Looking for top "geek" and "awesome" schools...

<p>I mean along the lines on MIT,Caltech...Where they hack scoreboards, steal cannon, hack the MBTA,dump sodium in the Charles, and do things like this
MIT</a> hack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

<p>Also I want them to pump out awesome research by the truckload.</p>

<p>What else are you interested in? Major? size? location?</p>

<p>Either Aerospace/Mech/Electical Engineering or Physics.</p>

<p>any tech/engineering school probably has a strong geek culture. try carnegie mellon. </p>

<p>what else are you looking for in a school?</p>

<p>Strong Science and Engineering program
Lots and Lots of Research
and what I already posted</p>

<p>Harvey Mudd College sounds like something else you should look at.</p>

<p>Edit: Nice username, by the way. Its a fair assumption that its referring to Portal, right?</p>

<p>They dumped sodium in water? Isn't that dangerous (if I remember right, sodium is scarily reactive with water)?</p>

<p>Caltech did that too, and with lithium and potassium too</p>

<p>Of course it's dangerous. And it makes a big explosion.</p>

<p>That's why it's fun.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The reaction of sodium and water is a familiar one in chemistry labs, and is reasonably safe if amounts of sodium smaller than a pencil eraser are used and the reaction is done behind a plastic shield by people wearing eye protection. However, the sodium-water reaction does** not scale up well*, and is **treacherous* when larger amounts of sodium are used. Larger pieces of sodium melt under the heat of the reaction, and the molten ball of metal is buoyed up by hydrogen and may appear to be stably reacting with water, until splashing covers more of the reaction mass, causing thermal runaway and an explosion which scatters molten sodium, lye solution, and sometimes flame.<a href="18.5%20g%20explosion%20%5B2%5D">/B</a> This behavior is **unpredictable, and among the alkali metals it is usually sodium which invites this surprise phenomenon, because lithium is not reactive enough to do it, and potassium is so reactive that chemistry students are not tempted to try the reaction with larger potassium pieces.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Interesting concept of fun. ;)</p>

<p>People have already mentioned them, but, Carnegie Mellon and Harvey Mudd.</p>

<p>(I am an MIT alum, and those two and Caltech are the ones that I normally heard people describe as being both very strong engineering schools and similar culturally to us.)</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins also fits the bill.</p>

<p>Hopkins students once stole "Testudo", the University of Maryland's mascot (a huge and heavy statue of a terrapin turtle) before a lacrosse game and, when it appeared at Hopkins, a riot ensued. Testudo is now fully embedded in concrete at College Park.</p>

<p>O course I am refer to Portal</p>

<p>O course I am refer to Portal
So I got </p>

<p>CMU
Harvey Mudd
Hopkins to some extant </p>

<p>any place else?</p>

<p>The MIT sodium drop is controversial, particularly after last year, when it may have caused some serious burns to cleanup crews. Goggle 'MIT sodium drop' for more info. Generally, it is tossed into the Charles in modest quantities from a bridge. Quanties vary from year to year - up to a pound, I've heard.</p>

<p>^^^^^
Still sounds like fun</p>

<p>For the sake of your pocketbook, you might investigate Cooper Union (in NYC) and Olin (in Boston). I can't speak to their "geek" culture, but they are selective, techy, and potentially tuition-free.</p>

<p>^^^
Isn't Olin even harder to get in then MIT?</p>

<p>bump
(10 char min)</p>

<p>Olin is awesome, but I've never heard of any really big, MIT-style hacks happening there.</p>