An MIT Alumni Association Publication
Slice of MIT Top Stories 2014

What do a Jeopardy! superstar, a battle of armrests, and fake MIT news from The Onion have in common? They’re all featured in Slice of MIT’s top 14 stories of 2014.

Relive all things quirky at MIT in 2014, including our most popular feature, the epic Hack Madness Tournament that named MIT’s hack of a 1982 hack of a Harvard-Yale game as the MIT’s community’s all-time favorite hack.

We hope Slice kept you entertained and informed in 2014. Thank you for reading. Happy New Year!

  1. The Harvard-Yale Football Game is MIT Hack Madness Champion: The game outlasted 31 MIT hacks, including the Caltech Cannon Heist.
  2. Ask an Engineer—How Do Birds Sit on Power Lines without Getting Electrocuted? There’s a reason you've never seen a bird straddle two wires.
  3. MIT Living Wage Calculator: Why Higher Wages Help Everybody: Showing the gap between the cost of necessities and the minimum wage.
  4. Waiting 37 Years for an MIT Degree: He now goes by Michael Zelin '81.
  5. Welcoming the MIT 5: The Class of ’18 includes five pals from LA's Polytechnic High.
  6. Ask an Engineer—Why is Speed at Sea Measured in Knots? Knots are the term for nautical speed. Why?
  7. Prepare for the Playoffs—An MIT Football Primer: A recap of the Engineers’ historic season.
  8. The Onion’s Best (Fake) Stories About MIT: More than 50 Onion stories mention MIT—here’s our 10 favorites.
  9. Record-Breaking MIT Alumna Questions the Jeopardy! Answers: Julia Collins’ 20 consecutive victories rank third-best all time.
  10. Ask an Engineer—Why Hasn’t Commercial Air Travel Gotten Any Faster Since the 1960s? Will we ever travel at supersonic speed?
  11. Armrest Wars—Designing an End to Elbow Battles: No more battles with a stranger for an armrest on a plane.
  12. Ask an Engineer—How do the Blades of a Jet Engine Start Turning? Here’s how commercial airlines start their engines.
  13. Who Coded Pied Piper for HBO’s Silicon Valley? Director Mike Judge relied on an alumnus’ algorithms to lend authenticity.
  14. Meet Elon Musk’s Top MIT Talent Many of his companies' employees graduated from MIT.
Do you have a favorite MIT story from 2014? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter.