The Amazing Rubik Cube
Google Celebrated the 40th Birthday of Rubik cube with a Doodle . When a visitor clicks on the logo, the Rubik’s Cube will spin and grow into an interactive version of the 3-D puzzle. Players click the mouse to twist horizontally, while clicking and dragging down twists vertically.
The rubik cube is not at all easy to solve unless you have great practice on it . It is a good brain exercise and helps in increasing IQ and Memory.
What makes its success all the remarkable is that it did not start out as a toy. The Rubik’s cube was invented in 1974 by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian architect, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry. You can always learn few algorithms and methods to help you solve rubik cube . Click here to learn how to solve Rubik cube :- Learn to solve Rubik cube
You can also try here :- Methods to solve Rubik cube .
There are only a handful of toys that last more than a generation. But the Rubik’s cube, which celebrates its 40th birthday (and features on Google with a Doodle), now joins the likes of Barbie, Play-Doh, Lego and the Slinky, as one of the great survivors in the toy cupboard.
After designing the “magic cube” as he called it (twice the weight of the current toy), he realised he could not actually solve the puzzle. The more he moved the coloured squares, the more mixed up they became. “It was a code I myself had invented!” he wrote. “Yet I could not read it.”
The cube, made up of nine coloured squares on each side, can be rearranged in 43 quintillion different ways. That is 43,000,000,000,000,000,000.
After a month, and using a method of rearranging the corners of each side first, he finally solved the puzzle.
Being from Hungary, then behind the Iron Curtain, it meant that Rubik took a few years to market the cube as a toy. It was shown at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1979 (a toy fair which has seen many great toys be launched, such as Playmobil in 1974), and was spotted as a potential hit. It was licensed to the Ideal Toy Corp in 1980 and, by January 2009, more than 350 million units had been sold worldwide, making it the biggest-selling toy of all time.
Know it here :-
One in seven people have played with a Rubik’s Cube.
An estimated 350 million cubes have sold to date.
It was little known until 1980 when it got a global release.
Mr. Rubik once said, “If you are curious, you will find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them.”
Its heyday was in the early 1980s – it won Toy of the Year in the UK in both 1980 and 1981 – even though the great majority of children could not solve the cube and resorted to cheating by peeling off the coloured stickers.
It then fell from fashion, but never completely disappeared, thanks in part to “speed cubing” competitions, where people tried to solve the cube as quickly as possible. The current world record is held by Mats Valk, a Dutch teenager, who managed to solve it in 5.55 seconds.
Robots, however, been able to solve the Rubik’s cube even more quickly. The Cubestormer III robot built from Lego kits and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone solved it in 3.25 seconds in March this year.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, was once asked whether he had a hidden talent. He answered: “I can do a Rubik’s cube in one minute and 30 seconds.”
Some Records with Rubik’s cube
Single time: The current world record for single time on a 3×3×3 Rubik’s Cube was set by Mats Valk of the Netherlands in March 2013 with a time of 5.55 seconds at the Zonhoven Open in Belgium.
blindfold, fastest time (including memorising): 23.80 seconds, Marcin Zalewski (Poland) at the Polish Nationals 2013 . The record for blind solving is held by Marcin Zalewski of Poland, who solved a cube blindfolded in 23.80 seconds (including memorization) at the Polish Nationals in 2013
A time of 9.03 seconds was made by Feliks Zemdegs at the Lifestyle Seasons Summer 2014. Antoine Cantin, from Clarence-Rockland, ON averaged 12.56 seconds over five cubes at the Toronto Open Spring 2014
The best known algorithm for solving the cube needs only 20 face turns.
The youngest person who solved a Rubik’s Cube in a competition was Ruxin Liu (China), who was 3 years 118 days old when she solved the cube in 1:39.33 at the Weifang Open on 14 April 2013
The smallest working Rubik’s Cube is 8 mm wide. It was created using a 3D-printer by Evgeniy Grigeriev (Russia).