Quotes about MIT

  • As a top engineering school, MIT’s School of Engineering has an opportunity as well as an obligation to prepare students to lead the engineering professions.

    Subra Suresh, Dean of MIT School of Engineering

  • Every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good.

    Aristotle

  • In the fields of observation chance favors only those minds which are prepared.

    Louis Pasteur, Nineteenth century chemist and microbiologist

  • Stanley Kubrick knew we had good graphics around MIT and came to my lab to find out how to do it. We had some really good stuff. I was very impressed with Kubrick; he knew all the graphics work I had ever heard of, and probably more.

    Marvin Minsky, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT

  • Mens et manus: With mind and hand we set forth. Together, we will give shape to the future—the future of MIT, our nation, and our world.

    Charles Marstiller Vest, Fifteenth MIT President

  • The world-enforced distinction between the practical and the scientific worker is utterly futile, and the whole experience of modern times has demonstrated its utter worthlessness.

    William Barton Rogers, Founder of MIT

  • The values of engineering—the rigor; the implacable curiosity; the disciplined creativity; the appetite for good, old-fashioned hard work; the passionate, enthusiastic, can-do, hands-on, fix-it-now attitude—those values are and always will be the values of MIT.

    Susan Hockfield

  • MIT is—and should be—expected to provide leadership for improving the level of scientific literacy and for nurturing talent in—and for—today's world.

    Paul Edward Gray, Fourteenth MIT President

  • A scientist discovers that which exists. An engineer creates that which never was.

    Theodore von Kármán

  • To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

    Nicolaus Copernicus

  • He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

    Leonardo da Vinci

  • A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.

    Freeman John Dyson, Physicist

  • The world has never needed MIT as much as it does now. Think how many of the major challenges of this uncertain, unsettled age are shaped by science, technology or daunting problems of quantitative analysis and complex synthesis.

    Susan Hockfield

  • The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is... the teaching, not of the manipulations and minute details of the arts... but the inculcation of all the scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them.

    William Barton Rogers, Founder of MIT

  • MIT’s roots go deep into the soil of engineering, our branches are always reaching up toward the light of real-world applications and answers.

    Susan Hockfield

  • Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

    Archimedes

  • There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

    Louis Pasteur, Nineteenth century chemist and microbiologist

  • The basic question is, can we in fact control our destiny? I myself have faith that with intelligence and determination we can.

    Julius Adams Stratton, Eleventh MIT President

  • I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

    Charles Darwin

Ask An Engineer

  • Could a GPS device reveal my location to others?

    Not unless you want it to, according to Seth Teller, professor of computer science and electrical engineering. Whether you want it to or not depends on whether you're a teenager evading nosy parents or in a broken-down car on a lonely country road. "An ordinary Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, such as those found in commercial dashboard navigation systems... (continue reading)

  • Why do submarines move more like torpedoes than fish?

    While a fish's low-drag scales and body shape make it better suited at sliding through the water than submarines, fish do not have the advantage of a rotating machine behind them. "There's nothing simpler to Industrial Age people than building a propulsion device—an electric motor, an internal combustion engine or a turbine—connected to a propeller," said Franz S. Hover, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. "The propeller on a submarine is a lot like... (continue reading)

  • How does temperature affect the "life" of a battery?

    In general, higher temperatures improve the rate at which you can charge or discharge a battery. As a result, a battery's total energy or run time at a given power rating will tend to improve when, say, you're on vacation in Phoenix. However, says Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Ceramics in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the battery's number of recharges and its total time in service decreases if you linger too long in hot climes... (continue reading)

  • How do medicines know where in the body to start working?

    When you take Tylenol or Advil for a headache or a sore muscle, the pain disappears. It seems like the medication zeroes in on your aches and pains like magic; it "knows" what to do. The fact is, most medicines are pretty dumb in this respect, says Institute Professor Robert Langer, who holds hundreds of patents for biomimetic materials fabricated based on natural processes found in biological systems. Such materials can be used for drug delivery and tissue engineering, among other applications... (continue reading)

  • What is the relationship between the length of a boat and its maximum speed?

    A boat's ability to go fast is a balancing act between its length and the power driving it, whether supplied by wind or engine, says Jerry Milgram, William I. Koch Professor of Marine Technology. In the 1800s, William Froude, researching warships for the British Admiralty, observed that models run at speeds in proportion to the square root of their length... (continue reading)

  • How does a particle accelerator work, and why are such large structures necessary to increase the energy of such tiny particles?

    Modern particle accelerators are either linear, where the particles are accelerated in a straight line, or circular, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that just started operating at CERN. In both, electric fields accelerate... (continue reading)

  • How does an airplane stop on a runway after landing? It doesn't seem like normal brake pads would be enough at those speeds.

    When a Boeing 777 comes barrelling down the runway at 150-plus mph, it sometimes feels to its passengers like the plane is struggling mightily to stop. That's only because it is, says Steven R. Hall, professor of aeronautics and astronautics... (continue reading)

  • Can my Internet connection be "tapped" like a phone line?

    In a word, yes. Robert T. Morris, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, proposes this scenario: You're sitting in an MIT lecture hall, using MIT's ubiquitous wireless network to Google something. "Other laptops in the room with wireless hardware will... (continue reading)

  • What is the energy of gasoline compared to same cost of natural gas in BTUs per dollar? Fuel oil? Electricity?

    First, a quick lesson in terminology: A BTU (or British thermal unit) is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of a pint of water one degree Fahrenheit. As such it is often used to compare the energy content of different in fuels. A wooden kitchen match generates approximately one BTU—a gallon gasoline contains... (continue reading)

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