A cornerstone of MIT culture is the "hacking" ideology: taking everyday objects, places, and situations and creatively transforming them into something new, surprising, and often funny.
Bring these two together, and you have a tradition on its own: the first hacks by the freshman class are on the very tubes in which they learned of their admission.
When I received my tube back in March, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. My specialties were in math, computer programming, and robotics (mostly in that order). While these in theory could have yielded something creative, I was having a hard time coming up with any ideas that weren't prohibitively expensive, already done, or simply boring. So what did I do? I did what any self-respecting self-thought creative person would do, and changed directions completely, to a field where I had only limited success in the past: mechanical engineering.
To be specific, I decided to build a catapult.
To be even more specific, I decided to build a Da Vinci catapult, a design based around arms being tensioned by means of rope wound around a central column (which, of course, would be the admissions tube itself). Details on the construction and elements of this project are included in the slideshow below:
Unfortunately, due to some fundamental design issues, the catapult didn't have anywhere close to the launching power I was hoping for--but even so, I found it a fun diversion and tribute to the institute I'll be calling home for the next few years.
Hack on!
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