The Rubik's Cube just had it's 40th anniversary of invention.
It is, arguably, the world's best-selling toy, having sold over 350 million units.
Here are a few things you might not know about it.
1. The Rubik's Cube was invented by Erno Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture and design, who wanted a working model to help explain three-dimensional geometry to his students.
2. The toy was originally named the Magic Cube. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Rubik admitted that it was strange to refer to his creation as a "Rubik's cube" and says that he calls it "my cube." Rubik introduced the toy as the Magic Cube in Hungary, named for his theory of "magic cubology," but the Ideal Toy Corp. dubbed it the Rubik's cube in 1979.
3. All possible Rubik's cube combinations can be solved in 23 moves. No matter how the cube starts out, its colors can be perfectly rearranged in 23 or fewer steps. See here.
Toys aren't just for Kids.
CubeStormer 3, built from Lego mechanical and robotics parts and powered by a Samsung Galaxy S4, shattered the world record by solving a Rubik’s Cube in only 3.253 seconds – considerabley faster than the fastest human time of 5.55 seconds.
You can watch the robot break the world record yourself below:
via YouTube.
The smartphone acts as the brain of the robot. It uses a custom app that uses the camera to make note of what the scrambled cube looks like, then sends instructions to eight Lego Mindstorm EV3 bricks, which then in turn manipulate the arms of the robot to move the cube.
“We knew CubeStormer 3 had the potential to beat the existing record but with the robot performing physical operations quicker than the human eye can see there’s always an element of risk,” Gilday said in a statement, “In the end, the hours we spent perfecting the robot and ensuring its motor and intelligence functions were properly synchronized paid off. Our big challenge now is working out if it’s possible to make it go even faster.”
