Fraternity-Testvériség, 2010 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

2010-10-01 / 4. szám

Fraternity I Testvériség

Fehérvári Petra

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ote to readers: At the request of some of our readers, this article has been translated into English from Hungarian as it formerly appeared in the Fraternity magazine on page 6 of the Fall issue, 2010.

Mathematicians have revealed the secret of the Rubik’s Cube that the toy’s fans have been searching for for the past 30 years. An international team of researchers using computer time lent to them by Google has found every way that the Hungarian Ernő Rubik’s world-famous puzzle can be solved and, furthermore, they showed it can always be solved in 20 moves or less. One may suppose that even God would use a much more efficient algorithm, one that always uses the shortest sequence of moves, and this reference to its difficulty has been called God’s Algorithm because the number of moves this algorithm would take in the worst case scenario is called God’s Number. Finally, “God’s Number has been shown to be 20,’’said one of the researchers, who ran millions of possible cube positions on the computer before drawing his conclusion.

In addition to the numbers of moves, the length of time to solve the cube has kept fans of the puzzle excited. These same fans who are obsessed by the Cube prove their talent every year during several championships held around the world. The most recent world champion is a young man from the Netherlands who completed Rubik’s Cube in 7.8 seconds two years ago. Ernő Rubik’s 1974 invention enjoyed an overwhelming success world-wide, and it is still one of the most popular games in existence. You Tube has more than 38 thousand videos of talented people from all generations and countries who are able to solve the Cube.

for Completing the

The Ultimate Number Rubik’s Cube

Rubik’s Cube is enjoying another renaissance in the United States. The American vendor of the puzzle says that parents are trying to find toys for their children that they used to play with just to remind them of their own childhood. Also, the Cube is fashionable because it offers

new challenges and is almost indestructible. The most damage that a frustrated player can cause is to change the little self-adhesive colored squares so at least, if there is no other way without performing this harmless trick, he can successfully reach the long-awaited solution.

Ernő Rubik was born in Budapest, Hungary, July 13, 1944, during World War II. His father, Ernő Rubik, was a flight engineer at the Esztergom airplane factory, and his mother, Magdolna Szántó, was a poet. He graduated from the Technical University, Budapest Faculty of Architecture in 1967 and began postgraduate studies in sculpting and interior architecture. From 1971, he worked as an architect, and then became a professor at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. He has spent all his life in Hungary.

In the early 1980s, he became the editor of a game and puzzle journal called ... És játék (“... and games”), and then became self-employed in 1983, founding the Rubik Stúdió where he designed furniture and toys. In 1987, he became professor with full tenure; in 1990, he was elected the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy. At the Academy, he created the International Rubik Foundation to support especially talented young engineers and industrial designers. Presently, he is mainly working on video game development and architectural topics and is still leading the Rubik Studios. Rubik is a member of the USA Science and Engineering Festival’s Advisory Board.

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