The Infinite Corridor is a hallway that runs through the main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8 (from west to east).
Twice a year, in mid-November and in late January, the corridor lines up lengthwise with the position of the Sun, causing sunlight to fill the entire corridor. Named MIThenge, the event is celebrated by students, faculty, and staff.
The corridor is important not only because it links major MIT buildings, but also because it serves as the most direct indoor route between the east and west ends of the campus. The corridor was designed as the central spine of the original set of MIT buildings designed by William W. Bosworth in 1913.
The Infinite Corridor is slightly longer than that of the University Hall building at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, which measures long. It is, however, significantly shorter than the so called "K-Straße" (K-street) in the Rost-/Silberlaube building of the Free University of Berlin, which measures about .
On occasion, students in the Transport Lab of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) have studied foot traffic in the Infinite Corridor, as a safer, more accessible model of highway traffic. In 1997, one student report made the following observations about the informal rules that seem to apply to Infinite Corridor traffic:
The rules of the road for the Infinite Corridor include: stay to the right, limit group size, pass on the left, form a line at bottlenecks, don't stop/slow down, no tailgating, traffic within corridor has right of way, no physical contact and no eye contact.
Because the heavy pedestrian traffic in the Infinite Corridor guarantees a large audience, it is a setting for some "hacks" (practical jokes), especially those of a serial nature such as a series of "Burma Shave" style signs. The "Mass Toolpike" hack in 1985 involved placing traffic signals, lane markings, and highway-like signs along the length of the Infinite Corridor.