MIT Open Learning reaches all the way to the South Pole

John Della Costa, a researcher on the BICEP project stationed at the South Pole, uses MIT OpenCourseWare courses to fill downtime and build community among the isolated 45-person team. He started a weekly 'Fysics Fridays' series where the group watches physics lectures and documentaries, including MIT's 'Einstein, Oppenheimer, Feynman: Physics in the 20th Century' course. Because internet access is severely limited, Della Costa downloaded several MIT courses before arriving. The initiative caught the attention of MIT Professor David Kaiser, who now plans to host a special Zoom colloquium for the South Pole community.