Fold your wings and fly
Students, faculty and staff are invited to compete next Thursday in a paper airplane contest sponsored by the MIT Libraries as part of "Ideas Take Flight," the second annual libraries' week at MIT Sept. 15-19. This year's theme commemorates the centennial of the first flight in December 1903 with displays highlighting the flight-related collections of each library, a flight trivia and prize drawing on Sept. 19 in Barker Library, and other special events.
Registration for the paper airplane contest will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 18 in the Humanities Library. Flights take off at 5 p.m. and judging starts at 6 p.m. Planes may be entered in three categories: classic (planes made of 8.5x11 copy paper), freestyle (planes made of any size and type of paper, and aesthetic (planes made of anything, but with a paper component).
Classic and freestyle planes will be judged by distance (measured in smoots) and duration of flight; aesthetic entries will be judged on looks alone. The contest is open to all members of the MIT community. See http://libraries.mit.edu/orientation/2003/librariesweek.html for contest rules and other activities planned for the week.
In addition to the Aeronautics and Astronautics Library, the MIT Libraries' flight collections include Dewey Library's material about the aeronautics industry, Barker Library's materials on the engineering aspects of flight, Rotch Library's holdings on planning and building airports, and the Humanities Library's books on the history of flight and flight-related novels.
Enterprise Forum event tonight
"Applied Research @ MIT: Where Will it Apply?" is the topic of an Enterprise Forum panel tonight (Sept. 10) from 6-9 p.m., in the Tang Center. Speakers will be John D. Joannopoulos, the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics; Linda Griffith, professor of chemical and biological engineering; Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms; and Lita Nelsen, director of the Technology Licensing Office.
Walk-in registration begins at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 for members, $25 for non-members and free for students with ID. For more information, see http://www.mitforumcambridge.org/events/september03.htm.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 10, 2003.
