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🎮🧠 MIT Hack Culture Level: LEGENDARY

In 2012, MIT students turned the Green Building—a 295-foot-tall campus skyscraper—into a fully playable game of TETRIS. Yes, seriously.

Using the building’s 153 windows as pixels, hackers rigged up custom circuitry and LED lights to create a giant, vertical arcade screen. Passersby could walk up and play the game in real-time, watching colorful blocks fall from the top of the building.

It wasn’t just a tech flex—it was art, engineering, and fun rolled into one.

At MIT, hacking isn’t about breaking the rules—it’s about creativity, wit, and tradition. And few hacks have lit up the night (literally) like this one.

🕹️💡 Where else can a game of Tetris become a city-sized monument to imagination?

Two times during the year, the setting sun aligns with the Infinite Corridor at MIT. In mid-November and in late January, when this occurs, and atmospheric conditions are right, sunlight streams down the entire 825 feet of the corridor. This celestial phenomenon is known as MIThenge.

Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT

Image: Christine Danlioff/MIT

Moungi Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry, got a call from Stockholm early this morning which is about 3,538,606.2 smoots from Cambridge. Happy Nobel Smoot Day!

What is a smoot?

One smoot is equal to Oliver Smoot's height, 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m). 

2018 MITHenge photo: Hongzi Mao

Twice a year, in January and November, the setting sun aligns perfectly with MIT’s 825-foot-long Infinite Corridor.

Planetary scientist Richard Binzel describes MIThenge as “a major cultural moment on campus when the heavens and MIT seem to align.”