Other Mathematics Commons^™

Solving The Rubik's Cube Using Group Theory, Courtney Cooke

Honors Projects

While he was working in his mother's apartment in 1974, the professor of architecture from Budapest, Erno Rubik, had no idea he was inventing one of the most popular toys in history, the Rubik's Cube. As an estimated 350 million Rubik's cubes have been sold, and approximately one in every seven people have played with one (which is about 1 billion people) it is not surprising to see that the algorithm of solving the Rubik's cube has been applied to the eld of mathematics. By using abstract algebra and more specially, group theory, the Rubik's Cube, no matter what the …