Rubik's Snake

Rubik's Snake (also Rubik 's Twist, Rubik's Transformable Snake Puzzle Snake or Rubik's ) is a toy that consists of 24 connected in series, three straight -sided prisms. The prisms can be rotated to each other, so that different shapes and figures formed.

The starting point is usually the straight line, from which can be formed with a few twists figures like a snake, a cat, a dog, a ball, and many other imaginative shapes.

The toy does not require any special " strategies " and promotes creativity and spatial imagination.

Construction

The 24 prisms are connected alternately normal and lying on the head. The prisms can be connected to the 23 rotational surfaces of four displaced by 90 ° occupy stable positions. Usually the prisms are alternately in two colors.

Notation

Instruction sequence for turning

The description of any shape or figure is based on a batch of rotations of the prisms.

The starting point is the straight line, the 12 underlying prisms are numbered from left to right 1-12. The left and right rotation area of ​​the prisms is referred to as L and R. The four possible positions of each rotational surface can be 0, 1, 2, and 3 numbered ( rotation of the prisms lying adjacent prism). The numbering is obtained from the point of view from the right of the axis of rotation in a clockwise direction. The 0 position corresponds to the initial position and is therefore not separately listed.

Each rotation is described by:

  • Example of Three Peaks
  • Example of cat

Mechanical processing

The positions of the 23 surfaces of revolution can also write directly behind the other. The positions 0, 1, 2 and 3 result in this case always from the rotation of the right prism relative to the left prism line of sight from the right on the axis of rotation in a clockwise direction.

This notation is, however, unsuitable for manual twisting, because it does not indicate the sequence of rotations.

  • Example of Three Peaks
  • Example of cat

Mathematics

The number of theoretically different types of Rubik's Snake is

423 = 70 368 744 177 664 ≈ 7 · 1013

It results from the number of each 4 positions of the 23 surfaces of revolution.

However, the actual possible number of different shapes is lower and still unknown. This is because some combinations of rotations are not executable, because parts of the resulting figure would overlap.

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