James Plensa sculpture in front of the Stratton Student Center—suddenly “grew” a mustache. No word yet on whether this is a permanent look, or just a weather-related necessity.
Image: Katie Maloney
Directly across the street, Lobby 7 at 77 Mass Ave. was altered with a seemingly ambiguous banner reading “</novemberRule>.” A quick web investigation shows that shows that the November Rule essentially states, “freshmen should be taken care of, not taken advantage of, until November 1st.” With November 1st in our rear-view, this could be a not-so-subtle reminder to first-year students.
12/6/11 Update: Thanks to Gina for sending along one more “Movember” related hack.
A 1980s hack pokes fun at campus overcrowding by putting a tiny dorm, 10-1000, on the Great Dome.
The MIT hacker is to be admired for pulling off the collegiate world’s cleverest and most elegant pranks, believes Professor Emeritus of Linguistics Jay Keyser. He told tales of MIT’s storied hacks March 23 on WGBH’s Callie Crossley Show in an episode titled “The Art of the Hack.”
In the video, Keyser describes some of his favorite hacks and burrows into the psychology of hack culture at MIT. Here’s how MIT World describes the video:
Even if the typical MIT hacker doesn’t qualify as a secret agent, he or she is to be admired for pulling off the collegiate world’s most surreptitious, elegant pranks, believes Jay Keyser. While Harvard students get a chuckle out of “putting panties over statues,” MIT students have placed a telephone booth and a police cruiser on top of the massive MIT dome and then safely exploded a weather balloon on the field of a Harvard-Yale game. Keyser is a fan of these generally anonymous and extremely clever technical pranks. And he’s burrowed into the psychology behind them. The students “are thumbing their nose at the Institute. ‘You want us to be engineers. You’re so damn hard on us. We’ll show you what we think of you.’ So they take us down a peg or two.” In fact, “hack culture is an important component of the mental health of the MIT student body,” Keyser claims. The difference between MIT and every other university, he says, is that MIT students “have bought into the value system of the university.” They’re under the constant burden of judgment and struggle every day with the knowledge that they’re among the best and the brightest. So hacks are “a coping mechanism, a way of putting on sunglasses on a very bright summer day.”
Hackers installed an illuminated Doctor Who-style police call box (also called the TARDIS—for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space) on the roof of Building 7 overlooking 77 Mass. Ave. for the start of Rush and Freshman Orientation. The banner reads
Hackers were in full form yesterday to celebrate the start of Campus Preview Weekend. Newly admitted students, their parents, and the MIT community were treated to quite a sight as they neared the MIT Media Lab. An upside-down lounge, game room, parlor, rec room—call it what you will—complete with pool table, lamp, and “wall” photo. Take a look.
Photo: Maggy Bruzelius.
Photo by Emily Muldoon Kathan.
Photo by Emily Muldoon Kathan.
Details included a working light, sleeping cat, and two highball glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Photo by Maggy Bruzelius.
There was also a pool table. Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan.
On top of which were hacking plans. Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan.
And there was a photograph on the "wall." Photo: Emily Muldoon Kathan.
People couldn't help but gawk at the impressive display. Photo: Maggy Bruzelius.
Happy April Fools’ Day! A few weeks ago we announced a Hacks at Home video contest and we’re please to present the winner.
Drum roll
Longtime appreciator and first-time hacker Jim Mottonen PhD ’89, a senior research associate in the Department of Physics & Optical Science at UNC-Charlotte. Mottonen turned the whole endeavor into a spirited family adventure, complete with code names for all of the mission’s participants. Mottonen (“Gristle”), his kids, Nathanael (“Secret Sauce”) and Frieda (“Fierce Monkey”), and friend Ryan Oliver (“Agent Oregano”) showed the UNC–Charlotte campus what this MIT tradition is all about.
“Hacking turned out to be quite an exhilarating family enterprise, like geocaching with an edge,” Mottonen says. “My kids and I were so inspired that we now have a hacking queue set up with future projects.”
Parents take note! You can add hacking to that list of fun together-time activities. There are only so many make-your-own-pottery studios and IMAX movies and putt-putt courses you can hit. Am I right?
But of course, nothing goes off without a hitch. Says Mottonen:
“The actual hack day events turned out fraught with unanticipated problems, like most projects. The steak blew off at first, until I borrowed a step stool from a nearby lab to secure it to the pickaxe. The video from my daughter’s camera could have been clearer, and I forgot to show her contribution of the giant bite-mark revealing a medium-rare cross-section. We put it up around 7:00 a.m. and by 11:00 a.m., the steak itself was gone to parts unknown. Perhaps someone decided to ‘claim’ it?”
Mottonen did alert the campus police of his undertaking beforehand with the following message sent from email username “ribeye”:
“The giant steak and lettering at the 29 entrance to campus is a harmless prank in the tradition of MIT hacking. If it survives the day, it will be removed tomorrow morning. No actual rib eyes were harmed in the making of this hack.”
A giant statue of the Greek goddess Athena appeared in MIT's Killian Court on the first day of final exams 2009.
Hacks, clever student stunts that enliven campus life and do no harm, are an MIT tradition. Now the MIT Press and the MIT Museum are revising Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranksat MIT in time for the pending 150th Institute anniversary in 2011. They need new material—and they are hoping that alumni will come forward to share stories and information.
The deadline looms! In fact, writer Eric Bender needs to hear from you by Friday, March 26. See ways to contact him below—and you can remain anonymous.
“In particular, I’m writing an essay about hacks from 2001 to today,” Bender says. “I’d love to hear from alums who have special knowledge of hacks in that period.”
Bender is particularly interested in these hacks:
Caltech cannon abduction
Apollo lunar module on the Dome
Solar-powered subway on the Dome
“In case of zombie attack, break glass”
Board games hack
Fire truck on the Dome (5th anniversary of 9/11)
Marriage proposal banner drop
Yellow cranks
Wright Flyer on the Dome
One Ring to Rule the Dome
Ready to share a tale or two? You can email Bender with a comment or set up a time to chat at ebender@mit.edu. Or leave voicemail at his day job, 617-732-2418.
Meanwhile feel free to visit Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People: the MIT Gallery of Hacks.
The world could use a few laughs these days, or chuckles, or even smiling nods of appreciation for supreme cleverness. Show off that irreverent MIT spirit and enter the Alumni Association’s Hacks @ Home video contest.
Here’s all you have to do:
Create a hack somewhere in the world
Record a short video of it (90 seconds max)
Upload said video to YouTube and submit a very quick entry form
Earn the admiration and respect of your peers—who knew it could be so easy?
Videos must be uploaded by March 25, 2010, by MIT alumni. Winning videos will be posted April 1 (I know, so fitting, right?). Here are all the details.
Bioengineering hack on Feb. 7. Photo: Eric Schmiedl ’09
Hack aficionado and photographer Eric Schmiedl ’09 captured a Feb. 7 hack in photos and this on-the-scene description:
Satirizing MIT’s newest major (Biological Engineering), hackers representing “Stepford Labs” at the MIT Department of Biological Engineering installed a display case full of “enhanced” simulated body parts in MIT’s Infinite Corridor on 2/7/10. The body parts included: a head with a functional video camera replacing an eye, a leg with a power socket, feet with rolling wheels, an “Avatar”-style head, a face with LEDs in the eyes (transmitting “IHTFP” in Morse code), a head with a “Matrix”-style socket in the neck, a neck featuring a jack for “IP over Voice” as well as analog audio, and a hand with a USB “thumb drive.”
