Cubed! – The Difficult Made Easy
The popular and perplexing puzzle known as Rubik’s Cube was invented by Dr. Erno Rubik in 1975, but did not make its way to the West until 1980.
The Cube has 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different possible configurations. One, and only one, of these possibilities represents the 'solved' Cube, showing a single color on each of its 6 sides. Allowing one second for each turn, it would take you 1400 million million years to go through ALL the possible configurations. In comparison, the whole universe is only 14 thousand million years old.
In 1982 the first World RUBIK's Cube championship was held in Budapest. Nineteen national champions took part. Minh Thai, the US Champion, won by solving the Cube in of 22.95 seconds. The world record, in competitive conditions, grew progressively lower and now stands at 13.41 seconds.
How amazing, then, if our magician could solve the Cube in a time that is less even than the current world record! In “Cubed!” Marco does just that. A dozen or so cubes are passed out to different audience members, who are asked to randomize them. Once collected, a single cube is selected and handed to Marco. In just 5 seconds he examines the cube, gives it a deft twist or three, tosses it into the air – and it lands in his hand, completely solved!
“Okay…perhaps I used a bit of magic on that one,” he confesses. “Let’s try something a bit more challenging. Please hold up any one of the other cubes.” His assistant selects any of the remaining cubes at random, and Marco proceeds, with only a few more twists, to complete this cube. He holds it up, and it appears NOT to be solved, but to still be in a randomized state -- until Marco takes the cube from the assistant and shows that each side of his cube now matches a side of the cube the assistant had been holding:
“This is side one, side two, side three, side four, side five and side six. And that’s a miracle. Thank you!”
For situations in which a product or service “makes what you thought was impossible, easy,” Cubed! presents a delightful demonstration of just what is possible, using the “magic” of the new product. |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | logo integration, customized cubes as give-aways |
|
|
|
|
