The Four Cubes Problem - 1

4 cubes with 4 colours across their 6 faces, 82,944 possible ways of stacking them - how do we stack them to have all four colours on each side of the stack?
This is the problem of Instant Insanity, to which there are two distinct methods of solution. Robin Wilson, Gresham Professor of Geometry, here explains how to solve it using graph theory.

This is the 23rd part of 'A Millennium of Mathematical Puzzles'.
The full lecture is available (in 24 parts) here on YouTube, or it can be downloaded (like all of our lectures) in its complete form from the Gresham College website, in video, audio or text formats:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Math
• Maths
• Mathematics
• Wilson
• Geometry
• Problem
• Puzzle
• Lecture

[apol657]

I like these videos! Nice!

[ryanc4992]

hes a very clever guy.

[M05HP1T93]

@MegaKickurass there's nearly 83,000 possibilities, before seeing this video i doubt there would be a chance of you ever completing this, make the blocks yourself and set someone you know is very good at puzzles and see if they can do it, chances are, they cant

[KittyGoezRawr13]

british people are so smart.

[MegaKickurass]

not hard

[itsamemariowahoo]

@elizze6 it's maths from secondary schools or middle schools if you're american

[elizze6]

What? He confused me with the graphs

[jimmithyiscool]

haha i tried to this puzzle at a friends house but he told me the goal was to have each side all one color it seems alot easier now