Rubik’s cube deconstruction cont’d
The video below shows Paulina as she is taking apart a standard Rubik’s cube. During her exploration, Paulina found out that when it comes to Rubik’s cubes it is fairly easy to disassemble the cube, but it is extremely important that you do it in the right way:
To pull apart the Rubik’s cube, put it on a hard flat surface. With a thin blunt instrument such as a medium sized flathead screwdriver (don’t use a knife or any other sharp instrument), gently work the screw driver into the gap directly above one of the centre spindles - don’t try this on a corner, or it will snap. When the screwdriver is in a few millimetres, gently lever the so the edge piece is slowly forced up. The piece should suddenly pop up, but don’t press too hard. With this piece removed, all the remaining pieces can be slid out.
It took Paulina approx. five minutes to remove all the pieces, which, as you probably can understand, is not much of a record.
Some useless facts:
- The Rubik’s cube was named after one of its inventors: Erno Rubik (patent in 1974).
- In March 1970, Harry D. Nichols invented a 2×2x2 “Puzzle with Pieces Rotatable in Groups” and filed a U.S. patent application for it. Nichols’ cube was held together with magnets. The patent was filed two years before Rubik invented his improved mechanical cube.
- A standard cube (3*3*3) measures approx. 2 1/4 inches (5.7 cm).
- The standard cube can have 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different permutations, but the puzzle is advertised as having only ‘billions’ of positions.
- All cubes (3*3*3, 4*4*4, 5*5*5 and 6*6*6) can be solved in 26 or fewer permutations.