STANLEY RUBIK: EYES WIDE SHUT

For those of you who know me, or read my blog, you know that I have gone a little crazy over the Rubik's Cube. 

The Details: (from wikipedia)

The cube is mechanical puzzle invented in 1974[1] by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube",the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

And for you Math aficionados:

The original (3×3×3) Rubik's Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes. Seven can be oriented independently, and the orientation of the eighth depends on the preceding seven, giving 3 7 (2,187) possibilities. There are 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges, since an odd permutation of the corners implies an odd permutation of the edges as well. Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 2 11 (2,048) possibilities. [18 ]

There are exactly 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possibilities, which is approximately forty-three quintillion. To put this into perspective, if every permutation of a 57- millimeter Rubik's Cube were lined up end to end, it would stretch out approximately 261 light years. Alternatively, if laid out on the ground, this is enough to cover the earth with 273 layers of cubes, recognizing the fact that the radius of the earth sphere increases by 57 mm with each layer of cubes. Cool, right? Wait, there's more! Check out this 3 year old, sitting in a high chair, do the cube in less than 2 minutes!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSqUcrFJ498

How can this get ANY cooler, you ask?  Well, my answer to you is....blindfolded, of course!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZs-Gr6Vcsk Man, when i solved the cube, i ran around the Harbour screaming, "i did it!  I did it!"  leaping for joy and crying over finally overcoming my long time obstacle....and now kids are doing it blindfolded?  Good grief!