Event calendar file
School of Technology and Computer Science Seminars
On the Group of Symmetries of the Rubik's Cube
by Mr. Nikhil S. Mande (School of Technology and Computer Science, TIFR)
Friday, March 14, 2014
from
to
(Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus
at Colaba Campus
| Description |
In this talk, we will prove that the group of symmetries of a standard (3x3x3) Rubik's cube is isomorphic to (\mathbb{Z}_37 \times \mathbb{Z}_2^{11}) \rtimes ((A_8 \times A_{12}) \rtimes Z_2). Due to limited time, some proofs may not be completely rigorous. We will also try to understand how the above structure suggests a natural commutator based approach to solving the Rubik's cube (and also how it generalizes to higher order cubes).
The talk will assume a very basic group theory background, namely knowledge of cyclic groups and direct products. We will define semidirect products and alternating groups through the course of the talk.
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