Slashdot Mirror
A Working 5D Rubik's Cube
Melinda Green writes "Readers who enjoyed the previous
Slashdot postings regarding the 4-dimensional Rubik's cube called MagicCube4D will
be interested to know that a couple of brilliant developers have
recently created a working 5-dimensional Rubik's
cube. Operating a 5 dimensional puzzle projected all the way down
to a 2D computer screen may seem a hopeless task but the full 5D puzzle
has already been solved
by 3 people. Also noteworthy is the fact that the 4D puzzle has now
been ported to Java and is available as both a full-featured desktop
application and as an Applet."
A 4 Dimensional Cube is called a Tesseract, unless you assume time is a dimension (which it frequently is/is cited as being).
That 4d java applet is amazing! It even runs perfectly fast on my Pentium II.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Is there anyone reading with the brains/training to confidently/accurately answer some questions please?
"These are Rubik's cubes of the form 3d, with the original popular puzzle being 33. We label the puzzles like this because they are a d-dimensional cube broken into 3d smaller pieces or "cubies" of the same dimension. For example, the 3D cube has 33 or 27 total 3-dimensional cubies."
Does adding cubies really mean adding a dimension, or does it mean simply making a more complicated 3D puzzle and giving it a fancy name? (Behold: the Fifth Dimension! Amaze Your Friends!)
I noticed in the 4D model that elements disappear and reappear with each move. What's up with that? What do the green cubes represent? Where are the pieces which disappear supposed to be going, and why can't we see the changes being made to this set of cubies? Is the invisible set a cheat on the part of the designers?
I have not played with the 5D version, and so have no questions about that one.
RTFM; please, I beg you.