Top 10 Facts: Rubik's Cube

in hungary in 1974 a young erno rubik sat in his room building what was the first version of his cube it was made out of wood and it was held together using elastic bands and paper clips but eventually he found a design that could have the blocks hold themselves together he added one color to each side and began turning it but he quickly discovered for how simple it looked he was unable to bring the colors back to the start in fact it took him a whole month to devise a method for solving his cube and when he finally came out of his room to show his mother what he achieved she was delighted mostly because he would finally stop spending his time on this erno rubik patented his cube mechanism and in 1977 it was being sold in hungary as beavus kotska magic cube then in 1980 rubik partnered with ideal toy company to move his product to the international market and it was renamed to rubik's cube however this name wasn't erno rubik's idea but rather the company selling the cube to this day erno prefers to call it my cube he once said from my mouth it sounds strange to call it rubik's cube if i have a child i call it my child not rubik's boy or rubik's girl personally i don't know about that as he did name one of his children after himself more than 350 million rubik's cubes have been sold making it one of the best selling toys of all time and this is just counting the official rubik's cube not to mention the millions of other cubes sold from dollar stores and speed cubes made by chinese companies also known as knockoffs wait a minute the rubik's cube was so popular that in 1981 a book by james g norse called the simple solution to the rubik's cube sold over 6 million copies now keep in mind this was before you could just type how to solve the rubik's cube in the youtube search bar and find a free rubik's cube tutorial in seconds what makes the rubik's cube so fascinating is something that looks so simple can in reality be so complex with only six colors on a three by three by three cube there are over 43 quintillion ways to scramble it even the 2x2 cube also known as the easy one has over 3 million combinations in 1981 a commercial for the rubik's cube advertised it as having over 3 billion combinations rubik's cube over three billion combinations but just one solution from ideal and it is technically true unfortunately our human brains are not exactly capable of understanding just how big 43 quintillion is if you could go through one rubik's cube combination every second you could reach 1 million combinations in a week but to reach 1 billion that would take over 31 years even if you had every human on earth all spend their whole life doing the same thing we wouldn't even reach half of all the possible combinations but that's just the number of solvable positions by taking the cube apart and rearranging it you can have impossible situations such as a single twisted corner piece a single flipped edge piece or just two pieces swapped with each other this raises the number of possible combinations to 519 quintillion but if you were like a lot of people who peeled the stickers off then there's a lot more combinations than that if god had a rubik's cube and tried to solve it in as few turns as possible how many turns would he need of course it depends on the scramble but what is the maximum number of turns needed to solve any scrambled cube this number is also known as god's number since the beginning it was well known that god's number had to be at least 18. otherwise it would be too young i mean if god's number was 17 that means you could write down the solution to all 43 quintillion scrambles using at most 17 moves but how many ways can you even write up to 17 moves only about 20 quintillion which means there's no way you can write the solution to every position however with up to 18 moves there are over 260 quintillion combinations of moves you could write meaning that 18 was the lower bound for god's number over the early 2000s the upper bound was slowly lowered but clever thinking could only go so far and in july of 2010 a search was done using a large number of computers at google and of course a lot of clever programming to prove that every scramble could be solved in 20 moves or less and thus god's number was shown to be 20. what if you didn't want to learn how to solve the rubik's cube but instead you found a sequence of turns that could simply be repeated over and over until your cube was solved this is also known as the devil's algorithm as repeating the sequence would surely be hell it may not sound so bad at first but think about it like this your cube could be in any scrambled state so the devil's algorithm would have to traverse all 43 quintillion positions of the cube just to make sure your scramble can also be solved to say that using this to solve your cube would take a long time is an understatement okay so nobody's gonna use the devil's algorithm to solve the cube but is it at least an algorithm you can learn to do well here's the thing no matter what sequence of moves you apply to the cube it will eventually bring you back to where you started some sequences require only a few repetitions while some require a lot more [Music] the maximum number of times you can repeat a sequence before it brings you back to the start is 1260. this means that the shortest possible algorithm that can go through every cube state before it started to repeat itself is 34 quadrillion turns long but if you're still against the idea of learning to solve a cube properly someone actually has found the devil's algorithm i'll link to it in the description but be warned it is long according to the internet this puzzle was almost named the inca gold or the gordian knot while they certainly are interesting names i couldn't find any primary sources on this so take that fact with a grain of salt even then the rubik's cube isn't just called the rubik's cube the official name for the rubik's 2x2 cube is called the pocket cube and the 4x4 is called the rubik's revenge and the 5x5 is called the professor's cube the rubik's cube also has other names depending on the language you're speaking but most are just a translation of the words rubik's cube although in chinese it is known as muafang which directly translates to magic square or magic cube which was the puzzle's original name in 1957 puzzle designer larry d nichols came up with the idea to make a two by two by two cube with six colored sides that could rotate allowing the pieces to move around freely he constructed a prototype in 1968 and received a patent for his design in 1972. two years later in hungary erno rubik makes his invention in the early 1980s after the international success of the rubik's cube nichols employer sued ideal toy company who owned the rubik's cube for infringement on his patent the thing is nichols's patent was only for a 2x2 cube his patent also showed the cube being held together by magnets which is very different compared to the rubik's cube core mechanism ultimately the court ruled that the 2x2 rubik's pocket cube infringed on the patent but the 3x3 rubik's cube did not the rubik's cube was such a cultural phenomenon that there is even a tv show about it called rubik the amazing cube there is a walking talking rubik's cube with a face i want you to take a moment and imagine what this character looks like got it [Music] yeah the show aired from 1983 to 1985 featuring a total of 13 episodes each being 30 minutes long the show follows some kids who find rubik a cube that belonged to an evil magician rubik had special powers such as flying abducting children and giving dogs sharp teeth rubik could very easily become scrambled such as when dropped on the ground where he basically becomes useless but as long as the kids could quickly solve rubik again he could get them out of trouble oh and episode 11 is called saturday night rubik that pretty much describes me as i'm writing this script naturally people who enjoy solving rubik's cubes are usually people who enjoy a challenge in this case building extreme rubik's cubes the largest rubik's cube was built by tony fisher in 2019 standing at over two meters tall or six feet seven inches tony fisher also holds the record for the smallest rubik's cube at 5.6 millimeters which he created in 2016. the rubik's cube with the most layers is a 33 by 33 cube made by greg's puzzles in 2017. the cube has 6153 parts and thirty 6534 stickers not only does this look like a big mistake of time investment if you tried to solve it it also looks delicate enough that i'd be most worried about the cube popping and on the flip side of course the cube with the least amount of layers is the one by one if you don't think that gan cubes are worth 60 dollars then get ready for this this is the masterpiece cube it was crafted by fred kehler the ceo and founder of diamond cutters international you can buy this cube for two and a half million dollars do it i dare you it's made out of 18 karat gold and instead of stickers each color is made of 25 little gemstones including emeralds rubies and amethysts it was made in 1995 for the 15th anniversary of the rubik's cube according to one source the violet side is hidden from public view to prevent anyone from replicating the design of this cube which i'm not so sure about since well here it is but what i do know is since this cube is from 1995 its corner cutting must be absolute garbage on the bright side they offer free shipping and a 14-day return policy if you want to buy a gift for your family member your amazing cuber friend or just for yourself but you don't have two and a half million dollars just sitting around at the j-perm store you can get shirts hoodies mugs and even masks we have cube related designs including of course the cubing mom and cubing dad which are the most popular designs and perfect if you don't know what to get for your parents also everything is 10 off if you use the discount code 2020 which lasts until the end of the year if you live in the us there's also the code free over 50 for free shipping on orders over 50 but i don't know how long that one lasts for you can only use one code at a time so pick whichever one saves you more honestly isn't this the ideal set of christmas presents oh i'm the the clothes not the cubes yeah who needs that many cubes so go get them quick so you don't have to worry about shipping times messing with your holidays i hope you enjoyed this one thanks for watching and i'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: J Perm

Views: 684,061

Rating: 4.9386468 out of 5

Keywords: j perm, jperm, tricks, speedcube, cubing, 3x3, 3x3x3, erno rubik, god's number, devil's algorithm, god's algorithm, devil's number, rubik the amazing cube, interesting, funny, speedcubing, largest rubik's cube, smallest rubik's cube, most expensive, 4x4, 5x5, 43 quintillion, combinations, history, scrambles

Id: f-rjR0lUDmg

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020