[cursor drag] move the cube around
(center tumbles, periphery rotates)
The Soma Cube
The soma cube consists of 7 irregular pieces which can be put together to
form a 3x3x3 cube in 240 different ways. The pieces are shown at the right
of the display. The puzzle was invented by Piet Hein, a physicist interested
in the structure of the nucleus of the atom. It has been the subject of
multiple Martin Gardner columns in Scientific American.
Operation
The controls allow selection of Soma Cube solutions and rotation to view each
solution from any angle. The solutions are numbered. One can change the
solution by incrementing or decrementing the solution number by 1 or 10. The
position of the cube in the viewing plane is changed (rotated) by grabbing a
outside corner and dragging it to the new position. The position of the cube
in the other dimensions is changed by grabbing the cube at any point near the
center and dragging the point to the new desired position. The controls switch
about 1/2 way out to the periphery. You will get used to it.
References
McKeeman, W.M., A Formal Model for Space-filling Puzzles, Machine
Intelligence vol.8, Elcock&Michie (ed.), Wiley (1977) pp 86-93
Conway, Berlekamp and Guy, Winning Ways, vol. 2.